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The "average user" shouldn't be trying to do law any more than they should be trying to do their own plumbing or wiring or surgery. Should "average lawyers" ju

The "average user" shouldn't be trying to do law any more than they should be trying to do their own plumbing or wiring or surgery. Should "average lawyers" just hack around for awhile in Visual Basic and then complain that a fully featured CRM/CMS/client portal/website hasn't popped up on their screen and installed itself on some free server somewhere? Or if those average lawyers managed to get something that would build/compile/run, would it make sense for them to complain that "computers are too hard" or "developers are too expensive" when the sad little program they produced crashed, with horrible results? No, that would be crazy. Lawyers should let developers and programmers work on technical things. And developers and programmers should let lawyers work on legal things. Legal fees are "extreme" if you're looking at the most expensive big name firms - but that's like walking past a Ferrari dealer and deciding you can't afford to buy a car. There are tons of ordinary attorneys who charge relatively reasonable fees - but many people think that, just like everything on the Internet should be (almost) free because it's all just bits, that everything lawyers do should be (almost) free because it's all just words on paper. If you really want to be in the "legal space", the effort and resources involved starts with three years of law school and passing a bar exam. There are attorneys who don't use a traditional hourly billing approach - in particular, and relevant to your concerns mentioned above, some attorneys for small business charge a set monthly or yearly fee for reasonably limited access to the attorney for advice and basic document drafting, etc. If an attorney could get, say, 20 companies to sign up for $1000/month, the attorney would gross $240K, giving them, say, $140K for overhead and $100K for compensation, which isn't great or awful. The companies would be able to use, on average, 8 hours/month of the attorney's time, which is enough to get some good ongoing advice and handle little issues. If those companies wanted to pay $500/month for legal services, the attorney could probably fire his/her staff, not rent a fancy office, and work out of their home and the clients' conference rooms instead. Of course, then the companies don't get to whine about how they have to leave a voicemail when they call the attorney, and they don't get to go sit in a fancy conference room in a tall building and feel important while talking to their attorney. Some people are doing that. (Not me, by the way.) I think it makes sense. Perhaps you could write software that would help those attorneys manage their practices, or build a site that would help attorneys and clients find each other. (there are already a lot of those, and there's a new one that pops up every couple of weeks, so I'm pretty cynical about that .. but the online dating market, which isn't so dissimilar, is pretty mature, but people like plentyoffish or okcupid manage to survive and grow despite the match.com juggernaut, so it's obviously possible.)

true_religion 15y ago
People unclog their own toilets, and fit their own pipes. They solder their own wires, and jump start their own cars. They represent themselves in small claims court fine, and read their own legal papers before deciding whether or not to sign. ---- You don't have to go all the way and become a professional, sometimes it enough to dabble and do simple things well within anyone's reach. I think there's a lot of simplicity to the law and the logic behind it isn't too hard to follow. However, fear holds people back from even trying to learn about case law and the court systems, and so too many fights are lost out of fear (e.g. "I can't afford a lawyer, but he can, so I give up").
- blakdawg 15y ago
  All of your examples concern people solving their own problems, not solving other people's problems, or providing infrastructure/tools for solving other people's problems. People who "read their own legal papers" should be commended for their diligence - but unless they've spent hundreds or thousands of hours studying the specific field in which they're signing papers, chances are there's a ton of meaning in those papers they don't understand or even recognize. Sometimes what's not present is as important as what is present - and sometimes the person who drafted the papers has included terms and conditions that sound innocuous but are incredibly important, or are completely unenforceable but sound scary. The example you pose probably isn't "fear", it's economics - e.g., "I don't want to give up having the other things in my life I'd have to sacrifice to have money for an attorney . . . and this dispute isn't really that important to me, so I'll just let the other guy win." I think it's a good thing that lots of minor disputes aren't litigated fully.

true_religion 15y ago

People unclog their own toilets, and fit their own pipes. They solder their own wires, and jump start their own cars. They represent themselves in small claims court fine, and read their own legal papers before deciding whether or not to sign. ---- You don't have to go all the way and become a professional, sometimes it enough to dabble and do simple things well within anyone's reach. I think there's a lot of simplicity to the law and the logic behind it isn't too hard to follow. However, fear holds people back from even trying to learn about case law and the court systems, and so too many fights are lost out of fear (e.g. "I can't afford a lawyer, but he can, so I give up").

blakdawg 15y ago
All of your examples concern people solving their own problems, not solving other people's problems, or providing infrastructure/tools for solving other people's problems. People who "read their own legal papers" should be commended for their diligence - but unless they've spent hundreds or thousands of hours studying the specific field in which they're signing papers, chances are there's a ton of meaning in those papers they don't understand or even recognize. Sometimes what's not present is as important as what is present - and sometimes the person who drafted the papers has included terms and conditions that sound innocuous but are incredibly important, or are completely unenforceable but sound scary. The example you pose probably isn't "fear", it's economics - e.g., "I don't want to give up having the other things in my life I'd have to sacrifice to have money for an attorney . . . and this dispute isn't really that important to me, so I'll just let the other guy win." I think it's a good thing that lots of minor disputes aren't litigated fully.