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Disbarment is usually considered a punishment of last resort. That the failure of the attorney to carry out their obligations is so absolute, that it justifies

by Zafira 3y ago

Disbarment is usually considered a punishment of last resort. That the failure of the attorney to carry out their obligations is so absolute, that it justifies taking away their right to practice law in a given state. There are certainly other measures that can be done here that are of a similar rebuke, just not as final. A suspension or temporary disbarment is also possible. We don’t know the full situation here, but a personal injury case against a bankrupt airline for striking someone in the knee with the serving cart seems remediable? Disbarment usually happens in cases where attorneys fail to file timely repeatedly at the expense of their clients and after multiple admonishments to stop that; utterly fail in their fiduciary obligations (i.e. they were acting like an escrow and then instead gambled the money away in Vegas).

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> that it justifies taking away their right to practice law in a given state. This seems a little weird. As far as I understand it, no one has a right to practice law. There is a privilege that can be acquired, it one meets the requirements. If you somehow got through without meeting those, or if you start to fail to meet those... time for a new career. > We don’t know the full situation here, but a personal injury case against a bankrupt airline for striking someone in the knee with the serving cart seems remediable? I don't know about this particular case, but many cases and circumstances can be a "one shot at it" scenario. You fuck it up, it's tossed and you can't refile. There are many reasons and details, any of which might be messed up by a lawyer relying on a silly chat program to draft motions. One might miss an absolute deadline. It might be dismissed with prejudice. Appeals might be exhausted. This could even be true of the case in question. In some cases, it might even be true if it was a criminal trial and your defense attorney was incompetent, that you don't get a chance to appeal. In California, I think, those are Marsden cases (someone correct me if I'm wrong). For those, you have to raise an objection during the trial. So, if someone found out that ChatGPT gave their lawyer bad advice the day after their conviction... well, oops. No appeal for you. I'll say it again. I do not want to live in a world where law license proceedings are decided on a "what's fair to the bad lawyer" basis. No one has a right to be a lawyer, if you're bad at it there are plenty of other occupations you might make a living with where incompetence doesn't threaten so many lives and livelihoods.
- hnfong 3y ago
  Let's change the professions a little bit. Imagine getting fired and barred from writing code ever again over a bug you introduced because you used copilot and didn't spot the issue. Pretty sure that would be considered an unacceptable infringement of basic human rights here. You can assert your ideals all you want but the fact is that professions that govern themselves invariably end up with "what's fair to the bad lawyer".
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    Licensed professionals are licensed (should be, there are notorious exceptions) because if those professions remain unlicensed, horrible things happen. Lawyers and medical doctors are two of those. Yes, it would be wrong to prohibit the Starbucks barista from making coffees, no matter how many times such a person burned it. Software engineering probably falls between licensed professional and burgerflipper on that scale... but let's not full ourselves. If you were working on firmware for medical equipment, then yes banning you from ever doing it again because you used ChatGPT when making a heart rate monitor is just and fair. Not all of our software matters. But the people working on code for space vessels or aircraft or as in my example, medical equipment? I'm more than happy to see them banned from these things for life if they were to do that. > You can assert your ideals all you want but the fact is that professions that govern themselves invariably end up with "what's fair to the bad lawyer". This is irrelevant. We're all aware of how underperformant oversight tends to be. The point is to fix that, to rally against its eventual decline. Certainly I don't know why anyone would want to embrace your attitude of defeat/acceptance.

by Zafira 3y ago

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

> that it justifies taking away their right to practice law in a given state. This seems a little weird. As far as I understand it, no one has a right to practice law. There is a privilege that can be acquired, it one meets the requirements. If you somehow got through without meeting those, or if you start to fail to meet those... time for a new career. > We don’t know the full situation here, but a personal injury case against a bankrupt airline for striking someone in the knee with the serving cart seems remediable? I don't know about this particular case, but many cases and circumstances can be a "one shot at it" scenario. You fuck it up, it's tossed and you can't refile. There are many reasons and details, any of which might be messed up by a lawyer relying on a silly chat program to draft motions. One might miss an absolute deadline. It might be dismissed with prejudice. Appeals might be exhausted. This could even be true of the case in question. In some cases, it might even be true if it was a criminal trial and your defense attorney was incompetent, that you don't get a chance to appeal. In California, I think, those are Marsden cases (someone correct me if I'm wrong). For those, you have to raise an objection during the trial. So, if someone found out that ChatGPT gave their lawyer bad advice the day after their conviction... well, oops. No appeal for you. I'll say it again. I do not want to live in a world where law license proceedings are decided on a "what's fair to the bad lawyer" basis. No one has a right to be a lawyer, if you're bad at it there are plenty of other occupations you might make a living with where incompetence doesn't threaten so many lives and livelihoods.

hnfong 3y ago
Let's change the professions a little bit. Imagine getting fired and barred from writing code ever again over a bug you introduced because you used copilot and didn't spot the issue. Pretty sure that would be considered an unacceptable infringement of basic human rights here. You can assert your ideals all you want but the fact is that professions that govern themselves invariably end up with "what's fair to the bad lawyer".
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Licensed professionals are licensed (should be, there are notorious exceptions) because if those professions remain unlicensed, horrible things happen. Lawyers and medical doctors are two of those. Yes, it would be wrong to prohibit the Starbucks barista from making coffees, no matter how many times such a person burned it. Software engineering probably falls between licensed professional and burgerflipper on that scale... but let's not full ourselves. If you were working on firmware for medical equipment, then yes banning you from ever doing it again because you used ChatGPT when making a heart rate monitor is just and fair. Not all of our software matters. But the people working on code for space vessels or aircraft or as in my example, medical equipment? I'm more than happy to see them banned from these things for life if they were to do that. > You can assert your ideals all you want but the fact is that professions that govern themselves invariably end up with "what's fair to the bad lawyer". This is irrelevant. We're all aware of how underperformant oversight tends to be. The point is to fix that, to rally against its eventual decline. Certainly I don't know why anyone would want to embrace your attitude of defeat/acceptance.