Problem: can lawyers be trusted? They can easily tell me that I need to spend infinite amount of money on them. I might spend all my money on lawyers without ever getting any product off the ground.
I see how much money is wasted on IT consultants, why should it be different with lawyers? Except with IT consultants I can tell when shit is happening, with lawyers I can't.
The same applies to every aspect of life that you are not an expert at. Can doctors be trusted? Salespeople? Do your research, ask for recommendations. There are people in every profession with good reputations. These people usually have little to gain from screwing you over as opposed to providing good service. Conversely, if you are happy with their service you will keep coming back to them in the future once you trust them.
Sure, but nothing else is so far removed from my daily experience. Even with doctors I would say that I can get quite far with my common sense. And doctors DO rip you off, as in recommend loads of useless treatments. Maybe they don't even mean bad, it is just a different perspective (it's not their money, it is yours - they can not make the judgment call of how much money to spend. As long as money is available, there is always something else that could be done).
I am also not saying that lawyers in general screw you over. But it seems very hard to find a lawyer I could trust.
That's remarkable. If a doctor told you your arteries were dangerously clogged and you urgently needed a bypass, you would trust your common sense, even though the doctor is telling you you could have a heart attack at any moment? But if a lawyer recommends lots of expensive services, you wouldn't have the common sense or the assertiveness to seek a second opinion?
I didn't invent that heart-bypass example; it was a running scam exposed on 60 Minutes a few years ago.
I've been a client to maybe five or six independent civil lawyers over the years, and they all did pretty much nothing more or less than what I asked for going in.
I had a free consultation with a corporate criminal defense lawyer recently, not realizing she was a trial lawyer, so it would really only have been appropriate to meet with her had I been charged with something -- I was just looking for advice on how to avoid committing a corporate crime in a tricky situation. Not only did she listen to my story and not bill me for anything, she gave me the most cautious advice possible under the circumstances -- the advice least likely to cause me to need her paid services.
(I've been happy with the doctors I've had over the years as well, for that matter. I once saw a dentist who seemed both incompetent and fraudulent, but I didn't go back.)
First of all, as I repeatedly stated in this conversation, I don't want to knock down lawyers. It is just that I have the least knowledge about law, of all things, so the quality of lawyers is the hardest for me to judge. Also, are you denying that lawyers can get VERY expensive?
Your bypass example: yes, as it happens I have repeatedly read that bypass operations are complete nonsene, and there is actually a business of doctors referring patients to each other. Of course if they tell you you are going to die in one minute, there is no time to research the internet about the suggested treatment, which I would normally do.
With medicine I would do so - but with law, we have just learned that searching the internet is no good, because only a real lawyer should be trusted?
I have also had encounters with nice lawyers, who gave me free advice over the phone. However, it also seems common that lawyers don't want to be upfront about the costs they will incur. Also, I am in Germany, things might the different here than in the states.
Surprisingly, a large chunk of my friends are civil attorneys, and you know what? They all really care about serving their clients, and view themselves as champions of justice. Sure, there are scummy lawyers, just as their are lousy programmers, but I can't think of a single attorney that I've ever met, who wants to screw his clients over.
Especially in corporate law. If they do a good job at drafting your contracts and defending you in court against copyright infringement suits, you'll come back, and recommend your other business-people friends to that attorney's practice.
Of course, your attorney will want to disembowel the opposing side, but that's what you want.
If you're worried about an attorney, look at their track record; unlike a lot of other professions, you can get all of it from the courthouse in the district where they practice. If you don't know where to start looking for a lawyer, call your local bar association, and ask them for a referral.
Or, if you've got very little money, look at Pre-Paid Legal Services. Yes, yes, it started as an MLM company, which looks pretty scummy, but they actually do provide a very, very useful set of services, and the total cost is less than twenty bucks a month.
It just makes me sad to see lawyers catching all the flack for the problems in our judicial system, when it's our elected officials who created the whole nightmare in the first place.
If you can afford a highly paid professional, sure, it is no problem to ask a lawyer all the time. Operating on a shoestring, the decision comes a little bit harder.
I did not even mean to knock lawyers, maybe they all mean well, but they might be used to a different kind of level for their operation.
Not that I had so much experience with lawyers so far, but so far I found it hard to find good ones. I just happen to have no connections in lawyer circles.
Lawyers are perfectly well aware that a) if they try to screw you, another lawyer will happily screw them right back on your behalf and b) their social position is precarious enough as it is; no jury would convict an anti-lawyer lynch mob.
Unfortunately, this is a legitimate concern. You can't really sue someone for giving you subpar legal advice. It has to be really, really bad. And you would be surprised at how rare it is for a lawyer to lose a malpractice case. Doctors, sure, lawyers, not so much. It turns out that juries actually respect the work lawyers do when you get them in a courtroom.
On the plus side, if you really do get screwed, a lot of states have funds set up to compensate you. But if you pay for some legal work that might not have been completely necessary, you're on your own.
I don't think lawyers are inclined to go after their bretheren this way, but I do think lawyers get a lot of business through referrals, and clients who don't feel like they've been screwed will refer friends and colleagues.
This would be particularly important in corporate law for small businesses, where the lawyers have ongoing relationships with clients (as opposed to, say, personal injury law, where some guy hit by a truck picks an attorney out of the Yellow Pages and may never deal with the lawyer after that case is resolved).
Of course, I'm making suppositions based on my knowledge of economics. Maybe I should consult an economist.
Lawyers, like most well-paid professionals, have strong incentives to act ethically. They generally have more business than they can handle, so they don't need to rip you off, and getting caught doing so (which would happen the minute you spoke to another one) would have seriously negative consequences, up to getting disbarred.
Of course just like doctors, it cannot hurt to get second opinion, because lawyers are of course not all ethical or infallible.
So how does it relate to IT consultants - would you say that it is completely different with lawyers? Maybe all IT consultants are ethical, too, but many are still clueless. Still, they manage to find their customers, and they are in high demand, too. Are lawyers in general less clueless?
I must admit that it often freaks me out to consider that other professions are just as messed up as the software world. For example, in medicine there is in all likelihood an equivalent to LISP and an equivalent to Java. Many hospitals might have invested in useless expensive machinery (Bea Weblogic, Oracle...), and now use it on their patients, even though better treatments are already available.
If not, I wonder how medicine has solved the problem that the IT world can't seem to get a grip on.
I don't see what IT consultants have to do with lawyers, or how you think the two relate. Just because people waste money on IT consultants does not mean hiring a lawyer is a waste.
Also, anyone can just call themselves an IT consultant. You have to go through schooling and pass a test to become a lawyer. The barrier to entry is a lot higher.
I see how much money is wasted on IT consultants, why should it be different with lawyers? Except with IT consultants I can tell when shit is happening, with lawyers I can't.