Lawyers are some of the most disagreeable people you will meet. Law schools attract egomaniacs, narcissists, greedy people, and even snakes. There is something that being at war constantly does to a soul. Of course, we are not real soldiers. We fight not with guns or drones, or missiles. We carry no physical armor or swords. We fight with our wits and our tongues. We play mind games. We have no mercy.
Sure, there must be some decent opponents out there. Most times I think most opponents are honorable, but not today. We fight over dates, discovery extensions, semantics. We can be bullies. We manipulate. All to gain some rather undefined benefit, that, in the end either makes no difference, or sometimes even hurts our cases.
In negotiations, there is no cutting to the chase. That's too direct to be part of the game. If it suits our purpose, we will go after the plaintiff's daughter who can't admit she was sexually abused and make that a central feature of a case where it is irrelevant. Kindness and mercy are not in our vocabulary.
if one of the lawyers has serious illness in the family, we either bend over backwards to accommodate, especially if we lose nothing strategy-wise OR we pretend that nothing deserves special consideration and we ignore the opponent's pain for our advantage.
Some of us only care about money, not our clients. We are always posturing, posturing, posturing, and then we pound our chests.
Doesn't this game of one-ups-manship grow old for others. Law is supposed to be an honored profession. We are the keepers of justice and civilization. What has gone wrong. Is our selfishness and bullying antithetical to maintaining justice in a modern society? Of course. Maybe I just had a bad day. I hope so. No wonder lay people hate us.
Lynne
ReplyDeleteWhen my Grandfather practiced law in Kansas City it was explained to me that he was someone you went to for help resolving a difficult problem.
Today we are little better than hired guns.
The culture of zealous representation for every client, (no matter the justice or morality of what they hire counsel to advocate) combined with hourly billing is a cancer on the profession.
I think the Latin maxim is applicable more than we want to acknowledge: De minimis non curat lex!
But our legal malpractice awareness teaches us never to tell a client they do not have a case, but only that we are too busy to take on their matter.
Too many of us are in this business to make a lot of money, or have made so much money that we lost sight of the reason we started law school in the first place.
No wonder we have lost our way.
On the criminal side of the practice the clients may often be simply very bad people.
But sometimes the police and the prosecutors will charge an innocent person, and then, for that one client the lawyer becomes liberty's last champion. There is no higher calling in the law.
Keep the faith. This work is still capable of honor; we just have to slog through a swamp of our own making to get there.
Ed Rucker
The problem with lawyers (especially judges and prosecutors) is that you are de facto not held to any standards, certainly not the ones you so deftly hold others to. Imagine if every case you lost opened you to a malpractice suit, replete with loss of income and character assassination. How about involuntary major organ removal for judges whose ruling were appealed, not necessarily even overturned. I am not so naive as to think that law is an intrinsically unclean activity, but the legal profession in this country is totally out of control.
DeleteDEFENSE lawyers are the ones not held to a standard. The prosecutors are bound to give up any exculpatory evidence they find. By law they are suppose to seek the truth (not that they always do). Do you think that any defense lawyer who has a guilty client wants to seek the truth? Do you think that OJ's lawyers REALLY believed he was innocent?
DeleteI wouldn't worry about character assassination if I were you. I mean come on, if you are a scumbag attorney, your character is already shot.
DeleteAmericans worshipping money? No, you dont say....
DeleteYou had an epiphany, not just a bad day.
ReplyDelete(from one trial lawyer to another)
Melody:
ReplyDeleteI saw your blog and website very interesting ideas. I couldn't agree with you more about adrenaline addiction. Good work!
Lynne
I hope you just had a bad day, but I definitely understand the frustration. My dad is a very honorable lawyer in Orillia. He has made a good living but is very honorable and isn't just a punch-line.
ReplyDeleteWhatever, if your dad is an attorney their is nothing honorable about him. He is a punch line and a soulless being. It's not just your dad its all scumbag attorneys. I know I know wait until you need an attorney right, the only reason i would need an attorney is because of another scumbag attorney.
DeleteYou are absolutely right. The only time you need a lawyer is when some other lawyer is trying to rape you. Laws are made BY lawyers FOR lawyers. Legislators all over the country are lawyers and/or their staffs are lawyers. Do you think these animals are EVER going to pass laws that will make it hard for lawyers to file law suits? As far as I am concerned liability insurance is nothing more than the old protection racket.
DeleteI know. Hopefully someday the people in this country will wake up and stop electing these assclowns.
DeleteLawyers are all pieces of crap. Period.
ReplyDeleteThat's an insult to crap.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.listosaur.com/miscellaneous/10-most-despised-professions-in-america/
ReplyDeleteI can't believe they were third and not first.
Well really they are 1st and 3rd since most politicians are lawyers.
DeleteHiring a lawyer to protect you is like coiling a rattlesnake around your neck to protect you from other rattlesnakes.
ReplyDeleteNo lawyer shall enter the gates of heaven...it says it right in the bible.
ReplyDeleteMost lawyers are criminals, using the law to steal...funny how the cops and FBI won't touch them either. We cannot even expose their criminal behavior in any site
ReplyDeleteon the internet. People are not protected at all. Check out the horrible story about
Judge Mary Elizabeth Bullock, Deborah Breuner, so many more.
What a great article. It's certainly self deprecating, and I would like to extend a reluctant and most awkward thanks for your brutal honesty at the expense of yourself!
ReplyDeleteLife is absolutely full of comedy and tragedy, and I can relate to the comedy of errors this subject has brought forth.
I really needed to read it in relation to a few cold and creepy lawyers I have had the displeasure of dealing and/or 'working' with in the past; or, maybe I should say, haggled, argued and struggled/wrestled with.
When would one ever have the clear faculties or common sense to pay anyone to not listen to you, all the while being so unsympathetic, unsavory and ornery at the same time? The only answer that would satisfy that question would be : It's only when there is absolutely NOTHING else that one has to resort to for assistance, and selling one's soul to the devil is the only solution.
What a callous, underhanded, bizarre and twisted - and dare I say, - dysfunctional profession/racket. Lawyers are HIRED to help and serve the people, but at the same time they just hinder and sabotage you, while raping your wallet. How disrespectful, humiliating, and borderline criminal. It's been said that money talks and bullshit walks. That statement could not be more poignant AND the absolute truth, than in this case.
The whole system is also dripping with the slime of blatant cronyism. The concept of being non biased is a joke. Everyone knows everyone; INCLUDING the judges trying the individual cases. It's a backstabbers and butt buddy paradise. I am sure they discuss and relish their spoils when attending their cocktail parties So prepare to reveal your soft underbelly and also be bent over, because here it comes whether you like it or not. Sorry no lube or band aids for you. All the while they smile their shit eating grins and expect you to respond with - Thank you sir or mam, may I have another?!
And that folks,.....is what you pay for. They even charge you when they fart. Look for it on the bill, as it is listed as a miscellaneous charge.
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DeleteThanks for letting me purge. It felt great, and it was long overdue. I will remain anonymous for the most part for the fear of getting sued. ��������
ReplyDeleteThe concept of 'liberty and justice for all' has been negated by the courts and the lawyers. Justice requires a full disclosure of the truth. As advocates for the clients and themselves, lawyers are not advocates for truth. They will hide the truth, mitigate the truth, otherwise the bastardize the truth or even outright lie to achieve their goals. Since lawyers are the principal players in all aspects of the judicial process, it is unlikely that any proceeding will have a full accounting of the truth and therefore justice cannot be achieved.
ReplyDeleteWell said!
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DeleteThere aren't any honorable lawyers. There are only those slightly less wretched than the majority. Those specializing in adoption and Constitutional law might be an exception, but 99% are Statist scum.
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ReplyDelete👍 Agreed. Satan's spawn.
ReplyDeleteHmm...Didn't intend to delete my comment about the people that are worse than lawyers. Judges. Although I'm amazed it's possible, the folks that become judges apparently need more hubris in their lives, so they don the prestigious black robe, and become arrogant, unaccountable, douchenozzles of the highest order. I have a judge friend that said no one has the right to complain about a judge and cites her time in family court as the 'most stressful time of her life.'. Well, boo hoo. The families that have been destroyed by lazy, arrogant, prejudiced judges is far worse. The judge will get over it as they enjoy their oath breaking, unaccountable, privileged, lives. The families they have destroyed will not. I loathe the black-robed thugs that are the self-proclaimed champions of the US 'justice' system.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could have read what you typed on here that got you deleted. Anyhoo I couldn't agree more.
Delete1204 AM
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ReplyDeleteI'm not advocating violence, but if there were any true justice in this world, the solution would be to take half of the lawyers, doctors, politicians, and anyone else in authority and behead them, put their heads on poles, and put a sign on them listing their crimes against humanity. The other half would be made to watch, and be told that the same fate awaits them if they continue to destroy people.
ReplyDeleteI can get behind this.
DeleteSo true. These vultures destroy people for life. I wonder if God made lawyers to punish us.
DeleteI am a partner in a media business. I just had a lawyer approach my parnters, and, without ever having met me, undermine my judgment, character, and integrity. He essentially tried to worm his way into the partnership, volunteering all kinds of services and connections, all the while saying how it was all a gift. Then he tried to undermine the text of our partnership agreement all the while graciously offering his services to compose an agreement at $500 an hour. What a clown. Typical douche who thinks that he walks on water because he went to law school. We sent him an email declining all his offers. Feels good to fire an overpriced tool.
ReplyDeleteI think it's just the evolution of American society (that has historically been litigious) that is being mirrored in the law profession.
ReplyDeleteI would say that the corruption of the 'legal' system holds its roots in its inherit unaccountably.
ReplyDelete200 years ago a Judge who overstepped his bounds would be laughed at and ignored by elected officials. Case in point, "Marbury v. Madison" the case where the same court allegedly asserts its own power OVER The federal constitution.
The dirty little secrete about that case s that Marbury never got the writ the court thought he was entitled to. The court at that time still recognized the very practical fact that the executive branch under Thomas Jefferson would have told them to take a hike. And then then recent Federal constitution Gave them no practical power to enforce their edit by commanding either the legislator or the executive branch to do their will.
But something happened in the last 100 years, most notably the last 60. Our masters in black robes have acquired executive and legislative power and now directly command officials to carry out their policy prescriptions. This has the effect of extending their command over the whole of the Government making them the 1 branch that rules them all.
Naturally with such awesome power over all people and law and zero accountability theses people tend to become quite corrupt, and the lawyers who often share and preswade their power, degree, and black ground are typically nearly as corrupt.
Yes the blame lays with the judges who abuses their power, more than the lawyers who take advantage of the. But more to the point the blame also lays with the other 2 branches of government that allow this one branch to command them all, rather than simply resolve individual cases of law.
In Australia, Queensland’s Legal Services Commission publishes a brochure (The Application of the Australian Consumer Law to Lawyers) confirming that lawyers are subject to the Consumer Guarantee provisions of Australian Consumer Law (ACL) which provides for refunds, and as such are required to provide services with due care and skill, that are reasonably fit for their purpose and in a timely fashion, which means to avoid negligence.
ReplyDeleteMost lawyers think that they can charge for incompetent and negligent work, ignore consumer law and refuse to refund. They could even be so dumb to not know of their statutory requirement.
Here is what one victim did about that: http://NorthCoastLawSucks.com
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ReplyDelete