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The lawyer's defense is "by playing devil's advocate, I make the protection of the law more robust for everyone". A closer equivalent would be a system where e

by mbg721 6y ago

The lawyer's defense is "by playing devil's advocate, I make the protection of the law more robust for everyone". A closer equivalent would be a system where every organization had white-hat hackers.

bluefirebrand 6y ago
The lawyer's defense is that, in any decent justice system, people have a right to a legal council and are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Even if they have been declared guilty of a crime in the past they might be innocent of this one and still have a right to council.
- mbg721 6y ago
  I think that amounts to the same thing; the lawyer thinks "This $#@& is guilty as sin, but the court has to prove it." Few professions have a regular test of that kind.
  - bluefirebrand 6y ago
    A lawyer can have their whole career ruined if they are found throwing cases. The justice system itself finds it unethical if they don't prosecute or defend to the best of their ability. Suggesting that software somehow has that same kind of standard where engineers are required to build anything and everything they are asked to the best of their ability or they can lose their accreditation (as if we even have that in software) is absolutely absurd.
    - mbg721 6y ago
      Software isn't fundamentally adversarial in the same way that criminal law is, but that's a fair point.
- tzs 6y ago
  I heard a lawyer in an interview talking about defending a rapist/murdered in a small town. While eating lunch at the town diner a few people approached to ask how he could defend someone so vile. He told them about how it is important that defendants are presumed innocent, and that everyone gets a strong defense, in order to make sure that those who are wrongfully accused do not get wrongfully convicted. They talked about it for something like an hour, and the people were only sort of convinced. And his lunch got cold. Later, he found himself in another small town, defending another rapist/murdered, eating lunch in a diner and being asked by the people there the same question. This time he said "his family paid me $100000 to defend him". The crowd accepted that right away as a perfectly fine reason to defend some totally vile criminal, and went back to their lunches.

by mbg721 6y ago

The lawyer's defense is "by playing devil's advocate, I make the protection of the law more robust for everyone". A closer equivalent would be a system where every organization had white-hat hackers.

bluefirebrand 6y ago

The lawyer's defense is that, in any decent justice system, people have a right to a legal council and are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Even if they have been declared guilty of a crime in the past they might be innocent of this one and still have a right to council.

mbg721 6y ago
I think that amounts to the same thing; the lawyer thinks "This $#@& is guilty as sin, but the court has to prove it." Few professions have a regular test of that kind.
- bluefirebrand 6y ago
  A lawyer can have their whole career ruined if they are found throwing cases. The justice system itself finds it unethical if they don't prosecute or defend to the best of their ability. Suggesting that software somehow has that same kind of standard where engineers are required to build anything and everything they are asked to the best of their ability or they can lose their accreditation (as if we even have that in software) is absolutely absurd.
  - mbg721 6y ago
    Software isn't fundamentally adversarial in the same way that criminal law is, but that's a fair point.
tzs 6y ago
I heard a lawyer in an interview talking about defending a rapist/murdered in a small town. While eating lunch at the town diner a few people approached to ask how he could defend someone so vile. He told them about how it is important that defendants are presumed innocent, and that everyone gets a strong defense, in order to make sure that those who are wrongfully accused do not get wrongfully convicted. They talked about it for something like an hour, and the people were only sort of convinced. And his lunch got cold. Later, he found himself in another small town, defending another rapist/murdered, eating lunch in a diner and being asked by the people there the same question. This time he said "his family paid me $100000 to defend him". The crowd accepted that right away as a perfectly fine reason to defend some totally vile criminal, and went back to their lunches.