Attack on the legal field?

[123]

1 hour ago, CleanHands said:

Lots of people hate lawyers because regular Joes only need to hire them during the worst moments of their lives and don't like having to pay hundreds of dollars an hour on top of situations that are already extremely negative and stressful. Not surprising. It's like how people hate going to the dentist because nobody likes being out of pocket hundreds of dollars to get their teeth drilled, and this translates into misplaced dislike of dentists themselves even though they are providing a valuable service.

1 hour ago, CleanHands said:

because unsophisticated clients can't tell what incompetence looks like. But in any event, respect and recognition for one's intelligence is something that is earned through demonstration of such qualities. It isn't automatically conferred or assumed just because of a job title or professional qualification, and it shouldn't be.

As a retail lawyer for some pretty unsophisticated clients, I find my unhappiest clients usually take issue with a lack of responsiveness. Some of that is real. I don’t tend to provide a lot of updates, except when there is material progress on the file. I don’t really take unscheduled calls. And I don’t schedule many client calls or meetings outside of when I need to (i) take instruction, (ii) interview them, or (iii) prep them for testimony. I don’t tend to accommodate a lot of other requests. That often makes clients unhappy. And honestly, I can’t really blame them for being unhappy. Until they see a final product and an outcome, responsiveness and communication are really their only metric to evaluate whether I’m doing anything to advance their case. They’re generally much happier once they’ve watched or read the arguments. But until then, it’s a struggle.

Really, what they’re experiencing is a fundamental economic issue with Legal Aid and private files for impecunious clients. In either case, I’m not paid very much. On prep, I’m typically only paid for the bare essentials. As a result, the basic interviewing, advice/taking of instruction, document review, research, and drafting almost always eat through the allotted hours. I often don’t even have enough paid hours to cover those, and when I run out, there’s usually no more money coming.

There are other ways to manage a retail-style practice for vulnerable clients. But regardless of how counsel does it, anyone in these areas of law needs to make tough choices about where they're going to allocate their time. Some lawyers try to do everything they can on every file, and invariably end up doing a lot of the work for free. There are a lot of lawyers who manage to strike a careful balance of keeping their clients happy, while submitting competent, but arguably not excellent work-product. There are other lawyers who really just cater to client whims, and are not invested in producing good work.

When I was starting out, I overextended myself on every case. I had a lot of happy clients and good outcomes. But I wasn’t making a lot of money, and I was burnt out. To avoid that, I now almost exclusively focus on casework that I believe could directly impact the outcome. Sometimes that means a lot of time doing client prep and evidence gathering. In those cases, the client is probably getting a lot attention, and is relatively satisfied. Other times, when the file is more likely to turn on expert evidence, legal issues, or something else that doesn’t involved the client, they’re barely going to hear from me. In either case, I am pretty ruthless with my allocation of time. I cut the niceties. And that makes people unhappy. At least, it does until I get them the outcome they want, or they can see that I went down swinging.

Not everyone’s practice is like mine. But I think the reality is that even the most reasonable legal fees are a lot of money for the average person. And where their cases are legal aid funded, the stakes are usually high enough that they’re also going to have certain expectations about what they want. Part of the job is managing those expectations. But regardless of how upfront you are, unless your client is rich enough to pay for top-of-the-line work and customer service, there’ll come a point where certain expectations just can’t be met, because the money isn’t there to pay for the thing they're requesting. And especially when they’ve placed a potentially life-changing procedure in Counsel’s hands, a client’s stress and anxiety does cause them to feel any disappointment and frustration very acutely. From my perspective, that’s where a lot of the negativity comes from.

Edited February 9, 2022 by realpseudonym

[Hegdis]

People don’t like lawyers because 1. They show up and complicate matters while getting paid to do so, and 2. our automatic assumption is that when you defend an act or argue in favour of an outcome it means you personally believe that thing to be morally correct. In other words, people conflate lawyers with their clients.

The first one is a legit beef, but it’s based on incomplete information. Really, Law 12 should be a required course in high school. It’s ridiculous that the public at large know so little about basic tenants of their own Justice system. 

The second one is just a lazy assumption, often fed into by #1.

I think the real solution is more education. There will still be people who want to shit on lawyers but at least it will be more along the lines of “this specific lawyer for this discreet thing” instead of the more common “kill them all” (Shakespeare, btw).

[Lawstudents20202020]

It's the same thing with any profession and many of the trades. People don't like the upfront cost to do it right the first time, mess it up on their own, come back and have a much more expensive issue. This is of course all the professionals fault and we are charging way to much money to help them.

[Phaedrus]

@razraini gave a great summary of where I think much of the public perception comes from: (1) the job revolved around something that should, in theory, be accessible to everyone (i.e., language), and (2) there's an underappreciation (or lack of understanding) that there are legal, factual, and moral rights/wrongs, and they don't always have harmonious outcomes. I think back to the phrase, "if the law is on your side, you pound the law. If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If neither are on your side, pound the table." 

In my work, I encounter a lot of people who conflate the operative rights/wrongs and believe a matter turns on something different than it does. If the law is against them, they try to appeal to a grand moral sense of right and wrong. Anecdotally, this is where I see layperson Charter ramblings stem from; the Charter becomes viewed as a Hail Mary because it clearly protects the "big picture" (being the moral position). Therefore, the lawyer becomes the "idiot" who can't see this simple argument. 

However, @realpseudonym hits on another equally important facet albeit from the perspective of the lawyer. The practice of law is, to many, a black box. It's reading, writing, and arguing. It's impossible to keep a client informed of every single decision that's made, and clients have no idea just how many decisions are made via back channel conversations and negotiation, or where there just aren't clear rules. Mind you, the decisions are informed by a lot of reading, careful application of rules, and years of accumulated knowledge that is almost impossible to distill into a 45 minute meeting. When the client has done their own reading, and reading that is on the side and not a function of their day-to-day job, it's low hanging fruit to think the lawyer is the idiot or didn't read the "right" materials. 

Edit add: there are a million different decisions to be made during the lifespan of a file, and those decisions can have a real impact on a client. Some clients face tough consequences for error and thus demand a lot more time and energy. Others are much less serious, are routine, and have less priority. It's a balancing act, and although everyone's problems become the centre of their world, it's not the end of the world. So, they get triaged and managed accordingly. When the lawyer proves to be human and subject to fault, they're a moron. 

Also, lawyers are an easy scapegoat for those dissatisfied with their situation, society and/or how the law applies to them. Fuck the person that can't fix the problem, and fuck the person who came up with the rule in the first place. Oh, yeah, and the fundamental attribution error. Your lawyer being an idiot is way easier to swallow than your own incomprehensible ineptitude. 

That said, the quality of lawyers is on a spectrum like any other profession. 

Edited February 9, 2022 by Phaedrus

[CleanHands]

21 minutes ago, Phaedrus said:

Also, lawyers are an easy scapegoat for those dissatisfied with their situation, society and/or how the law applies to them. Fuck the person that can't fix the problem, and fuck the person who came up with the rule in the first place. Oh, yeah, and the fundamental attribution error. Your lawyer being an idiot is way easier to swallow than your own incomprehensible ineptitude. 

 

[razraini]

24 minutes ago, Phaedrus said:

In my work, I encounter a lot of people who conflate the operative rights/wrongs and believe a matter turns on something different than it does. If the law is against them, they try to appeal to a grand moral sense of right and wrong. Anecdotally, this is where I see layperson Charter ramblings stem from; the Charter becomes viewed as a Hail Mary because it clearly protects the "big picture" (being the moral position). Therefore, the lawyer becomes the "idiot" who can't see this simple argument

Omg this

[CleanHands]

25 minutes ago, Phaedrus said:

In my work, I encounter a lot of people who conflate the operative rights/wrongs and believe a matter turns on something different than it does. If the law is against them, they try to appeal to a grand moral sense of right and wrong. Anecdotally, this is where I see layperson Charter ramblings stem from; the Charter becomes viewed as a Hail Mary because it clearly protects the "big picture" (being the moral position). Therefore, the lawyer becomes the "idiot" who can't see this simple argument. 

 

1 minute ago, razraini said:

Omg this

 

[SlytherinLLP]

This touches upon @CleanHands's point re: the disconnect between legal language and common understanding of words - lawyers are often perceived as equivocating, avoiding the question, refusing to take a position, be purposely obscure/misleading etc. In some instances, fair point. In others, there is a crucially important but utterly overlooked framework of ethical and professional rules that dictates what lawyers can/can't say or can/can't do. 

Also there is an emotional reaction to the fact that for every societal wrong unearthed, a lawyer appears.

Chemical processing plant, knowingly (to the directors and officers of the Co), permits toxic waste to permeate groundwater thereby leading to X consequences for innocent people? - Team of lawyers ready to defend. Assault or worse caught on CCTV - criminal defense lawyer read to defend.

Even though most everyone is aware that anyone is entitled to a legal defense, and that here is a presumption of innocence and that these principles are necessary to carry out justice, it's difficult when faced with visceral facts to keep that in mind. 

How can anyone defend someone like that? - how many times I've heard this....

 

[gglaw]

I feel like a lot of people do not understand what it takes to be a lawyer. Granted I havent gone to law school yet im still in undergrad, but people think anything to do with law and the legal profession is so simple until they take one look at the LSAT or see how much reading it takes once you're in law school. (I know the LSAT has nothing to do with law itself but the methods of thinking are a huge thing that not a lot of people are able to do). 

If it was easy everyone would do it. But it's not. People who know they cannot do it are always going to talk down on the profession and have negative things to say about it but that shouldn't take away from how you feel about it. If law is something that you are truly passionate about and interested in then you will succeed and be happy in it. Maybe lawyers are dumb but it takes a good lawyer and a capable one to be good at their job. 

At this point every time I hear something along these lines I just remember how hard I worked all of undergrad and for my LSAT to get in and these statements dont really phase me because I know its not easy. Takes a bit of work but once you start only caring about your opinion life gets so much easier 🙂 this is your journey, enjoy the ride 

[plsgod]

 

4 hours ago, JudgingJudy said:

Ppl have blatantly told me that lawyers arent smart - and that its relatively easy to get in. Which makes me feel uneasy because I worked hard to get into law school. And its such a horrible assumption to make. They referenced that they knew lawyers who got in who weren’t smart and managed to be successful. 

Really depends on how these people are measuring intelligence. In high school people used to assume I was smart just because I wore glasses and was relatively quiet. They didn't know my grades. In undergrad, most people I met assumed I was dumb. I didn't have the energy for their 'intellectual conversations' after studying for 6+ hours a day, and would often joke around during those times. If I was quiet, they took my silence as 'not knowing what was going on'. They didn't know my grades either.

The reality is, unless you take some sort of foolproof 100% indicative IQ test (which doesn't exist) and make it publicly known, people's opinion on intelligence is only based on what they see. Who cares?

Edited February 9, 2022 by Scribble City

[Pantalaimon]

4 hours ago, JudgingJudy said:

I have also heard from 2 law students not to go to law school and that it’s just not worth it. That other careers are far better. 

A lawyer I volunteered for in my early years of undergrad told me that law was just not worth all the sacrifices she made? 

This might be drifting off-topic, but I think the legal field is particularly prone to self-loathing. Heck, two of the most popular posts in this thread are a self-own joke and @CleanHands dunking on BigLaw. I also spoke to a bunch of lawyers (having none in the family) prior to deciding to go to law school, and nearly every one said something along the lines of "why on earth would you want to be a lawyer?". I don't have any deep thoughts as to why, but I found it somewhat puzzling. There was really no parallel among my friends who are all sorts of professionals, comp sci, trades, or even retail.

[CleanHands]

12 minutes ago, Pantalaimon said:

I also spoke to a bunch of lawyers (having none in the family) prior to deciding to go to law school, and nearly every one said something along the lines of "why on earth would you want to be a lawyer?". I don't have any deep thoughts as to why, but I found it somewhat puzzling. 

I see this a lot and to be blunt I think that a lot of lawyers have extremely limited work experience outside of this profession and no idea how green the grass is in a relative sense. That and many people (I would actually say a significant majority) go in to the profession for the wrong reasons (i.e. anything that doesn't involve a genuine interest in the actual work it entails).

Both of these factors are exacerbated by the extreme real and opportunity cost of entry into this profession, so people who don't like it feel "trapped" in ways that people in careers with quicker and/or cheaper paths to entry and/or more versatility do not (ironic, given that JDs are often--falsely--viewed as versatile degrees).

Edited February 10, 2022 by CleanHands

[BlockedQuebecois]

28 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

I see this a lot and to be blunt I think that a lot of lawyers have extremely limited work experience outside of this profession and no idea how green the grass is in a relative sense.

As Churchill said: 

"Many forms of profession have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that lawyering is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that lawyering is the worst form of profession except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

[TooYoung]

I know a lawyer who always pushes back when he hears people disparage the profession. When he hears someone make a comment about lawyers, he always asks them if they personally know any lawyers. When/if they say yes, he will ask what the person thinks of that lawyer. At least according to him, most people have nothing but positive things to say about the lawyers they know personally.

He's a firm believer that most people actually like lawyers, they just don't realize it because of how hating on lawyers is just a given in this world. However, if they took a second and reflected on the lawyers they actually know, they would realize that lawyers aren't all that bad after all.

While I haven't tried the same experiment, I like to think his theory is valid. Although it might depend if you're someone who meets lawyers who are helping you e.g., buy a house, and not someone who is more familiar with e.g., prosecutors.

[leafs_law]

9 hours ago, CleanHands said:

 In my position I am exposed to some of the smartest and most talented lawyers in the country and some people doing the same sort of work who are shockingly, terrifyingly incompetent (while in positions of significant responsibility). And yes, the latter people can be quite successful in financial terms, because unsophisticated clients can't tell what incompetence looks like.

I'll build on your point here, because I agree with it.

It is often said that law exists within the service industry, and, of course it does. Law is a professional service. But few understand that legal service, and other professional services, are evaluated by consumers in the same ways that consumers value basic services and skilled trades.

I use the same general contractor, plumber and electrician for all of my home renovation projects. I have been going to the same dentist and doctor for over 15 years. I use the same auto mechanic. But, absent observing the ultimate failure of their services (death, a toothless smile, loss of electricity, a toilet that sprays feces, total collapse of my home's addition, or a car that runs over my brother and not my mother-in-law), I have no idea whether they truly did a good job or not, or at least how they would compare to the average service provider in their field. It is merely that they have convinced me, through conduct or result, that they are competent. It is a performance - it is relationship building - it is sales (government lawyering aside, as establishing a demonstrated commitment to communism is persuasion of a different sort). 

There is the practise of law, and then there is the business of law, and the importance of each is determined in the context of the job. But, it is very clear to me which wins out in private practice, as the lawyer deemed "managing partner" or "rainmaker" is not the intellect in the corner wearing size-48 pants up to his man boobs.

Most of my client contacts are in-house counsel and I treat them very well, but I treat my individual-litigant clients far differently, so that they may feel just as well-treated.   

 

[Totally_Bucked]

This has been touched upon a little bit, but I think a big piece of the collective dislike of lawyers is that the law is a topic on which people tend to massively overestimate their own knowledge. The actual level of legal knowledge among the average person is quite low, but because people operate in society, read about legal cases and issues, or follow politics, they tend to assume that they have a moderate to high level of knowledge. 

That assumption makes lawyers feel unnecessary. The thought process runs along the lines of, if they already have a pretty good understanding of the law and the legal system, why should they pay top dollar for a profession that is only mildly more informed than they are? It feeds into the perception that was mentioned by @SlytherinLLP that lawyers are just equivocating about meaningless distinctions and technicalities.