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Ugh. It's so discouraging when my lived experience contradicts with the subjective observation of someone who knows a lawyer and therefore becomes nonsense. I

Ugh. It's so discouraging when my lived experience contradicts with the subjective observation of someone who knows a lawyer and therefore becomes nonsense. I do want to point out that the "dirty tricks" methodology is in full effect, but has been wholly ineffective at e.g. keeping lawyer salaries and employability high. Just because it failed to deliver on those axes doesn't mean it's not happening. > Yet I have not found or even heard of a single instance of anything that would remotely qualify as the kind of "dirty tricks" or "exclusivity" you cite. I'm not really motivated by this interaction to provide examples, but I assure you they are myriad. What I find particularly interesting about this comment is the assertion that the law makes sense if you just read it. This is both technically correct and practically useless. It illustrates that the intellectual moat which sustained law as a historically elite trade has evaporated. > Just because you can write a "Hello World" app... I hope that the difference between hello world and the other thing is that the developer has skill which adds value to the product. That's frequently not the case with lawyers. A lot of the time the increase in skill doesn't correlate to added value for anyone but the lawyer. It's a profession where people are largely rewarded for selfishly sequestering value rather than creating a better product/service or efficiently collaborating. tldr; I hope that the code boot camps AND the law schools go out of business, but that your field can avoid the needless arcane complexity to which mine has long ago capitulated.

toss1 4y ago
OK, you've been much more deeply in it than I have. I used to have a similar attitude — that I ought to be able to quickly read a law in plain language and know what to do. Yet every time I argued that, I lost to valid often historical explanations from the attnys I was working/living with (& I've lived w/one for decades & been involve in a complex case with lots of BS maneuvering for 7+ years, and worked w/many building software for them). No one doubts that there is a LOT of needless arcane complexity. It is obvious to me that law is a monstrous mountain of arcane cruft. And not only the law, but also the caselaw precedents, regulations, etc.. It's also clear that this 1) has a strong exclusionary effect and 2) that those in the profession have little motivation to reduce this exclusionary effect, and some motivation to retain it, and so don't. But there is a difference between a system that has a tendency towards a result that no one fixes, and a conspiracy to create similar results. So, I'd really like to hear a good example or two that was deliberately created to exclude. Because AFAICT, it's just a mess that nobody is doing anything about and acting like it is some particular person's fault is self-destructive.
- public_defender 4y ago
  Sure. Here are a few examples of "let's make X as hard as possible so someone can never navigate it without a lawyer:" 1) Divorce. 2) Purchase/sale of land. 3) Adoption. Notice what's not on my list: civil forfeiture, immigration, corporate mergers. There are certain classes of things which are complicated because e.g. the government wants them to be difficult (immigration), and certain other things which are inherently complicated, but which are made more efficient by cooperation. But there is a third class of thing which should be simple and is not. Transfer of land is complicated because lawyers have a financial interest in making it complicated. Divorce is a little different: you often have two people trying to ruin each other and lawyers enabling that by using procedure and trickery to try to engineer an unfair outcome in favor of a client. But (assuming what I say is true) what is the functional difference between real estate and divorce? I argue there is none. A system which is deliberately engineered to be user-hostile is functionally identical to one where "cruft" accumulates and nobody is motivated to remove it. Also realize that there is a cycle of lawyers deliberately making a legal procedure or practice so complicated that someone needs to stop them because they are creating an obstacle to the good functioning of society. See e.g. 1) Service of process 2) Civil discovery reform 3) UCC adoption
  - toss1 4y ago
    Thx for the answers >> A system which is deliberately engineered to be user-hostile is functionally identical to one where "cruft" accumulates and nobody is motivated to remove it. This could definitely be true. Of course the solution is different. In the case of buildup of cruft, one needs to generate motivation to improve it, whereas if someone is deliberately engineering bad features, one has to find who to fight and fight them. I've been involved with service of process and civil discovery enough to know that they are a pain. We got service on one reluctant witness that was more a bit of luck to make it happen than not, and it seemed like a child's game of "tag". I agree that it needs reform, but who is actively making it more complicated? I've had opponents drag discovery out for years to the point of being sanctioned themselves, but it didn't seem to slow them down, but I'd put that more at the feet of judges that put up with the crap than an opaque process, which seemed at base pretty straightforward - they ask, here's the set of responsive docs. But who would we go after to fix it, and who is opposing us?

toss1 4y ago

OK, you've been much more deeply in it than I have. I used to have a similar attitude — that I ought to be able to quickly read a law in plain language and know what to do. Yet every time I argued that, I lost to valid often historical explanations from the attnys I was working/living with (& I've lived w/one for decades & been involve in a complex case with lots of BS maneuvering for 7+ years, and worked w/many building software for them). No one doubts that there is a LOT of needless arcane complexity. It is obvious to me that law is a monstrous mountain of arcane cruft. And not only the law, but also the caselaw precedents, regulations, etc.. It's also clear that this 1) has a strong exclusionary effect and 2) that those in the profession have little motivation to reduce this exclusionary effect, and some motivation to retain it, and so don't. But there is a difference between a system that has a tendency towards a result that no one fixes, and a conspiracy to create similar results. So, I'd really like to hear a good example or two that was deliberately created to exclude. Because AFAICT, it's just a mess that nobody is doing anything about and acting like it is some particular person's fault is self-destructive.

public_defender 4y ago
Sure. Here are a few examples of "let's make X as hard as possible so someone can never navigate it without a lawyer:" 1) Divorce. 2) Purchase/sale of land. 3) Adoption. Notice what's not on my list: civil forfeiture, immigration, corporate mergers. There are certain classes of things which are complicated because e.g. the government wants them to be difficult (immigration), and certain other things which are inherently complicated, but which are made more efficient by cooperation. But there is a third class of thing which should be simple and is not. Transfer of land is complicated because lawyers have a financial interest in making it complicated. Divorce is a little different: you often have two people trying to ruin each other and lawyers enabling that by using procedure and trickery to try to engineer an unfair outcome in favor of a client. But (assuming what I say is true) what is the functional difference between real estate and divorce? I argue there is none. A system which is deliberately engineered to be user-hostile is functionally identical to one where "cruft" accumulates and nobody is motivated to remove it. Also realize that there is a cycle of lawyers deliberately making a legal procedure or practice so complicated that someone needs to stop them because they are creating an obstacle to the good functioning of society. See e.g. 1) Service of process 2) Civil discovery reform 3) UCC adoption
- toss1 4y ago
  Thx for the answers >> A system which is deliberately engineered to be user-hostile is functionally identical to one where "cruft" accumulates and nobody is motivated to remove it. This could definitely be true. Of course the solution is different. In the case of buildup of cruft, one needs to generate motivation to improve it, whereas if someone is deliberately engineering bad features, one has to find who to fight and fight them. I've been involved with service of process and civil discovery enough to know that they are a pain. We got service on one reluctant witness that was more a bit of luck to make it happen than not, and it seemed like a child's game of "tag". I agree that it needs reform, but who is actively making it more complicated? I've had opponents drag discovery out for years to the point of being sanctioned themselves, but it didn't seem to slow them down, but I'd put that more at the feet of judges that put up with the crap than an opaque process, which seemed at base pretty straightforward - they ask, here's the set of responsive docs. But who would we go after to fix it, and who is opposing us?