Anyone else here used to watch Daredevil?

[ognoscopecreature]

And thought to yourself "hey I want to help people" I want to battle the evil darkness. For instance you do a consultation, you can see someone has been hurt by the system, do you guys look at how much money you can make or do you choose to help the more vulnerable. After this year I have not seen any Matt Murdocks, nowhere in BC. I have acquaintances in the USA that want to battle evil and do whats right, here seems like a bunch of AI giving little fks about the underdogs. Does anyone here agree?

Edited September 18, 2023 by ognoscopecreature

[CleanHands]

I do agree about the vast majority of Canadian lawyers not giving a flying fuck about vulnerable people (dunno about the States), although no, I haven't seen Daredevil. BigLaw lawyers will do the odd "pro bono" work in between representing oil and tobacco companies, doing things like taking a phone call giving summary advice to someone involved in a landlord/tenant dispute while getting paid their BigLaw salaries and bonuses and getting to count their time towards their billables, so that they and their firms can pretend to give a shit. But they are in a unique societal position to do the things you allude to and they clearly displayed their priorities to anyone with a three digit IQ.

I'm a legal aid staff lawyer. I get a modest salary, I fight for vulnerable people, and money doesn't enter the equation into what files I take on or what I do with them--beyond my clients actually needing to be indigent for me to serve them. I get to do some cool volunteering along similar lines, as long as it doesn't conflict with my job. There are jobs like this out there and lawyers who are interested in such things out there. But they definitely are in the minority of the profession.

[ognoscopecreature]

I catch what you're saying laying down. I want to thank you, wholeheartedly, for your kindness. I still have hope and belief that we can help those in need to a large scale. Time to make our ancestors proud. Again thank you, I have yet to meet one wanting to truly help, you are appreciated. ❤️

[CleanHands]

1 minute ago, ognoscopecreature said:

I catch what you're saying laying down. I want to thank you, wholeheartedly, for your kindness. I still have hope and belief that we can help those in need to a large scale. Time to make our ancestors proud. Again thank you, I have yet to meet one wanting to truly help, you are appreciated. ❤️

Haha, thank you very kindly but I don't deserve it. I'm not special and I've gotten a lot of help from a lot of people better than myself to get where I am. And truthfully, even for true believers, there are inevitable moments of disillusionment and questioning if one's efforts really matter. But I just wanted to assure you that you can do the sort of stuff you want to do if you keep your values in mind and stay true to them. And I wish you the best of luck and am always happy to see people like yourself go down this path!

[ognoscopecreature]

5 hours ago, CleanHands said:

Haha, thank you very kindly but I don't deserve it. I'm not special and I've gotten a lot of help from a lot of people better than myself to get where I am. And truthfully, even for true believers, there are inevitable moments of disillusionment and questioning if one's efforts really matter. But I just wanted to assure you that you can do the sort of stuff you want to do if you keep your values in mind and stay true to them. And I wish you the best of luck and am always happy to see people like yourself go down this path!

nice to know I am not alone, all the best my friend. <fistbump>

[Diplock]

I'll expand on what I'm about to say, but as much as I respect the points that have been made so far in this discussion, they've all emerged from such absolutist positions as to bear almost no relation to reality. So first, let me illustrate.

No, there are no Nelson and Murdoch firms in real life, and to the extent that anyone starts trying to work this way they quickly find better ways to operate. Why? Because you're talking about TV lawyers who are apparently brilliant, willing to work for chickens (literally) in a barter economy if need be, willing to represent absolutely anyone who has any problem regardless of venue, context, or any need to specialize, etc. Are you going to find that in real life? Fuck no. It's about as realistic as Liam Neeson dad-core revenge porn. I mean, I'd like to imagine if anyone hurt my family I'd turn into Rambo too. More reasonably, I'd take my professional salary and pay someone who still has functioning knees to do something. Let's live in the real world, okay?

To the point about how much "big law" lawyers really care about the little people in the world, that's also a ridiculous comparison. They virtually never have any reason to interact with them. If someone is a tax lawyer at a major firm, they are (a) never going to encounter or represent the little guy, and (b) even if they did want to help someone not get evicted from public housing, they have literally no relevant experience in how to do that. I admit I get a little sick of the hypocritical line that some large firms drop when they discuss "pro bono" legal work as a way to get articling students in the door and maintain their illusions that they can help large corporations pay as little tax as possible for a living and still call themselves "human rights" lawyers. But practically speaking, the best thing a large firm can do to help rank and file people in need is contribute money to pay someone who actually knows how to do that so they can do it full time. And many firms do in fact do that.

Yes, there are lawyers working on the front lines, frequently in legal aid clinics and taking certificates, who help individual people in desperate circumstances. I won't get explicit about my own work, but I do quite a lot along these lines myself. But I also very frequently turn people away because I simply have no expertise or experience in solving their problems and I absolutely refuse to get drawn into trying to do so. In very blunt terms, if my homeless and drug-addicted client is charged with a crime I can defend him in court and either secure an withdrawal or perhaps at least a resolution on generous terms. But I can't solve his homelessness and I'm not going to try. For that, at best, I refer him somewhere else. And likely wherever I sent him can't solve his homelessness either. Because we're lawyers, not guardian angels. We solve discrete legal problems within our areas of expertise. We don't fix lives.

I'm going to be real for a moment. In Ontario there was a very sincere and eager young lawyer who genuinely believed it was his job to do whatever needed to be done for his clients. He empathized fully with all of their perpetually broken, fucked up lives, and he felt it was his job to fix them. That's very admirable. Around a year ago he killed himself.

We solve discrete and specific legal problems. We don't fix lives. Putting that on anyone - yourself or anyone else - is an unhealthy and impossible standard. Daredevil isn't real life. And lawyers who both need to pay bills and are only willing to do what is their job to do are not lesser incarnations of public decency.

Finally, @CleanHands can speak to this from a measured perspective. He's in the trenches. The OP is still a student and bluntly, you need to deal with the reality of legal practice before you start passing judgment on the people who are doing it already. Just saying.

[Yogurt Baron]

Next-level excellent contribution from my old friend @Diplock here. I saw this post this morning and wanted to say similar things, but I'm not a lawyer and have no credibility. Diplock has lots. Listen to him.

Look: I'm a paraprofessional supporting lawyers. I've dealt with probably a thousand lawyers in this gig, in a wide variety of specialties and practices and geographic areas, and a huge part of my job is tracking down representation for the types of criminal clients who can be...challenging...to work with. Now, I'll concede that it's possible that the lawyers I talk to are probably disproportionately generous with their time and abilities, relative to some guy doing corporate shit. But here's some numbers:

• I've had one lawyer tell me, "I got into this job to get rich by helping other stay rich, so how is helping some homeless guy going to get me rich?"
• I've had ~999 people help as much as they can in their circumstances (even if it's just giving me some advice and telling me who else to call).
• I know of zero people who "want to battle the evil darkness". Like, that's...not what grownups do at their jobs? If the question is about trying to be helpful to the poor and the marginalized, lots of people do that. But someone talking about "want(ing) to battle the evil darkness" might not be approaching things through the most realistic lens?

I don't watch superhero shows, so probably I'm missing some nuance here, but the question at hand seems to be, "Is there anyone out there who is as good as the guy from TV?", and it's, like...nope. Haven't met any prosecutors who can win cases by yelling, "You did it, didn't you?!" at the guy on the stand until he cracks, either, even though Sam Waterston did it once a week for fifteen years. If you think everyone is either Good or Bad, and that the bar for Goodness is that the person be as good as a superhero from TV...yeah, sorry, we're all fucked. But if the bar is (and, I mean, it has to be) that a human being with healthy boundaries and a sense of their professional obligations does what they can to use their skills to help people (often damn unsympathetic people), lots of people clear that. I've been overwhelmed by how many good people there are in law--or, if we don't want to be absolutist and say "good people", people who have the impulse to do as much good as they can. But they're not Batman, for God's sake.

[CleanHands]

8 hours ago, Yogurt Baron said:

Haven't met any prosecutors who can win cases by yelling, "You did it, didn't you?!" at the guy on the stand until he cracks, either, even though Sam Waterston did it once a week for fifteen years.

Clearly you've never observed traffic court.

9 hours ago, Diplock said:

Finally, @CleanHands can speak to this from a measured perspective. He's in the trenches. The OP is still a student and bluntly, you need to deal with the reality of legal practice before you start passing judgment on the people who are doing it already. Just saying.

Thank you kindly and...I mean, funny enough, yeah, I got far more judgmental towards (most) lawyers, rather than less, as a result of going to law school and becoming a lawyer...

Edited September 19, 2023 by CleanHands

[CndnViking]

I'm one of those people. At least I want to be. 

I've lived my whole life essentially in poverty and watched a lot of people taken advantage of by unethical employers, landlords, predatory lenders, etc. and suffered because they didn't have meaningful access to the legal system. I've also been working in the non-profit sector since graduating from my undergrad, and been volunteering in the area of disability advocacy for 4 years. While I know I'm no costumed crime fighter, advocacy and service to underserved communities is very much my passion.

When I get asked about what area I want to practice in, I find it hard to answer because at the end of the day I know that I'll most likely have to compromise on it for financial reasons, at least in the short-term, but if I could make a comfortable and secure living doing public aid type work, that would be my ideal career.

I fully expect I'll have to compromise to a degree in order to make the money to pay back loans and whatnot.... but that's the work I WANT to be doing.

(On a note totally unrelated to my wanting to pursue law, but fitting nicely with this thread: I actually have a framed Daredevil poster on my wall - though it's from the comic, from well before the show existed, when one of my favorite artists was drawing for it. So trust me, I'm very sypathetic to your position.)

Edited September 26, 2023 by CndnViking

[CleanHands]

14 minutes ago, CndnViking said:

When I get asked about what area I want to practice in, I find it hard to answer because at the end of the day I know that I'll most likely have to compromise on it for financial reasons, at least in the short-term, but if I could make a comfortable and secure living doing public aid type work, that would be my ideal career.

I fully expect I'll have to compromise to a degree in order to make the money to pay back loans and whatnot.... but that's the work I WANT to be doing.

This is bullshit that people who value money over helping people say to pretend their priorities are different than they are, and it doesn't convince anyone. In fact, it just makes them look like assholes to both public interest lawyers and to honest BigLaw lawyers. And you're saying it before you even apply...

Public interest, Legal Aid, non-profit, etc lawyers aren't roughing it. They do have a "comfortable and secure living." They just aren't living large.

[CndnViking]

3 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

This is bullshit that people who value money over helping people say to pretend their priorities are different than they are, and it doesn't convince anyone. In fact, it just makes them look like assholes to both public interest lawyers and to honest BigLaw lawyers. And you're saying it before you even apply...

Public interest, Legal Aid, non-profit, etc lawyers aren't roughing it. They do have a "comfortable and secure living." They just aren't living large.

I'm sure that's the case for some, but certainly not for all. I know a guy personally who practices in the non-profit sector and lives no differently than I did when I was a security guard.

[CleanHands]

17 minutes ago, CndnViking said:

I'm sure that's the case for some, but certainly not for all. I know a guy personally who practices in the non-profit sector and lives no differently than I did when I was a security guard.

I mean, I'm a lawyer and I live in a rented basement suite. I don't think I'll ever be able to own a house the way things are. My standard of living is definitely not different than it was before law school.

But if you don't have to worry about paying rent, feeding and clothing yourself, you "make a comfortable and secure living." Maybe you aspire to more than that, materially, but let's not kid ourselves.

[LMP]

People always jump to extremes in these conversations, especially applicants. Somehow they get the idea that there are two practice areas, corporate devil or penniless martyr. There are a lot of practice areas and pretty much all of them will provide a good living, many will provide a very good one. The perceived correlation between (subjective) evil and pay is absurd to me and I really wish folks would spend more time exploring all the different opportunities that exist in the profession.

[Diplock]

I will say again that almost every comment on a topic like this that doesn't come from a practicing lawyer is liable to be ignorant. It's like passing judgment on how others raise their children when you haven't even got one. No matter how relevant you think your values and aspirations may be on the topic, your theoretical take on what parenting should look like has absolutely zero value in a conversation among parents for whom it isn't theoretical. That's just the bottom line. Your two available options are to either accept that, or look stupid. There is nothing in between.

 

Edited September 27, 2023 by Diplock

[CleanHands]

13 minutes ago, LMP said:

People always jump to extremes in these conversations, especially applicants. Somehow they get the idea that there are two practice areas, corporate devil or penniless martyr. There are a lot of practice areas and pretty much all of them will provide a good living, many will provide a very good one. The perceived correlation between (subjective) evil and pay is absurd to me and I really wish folks would spend more time exploring all the different opportunities that exist in the profession.

It's just what people who want to go into BigLaw for the money but don't want to admit that they want to go into BigLaw for the money say at the applicant and 1L stage, when they don't know enough to know how stupid that sounds to anyone who is somewhat familiar with the legal industry. BigLaw people with three digit IQs and even minimal knowledge of the industry accept that they can't have it both ways and pretend to be martyrs at heart, and don't spout off this shit. True public interest lawyers know they will make sacrifices to make things work and don't have to think twice about it.

[Diplock]

3 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

It's just what people who want to go into BigLaw for the money but don't want to admit that they want to go into BigLaw for the money say at the applicant and 1L stage, when they don't know enough to know how stupid that sounds to anyone who is somewhat familiar with the legal industry. BigLaw people with three digit IQs and even minimal knowledge of the industry accept that they can't have it both ways and pretend to be martyrs at heart, and don't spout off this shit. True public interest lawyers know they will make sacrifices to make things work and don't have to think twice about it.

I actually think you are moving to an extreme here that I don't agree with. There is a middle ground and it does exist. On one extreme there are lawyers such as yourself, who work basically full-time for the poor and indigent. Your compensation will always be capped at whatever the public purse is willing to pay a lawyer working for the poor and indigent. That's not quite a vow of poverty but it does restrict you to a modest though still respectable middle class lifestyle. It does come with sacrifices and people need to know this.

On the other extreme are lawyers who work for large and organized interests that have a lot of money to pay top dollar for lawyers. They develop skills that are only relevant to doing this work and they aren't really useful in any other way even if they wanted to be. Need to minimize your tax liability while operating an international subsidiary? There's a lawyer you can pay to help with that. But their skills aren't relevant to real people - only artificial ones. You chose that work, you've chosen the money. Let's not kid ourselves.

In between, however, are lawyers who have chosen practice areas in which they do help individual people and sometimes get paid quite well to do it. I'm one of them. But I also can and do choose to help the poor and indigent as well, and my skills are relevant to their needs. There are lots of practice areas where this is true. Family law, immigration, criminal, personal injury, other areas of civil litigation, employment...more besides. Some of my clients have money. Some of them really really don't.

So yes, there are extremes. But there is more middle ground than most people allow for. Even some areas of apparently business focused law can be applied to help, for example, a charity in the community.

Choices do begin in law school. It isn't one extreme or the other, necessarily, but law is a specialized skill set. If you want to tell people you're there to help the little guy but somehow got forced into taking corporate tax law, that's on you. Don't expect anyone else to take your bullshit seriously.

[Naj]

1 hour ago, CleanHands said:

True public interest lawyers know they will make sacrifices to make things work and don't have to think twice about it.

I was trying to frame this in a more proper way, but I think I'll just come right out and ask it. What exactly are you going to do when you decide to have a family? I mean, what you qualify as "comfortable and secure living" will change once you decide to have and financially account for children, no? Your situation, as you've described it, sounds like you can only really financially support yourself and not accommodate significant expenses associated with having a family. 

So if you can no longer afford to exist on that extreme of public service because there is more than just yourself to care for, are you just no longer a true public interest lawyer as you've described it? I'm being genuine when I ask this. 

 

[CleanHands]

7 minutes ago, Naj said:

I was trying to frame this in a more proper way, but I think I'll just come right out and ask it. What exactly are you going to do when you decide to have a family? I mean, what you qualify as "comfortable and secure living" will change once you decide to have and financially account for children, no? Your situation, as you've described it, sounds like you can only really financially support yourself and not accommodate significant expenses associated with having a family. 

So if you can no longer afford to exist on that extreme of public service because there is more than just yourself to care for, are you just no longer a true public interest lawyer as you've described it? I'm being genuine when I ask this. 

Pretty sure that ship has sailed for me personally.

For others who want the career and the family...well, my advice is to have a two-income household. (Edited to add - This financial situation is pretty normal for average folks in our society in this day and age, though.)

Edited September 27, 2023 by CleanHands

[Naj]

4 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

Pretty sure that ship has sailed for me personally.

 

Dont know how old you are, but the saying these days is that early 30's is prime time, might be too early to tell man. 😀

[CleanHands]

47 minutes ago, Naj said:

Dont know how old you are, but the saying these days is that early 30's is prime time, might be too early to tell man. 😀

I wasn't moping about it, you asked. I like being able to eat a horrible junk food diet without anyone giving me shit about it. lol

[Naj]

4 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

I like being able to eat a horrible junk food diet without anyone giving me shit about it. lol

Gotta get yourself a thicc girl then 

[Diplock]

5 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

I wasn't moping about it, you asked. I like being able to eat a horrible junk food diet without anyone giving me shit about it. lol

So just to be clear, you're living in a basement alone and treating yourself like crap and it seems like the primary luxury you afford yourself is moral indignation. I'm not saying I don't agree with you on a variety of topics, but you aren't exactly presenting a strong sales pitch in favor of public interest legal practice.

[CleanHands]

3 minutes ago, Diplock said:

So just to be clear, you're living in a basement alone and treating yourself like crap and it seems like the primary luxury you afford yourself is moral indignation. I'm not saying I don't agree with you on a variety of topics, but you aren't exactly presenting a strong sales pitch in favor of public interest legal practice.

Correction: I live with a cat and I'm quite physically active.

But yes, what I lack in money I get to make up for in constantly telling my BigLaw friends that they contribute nothing to society. I thought that was the deal.

[WhoKnows]

14 hours ago, Diplock said:

On the other extreme are lawyers who work for large and organized interests that have a lot of money to pay top dollar for lawyers. They develop skills that are only relevant to doing this work and they aren't really useful in any other way even if they wanted to be. Need to minimize your tax liability while operating an international subsidiary? There's a lawyer you can pay to help with that. But their skills aren't relevant to real people - only artificial ones. You chose that work, you've chosen the money. Let's not kid ourselves.

I've commented on stuff like this before, but I'll do so again lightly here. Mostly because I don't think the spectrum of practice within the corporate-commercial realm gets enough credit when public interest folks talk about it (and we don't need to rehash the heirarchy of virtuousity here, on which I've conceded previously). You hinted at it in the paragraph after the quoted, but I want to put it right out there. 

Doing business focused work doesn't mean you need to pigeon hole yourself into a narrow scope of practice, and it doesn't mean your skills can't be relevant to real people. Being able to read and negotiate a contract can be useful for an individual or a large business. You get to choose who you do it for, and therefore deal with the consequence of that choice. You're going to make tradeoffs based on the people you want to serve, and making those work for you is going to determine in large part your happiness in your job.

[Diplock]

30 minutes ago, WhoKnows said:

I've commented on stuff like this before, but I'll do so again lightly here. Mostly because I don't think the spectrum of practice within the corporate-commercial realm gets enough credit when public interest folks talk about it (and we don't need to rehash the heirarchy of virtuousity here, on which I've conceded previously). You hinted at it in the paragraph after the quoted, but I want to put it right out there. 

Doing business focused work doesn't mean you need to pigeon hole yourself into a narrow scope of practice, and it doesn't mean your skills can't be relevant to real people. Being able to read and negotiate a contract can be useful for an individual or a large business. You get to choose who you do it for, and therefore deal with the consequence of that choice. You're going to make tradeoffs based on the people you want to serve, and making those work for you is going to determine in large part your happiness in your job.

I acknowledge there is a lot of middle ground. That's very much the thrust of my post. And I disagree strongly with anyone who wants to pretend there are only two sides with no middle ground. However.

I do agree with CleanHands to this degree - people who want to pretend the issue doesn't exist at all are motivated to lump everything into a middle ground. And then once it's all muddled and a question of degree, the issue fades entirely into the background of unknowable things. It's like having a conversation with someone who wants to problematize questions about racism, sexism, ablism, etc and argue (with some validity) that we are all a mix of privilege and disadvantage, so really it's all so bloody complicated that no one really knows and we should all give up on trying to pin it down. While there is validity in the point about complexity, it implicitly becomes an argument to stop talking about racism, sexism, etc. at all. And that's simply a vile misuse of the ability to complicate an issue.

The extremes do exist. There are lawyers who dedicate themselves to areas of law that dramatically cap their personal and financial opportunities in life. That is a fact. And there are lawyers who dedicate themselves to areas of practice that are simply not relevant to helping real people in the real world to any degree at all. That is also a fact. You want me to acknowledge those lawyers are still literate and can read a contract? Fine, they can read a contract. Even presuming that skill is particularly relevant to the poor and indigent is a perspective I can barely swallow. Reading someone's lease when a public housing corporation is trying to evict them and make them homeless is NOT the issue. It's the fact that they are being evicted anyway. Someone needs to go to the Landlord and Tenant Tribunal and argue against it. Does the lawyer who hasn't gotten out from behind their desk in a decade have skills relevant to that venue? Of course not. The client would do better with a volunteer student from a law school clinic. Are they going to go to Small Claims Court? I mean they could, sure. Just like I theoretically could, even though I never have. But to pretend all skill sets are transferable is just false.

I'll acknowledge the middle ground. But in doing so, I'm not interested in providing cover for lawyers who have made choices all through law school and all through the careers that followed law school to learn and apply skills that benefit the powerful and the wealthy. There is nothing wrong with doing that for a living, just like there's nothing wrong with going to medical school and learning how to do nose jobs for a lot of money. But spare me the bullshit about how any day now you're going to apply those skills to help poor people somehow. Just fucking spare me. Do it and then tell me that you've done it, or shut the hell up. Stop telling yourself any day now you're going to take your experience in Mergers and Acquisitions and help the poor. It's bullshit, and it's infuriating, and if you just maintained your delusions in private I wouldn't bother you about them. But don't spread them around and expect my silence to abet them.

There are extremes. Choices are real, and matter, and are apparent. I won't pretend all lawyers are in the middle ground. Some are genuinely working in the trenches all the time - far more than lawyers such as myself who have a range of clients ranging from quite well off to very very not - and some are just in it for the money. They fucking are. And I'll argue with anyone who won't admit that's the case.