
Lawyers are Good People: A rebuttal of "Things your lawyer won't tell you" - dwwoelfel
http://wopsr.net/archives/401
======
mindslight
Lawyers are hated because as a profession, they are responsible for creating
the problems that are then "solved". If many doctors actually ran around
wounding people, _all_ doctors would get a bad rap, even the ones that were
begrudgingly employed to heal.

Laws grow without bound as to their complexity, and one has no choice but to
consult with a lawyer (for the better part of a grand) upon receiving any
"legal" attention. That the average person is unable to understand the law and
judge the merits of their case is _already_ a violation of basic due process
(nevermind the extremely high penalties that are always settled or pleaded
down).

From the point of view of someone forced to retain a lawyer, the situation
would be much better if _both_ sides' lawyers didn't exist, even though their
lawyer is actually helping them.

~~~
houseabsolute
The lawyers are not typically more responsible for the laws that exist than
any other citizen. We all equally voted for our representation and failed to
keep them from adding complexity to the legal code.

~~~
mindslight
Case law (which is most of what you're dealing with in a civil dispute) is
made by judges, whom are lawyers. Initial nastygrams (often casting a wide net
with many tenuous claims) are sent out by lawyers. Lawsuits are initiated by
lawyers. Statutory laws are certainly written by lawyers, to be phrased in a
"formal" (obfuscated) manner.

~~~
gnosis
It sounds like you're implying that lawyers do all this on their own
initiative. In fact, they do these things because their client orders it done
(with the exception of case law, of course, but why is making case law bad?).
Blaming lawyers for these things is like blaming the messenger for the
message.

Your description of what lawyers do is too one-sided. Lawyers not only send
out nastygrams, but they help those who are the targets of nastygrams. Lawyers
not only initiate lawsuits (because their clients want to sue), but also
defend people from lawsuits.

Lawyers fight for the rights of the oppressed, the poor, and the unjustly
accused and unjustly imprisoned. Of course, that's not all lawyers do, and not
all lawyers do these things. But it's unfair not to mention the good that
lawyers do, and pretend that all they do is reprehensible.

------
jrockway
A lot of lawyer hate here. I don't really get it; most of a lawyer's bad
reputation comes from their client -- divorcing couples that can't divide
their assets on their own, annoying IP-holders that send a C&D for using their
name in a review, etc., etc. None of these are bad lawyers; they're bad people
paying lawyers. The lawyer just makes sure that what's happening is legally
sound, they're not the ones initiating the action.

If we didn't have a legal system, disputes would be even less tasteful.

~~~
arethuza
Here is an example of a "bad" lawyer from my direct experience: at our IPO
completion meeting one of our advisers points out to us founders that the way
one document has been drafted by the company lawyers means that we would have
an immediate _large_ tax liability. Money that we as individuals simply didn't
have.

Now to remove this liability would have been a small change to _one_ sentence
in one document that wasn't due for submission until the following day. Except
the lawyer refused to do it saying that it would take too long (it really was
a couple of words).

It ended up being debated for ages - we had no real means of getting the
lawyers to do anything (they were the company lawyers, not our personal
lawyers).

Eventually we founders had to threaten to pull out of the IPO, which we pretty
much had to do as it would have bankrupted us, and only at that point did the
lawyer relent and make the change.

For me that is typical of bad lawyers - getting bogged down in silly little
fights about their own egos rather than the big picture of actually getting
the deal done.

~~~
jrockway
_For me that is typical of bad lawyers - getting bogged down in silly little
fights about their own egos rather than the big picture of actually getting
the deal done._

Totally different from other professions. Programmers would never act like
this!

------
mistermann
Is it just me, or does this fellow not seem entirely believable?? I started
writing some rebuttal points, but then gave up as it would take too long.

I realize, the concept and enforcement of law is crucial to our way of life.
However, the vast majority of work that is conducted by lawyers (on a dollar
basis) is redundant. It is fairly well documented (in Canada at least) that
lawyers have lobbied heavily, and succeeded, in shutting out paralegals from
large subsets of their work.

I've dealt with lawyers on a few occasions, and it is almost always the
same...they charge ungodly rates, they generally (after all, these are just
normal people) have a marginal understanding of their craft.

In this day and age, a GOOD software developer has to know WAY more than a
lawyer (after all, we can't just ask our assistant to figure something out for
us)...not to mention, in software it seems everything changes totally about
every 5-7 years.

And the ramble about standard forms, that they put so much work into refining
for each particular client....you are just outright lying, period. I've been
through this before. If you, as lawyers, want respect from people, then if you
a re-using a contract template, you should notify us and charge us
accordingly. I know you are going to charge me based on "value", but you imply
that all of you are not using variations of the same template.

Long story short, I think you are lying, and you likely agree, but nothing
ever will come of it. The beauty of law is that. a huge percentage of
politicians are former lawers, so most of what they propose gets though
legislation.

So, generally, I don't fault you for the money you make, you do server a
purpose in society, but you can be faulted for manipulating legislation to
make certain services only executeable by full on lawyers, etc., etc. etc. You
know, there's a reason almost everyone thinks you are crooks, it's not just
some stereotype we are told as children.

In my opinion, even though you are crucial in some scenarios,in the aggregate,
you are thiefs (according to the dictionary definition), and your lobbying has
made the world a worse place.

~~~
ubernostrum
Yeah, lawyers charge way too much and don't have to know anything! And so do
programmers! Why, my 14-year-old nephew knows how to write code, and I bet
none of you "rock star" geeks are any better at it than him, so why should you
get to charge that big hourly consulting rate? I'll have _him_ build my
website, you'll see!

------
dwwoelfel
Here's a link to the original submission of "Things your lawyer won't tell
you" on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1146976>

------
gnosis
Also see:

"The Lawyer Myth: A Defense of the American Legal Profession"

[http://www.amazon.com/Lawyer-Myth-Defense-American-
Professio...](http://www.amazon.com/Lawyer-Myth-Defense-American-
Profession/dp/0804011117/)

------
headShrinker
Sorry, but this rebuttal is a perfect example of turd polishing. The
experience described in '16 Things Your Lawyer Won't Tell You' is exactly the
experience I had with lawyers. After working with lawyers in the music
industry and software industry, one thing is certain, lawyers are only
practicing, but expect a big bill.

~~~
gnosis
Such a shame the music and software industries are far too poor to afford to
pay those bills.

------
greenlblue
Weak. I liked the other one better.

