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Lawyers are Good People: A rebuttal of "Things your lawyer won't tell you"

8 points by dwwoelfel 17y ago

dwwoelfel 17y ago
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 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1146976
mistermann 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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!
mindslight 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    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 17y ago
      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.
greenlblue 17y ago
Weak. I liked the other one better.
jrockway 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    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!
gnosis 17y ago
Also see: "The Lawyer Myth: A Defense of the American Legal Profession" http://www.amazon.com/Lawyer-Myth-Defense-American-Profession/dp/0804011117/ http://www.amazon.com/Lawyer-Myth-Defense-American-Professio...
headShrinker 17y ago
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 17y ago
  Such a shame the music and software industries are far too poor to afford to pay those bills.

8 points by dwwoelfel 17y ago

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

mistermann 17y ago

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 17y ago
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!

mindslight 17y ago

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 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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 17y ago
    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.

greenlblue 17y ago

Weak. I liked the other one better.

jrockway 17y ago

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 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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!

gnosis 17y ago

Also see: "The Lawyer Myth: A Defense of the American Legal Profession" http://www.amazon.com/Lawyer-Myth-Defense-American-Profession/dp/0804011117/ http://www.amazon.com/Lawyer-Myth-Defense-American-Professio...

headShrinker 17y ago

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 17y ago
Such a shame the music and software industries are far too poor to afford to pay those bills.