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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (219251)	2/18/2007 5:19:58 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Then there's the more general issue of lawyers lecturing on "intellectual honesty", which I judge would generally be greeted with a hoot by most of the population at large. Don't confuse what lawyers do for show with what they do with each other and judges and other educated people in situations where the actual heavy lifting of intellectual honesty occurs. "Pounding the table and yelling like hell" doesn't actually work when you're talking to someone you can't flim-flam. Abraham Lincoln's trial strategies are still taught to newbie trial lawyers because they win -- simplify your case by conceding weak points, deal with your less weak points forthrightly, and emphasize your main points, which must be your strong points. Newspaper pundits, TV pundits, and politicians may get away with flim-flamming the rubes, but you can't bullshit a fellow bullshit artist. In fact, one of the worst insults a trial lawyer can say about a fellow trial lawyer is that "he believes his own bullshit." If you try to flim-flam a judge he will cut you off at the knees. Don't ever forget it. But that's the way private lawyers must act, government lawyers get treated with more respect. ********************************** The Bush Justice Department plays hardball, but so did the Clinton Justice Department. Hardball is the way DC lawyers do things now. It's not the way lawyers do things all over the country. I've been practicing law in Fairfax, VA, for 17 years, and I've watched the practice of hardball spreading from DC to Northern VA and then points south. Out in the country, the judges hate hardball. It's time consuming, expensive, and country lawyers have a disadvantage if only because DC law firms have hundreds of lawyers, which is only fair because country lawyers already have the hometown advantage, judges who lean towards them because they're all in the Good Old Boy society. I imagine that hardball was invented in New York. At any rate, when the government uses the Justice Department to try a case, they don't have to worry about spending money, having enough lawyers, having enough paralegals, flying here and there for depositions, paying for expert witnesses, having enough of anything and everything -- Uncle Sugar's pockets are deep. When the issue has never been litigated before, they litigate every bit of it, they don't give an inch. You may find this exasperating, but I call it zealous representation of their client. When the shoe is on the other foot, and Democrats are back in the White House, they won't give an inch, either.