And David, Anoy (#7) is right. I’ve been fighting that kind of thing for eleven years. It’s called the White Wall.

Then again there were the clowns who got a hung jury in the first Spector trial. And I can’t understand how anyone could work to condemn children to Iron Lungs by extorting from vaccine makers.

Lawyers live in word-smithing bull land. If they can silver tongue up something that sounds plausible, they can take away everything you have – your freedom, your kids, your life’s accumulated wealth. In spite of the Constitution, there is no F=mA equivalent for lawyers (an immutable physical reality that must be conformed to regardless of station in life).

What this creates, despite arguments to the contrary, is that we live in a land were we don’t have the rule of law. We live in a land of rule by arbitrary men – worse than any dictatorship in that there isn’t only one tyrant to worry about, but millions. No one knows WHAT THE RULES ARE. If we lived in a land of rule of law, everyone would know what the rules were (and they would be constant until revised by the legislative process) and lawyers would simply help the lay person understand the rules. Instead, we have a legal system built on a foundation of shifting sand so that no one can make a rational decision that if I do X, the legal consequences are nil or Y or what ever – you don’t really know what the consequences will be. So you get the rampant CYA mentality. The rocket fuel post is classic in this regard.

You do realize you’re describing actual doctors, don’t you?

What if a lawyer was like a doctor who knew you had cancer but didn’t have the time to treat you, so your doctor told you you were fine, sent you home, and by the time you discovered you had cancer it was incurable?

I like the comparison between lawyers and doctors! I think it illustrates what an impact lawyers can have on their clients quality of life, and how damaging it can be when they fail – which leads us to more origins of lawyer unpopularity!

Worse, how it goes for real estate agents: “Take the plea, that way I get paid a small but certain amount for minimal work. I don’t want to risk putting in all the work of a trial for nothing, so I’m probably not going to work hard on your defense if it goes to trial.”

Your defense lawyer: comparable to your doctor.
Your antagonist (suing you): comparable to a disease.
The attorney representing your antagonist: the vector for the disease.

I think the root cause of bad feelings toward lawyers is that they have a dual role, playing doctor or acting as disease vector, unpredictably. They may represent you, or someone you like, or someone you don’t like, or the government, or just about anyone. To a lay person, this looks as if lawyers have no principles. From a legal point of view, of course, even the most despicable criminal deserves representation, and the more ably you defend a despicable criminal, the more credit you deserve for doing a good job.

Very difficult for nonlawyers to accept this. I had my own moment of doubt when I was considering being represented by a former county prosecutor. “Why did you stop being a prosecutor?” I asked. “Because I lost the election,” he answered. Well, okay, but I had to wonder–could he really just turn around and start defending the type of people he had been trying to put in jail a few months previously?

He looked at me as if I were crazy. “Of course,” he said. “It’s my job.”

Very difficult for nonlawyers to accept this kind of thing.