This is not surprising. There have been well funded corporate campaigns to demonize lawyers who sue on behalf of injured plaintiffs ("trial lawyers") while disregarding the insurance or corporate defense lawyers. Civil rights and civil liberties lawyers are regularly attacked in conservative circles. There re few favorable role models in the media or popular culture.

When people personally encounter the legal system, there is always a lawyer against them. I think doctors would be less popular if, when people got sick, there was a doctor on the other side trying to kill them.

While I have a positive view of the legal profession as a whole, I tend to find a lot of advertisements for legal services to be questionable at best. In particular, I take a very dim view of ambulance chasing such as we see with adds like "If you have been injured in a car accident, you may be entitled to money..... Get the money you deserve, call the law offices of.... today."

The other thing is that there are certainly some areas of law where adversarial approaches often create more problems than they solve-- divorce law is a good example (adversarial approaches should be a last resort in many cases). I think the legal profession often suffers from hammer syndrome (where everything looks like a nail).

I have also met a few lawyers who I see as intellectually dishonest. However, this extends to all professions, so isn't something one holds against lawyers per se.

However these concerns aside, lawyers as a whole have an extremely important role in our society and one that most people dont appreciate. Every one of our civil liberties, whether freedom of speech or gun ownership is guarded in part by dedicated lawyers who often selflessly pursue goals they see as fundamentally important for safeguaring our civil rights.

The media's inaccurate portrayals of lawyers no doubt also play into this. TV lawyers and real lawyers are worlds apart, but the average person has vastly more exposure to TV lawyers than to real ones.

According to that poll, the only thing people seem to like is food and the internet.

I think there's a sense of entitlement that almost inevitably works against lawyers. People feel they're naturally entitled to justice as they see it. Opposing lawyers are trying to take what they feel is rightly theirs, and their own lawyer is billing them for what they feel is rightly theirs.

The legal profession has allowed the law to be terribly abused, and I think that's at the root of a lot of it. Even if most lawyers aren't engaged in questionable practices, they don't seem to do much to stop them.

A relative of mine was recently sued after a fender-bender. The plaintiff claimed all sorts of damages, none of which could be proven at all, and many of her claims were outright lies (as was clearly shown). None the less, because of her persistence and the willingness of a lawyer to abet her rent seeking, the insurance company settled for $20,000 rather than pay the cost of a trial they were sure to win. Specifically, they got her to agree to binding arbitration, if the minimum she could get was 20,000. The arbitrator immediately ruled that her case was meritless, and she got the 20 grand.

When you know a few people that this has happened to, and you don't see the lawyers out campaigning to put a stop to this, how can you hold the profession in very high regard?

Furthermore, the lawyers have sought and obtained in the US a system where the loser does not usually have to pay. This enables all sorts of frivolous and costly actions where the only cost to the lawyer is his time - and some lawyers are willing to gamble a bunch of their time on this stuff until they hit pay dirt.

The legal profession, in my eyes, has one thing going for it: they are more honest than journalists, and far more competent.

I'd agree with those who say that personal injury lawyers have a huge amount to do with public perception. Everybody likes Law and Order, and half of every episode of that show is about lawyers (realism issues aside, as most viewers don't know that). But no one is a fan of these massive lawsuits over minutiae.

The two least efficient types of organizations in our society are the judicial and the educational. They both desperately need reengineering. It is not likely to come from within because there are great advantages to inefficiency...for the incumbents.

josil, what specific legal "reengineering" would you like to see?

I agree with Cornellian. However necessary the role of lawyer as zealous defender of his or her client may be--and, for better or worse, America's adversarial legal system requires it--the role is also fundamentally dishonest and disreputable, in that it requires lawyers to assert with great vigor and eloquence things that they likely don't really believe, and in some cases that no decent person would ever say outside of the lawyer's artificial role. Someone willing to do and say such things in a professional capacity--indeed, willing to expend great effort to win the opportunity to do and say such things for a living--might naturally be suspected of being less inhibited than others about behaving the same way outside of a professional setting.

There are quite a few jobs like this: PR flack, politician, advertising copywriter, salesperson. All of these require similar dishonesty, and suffer from similarly negative public reputations. (Likewise, in a somewhat different way, with the professions of executioner, bouncer, boxer or even dentist.) In a world where vocations are largely a matter of choice, those who choose to do what most people would find at least somewhat morally discomfiting, run the obvious risk of seeming to be relatively insensitive to moral discomfiture.

I gave my reasons here. They are verbally gifted, and that makes them untrustworthy. The average person likely views them alternatingly as sophists undermining law that is and ought to be clear, or as pedants adhering to legal technicalities regardless of the practical consequences (as with Scalia on actual innocence). Between the two, I prefer the latter type of lawyer (I think that's what A Man For All Seasons pays tribute to), which is why I called John Hasnas' Myth of the Rule of Law mad, bad and dangerous to know.

Orin:

And the Bush Administration's lawyers weren't exactly popular in liberal circles, either.

Certainly true, but I don't think their status as lawyers was held against them, just the belief they were bad, dishonest lawyers. Liberal calls for Woo, Bybee and Libby to be fired, indicted, impeached and/or disbarred suggests to me their lawyering was seen as aberrational. On the other hand, partly for the reasons you mentioned, partly because they support Democrats financially, the very term "trial lawyer" is a popular epithet with the Limbaugh crowd, and one that rubs off on the legal profession as a whole. JAG lawyers have also taken a lot of heat from certain quarters on the Right. And let's not forget the far Right's favorite black-robed bogeymen, also lawyers. If there's a category of lawyers some left-wing faction loves to hate, it doesn't pop to mind, so help me out if I'm forgetting.

FWIW, my sense is that the popular demonization of lawyers didn't start out as a partisan issue, but began with media reports of a few outrageous plaintiffs and ambulance chasers. In think the partisan Right exploited this after the fact, recognizing they could use it to punish one of their main opponents, the trial lawyers, and help one of their main allies, the Chamber of Commerce.

Leo,

I think the comparisons between left and right are a little tricky, as it depends on how you define the groups. You seem to believe there are monolithic and clearly defined groups on the right that have pretty specific views -- you refer to "the Limbaugh crowd," "the far right," "the partisan right" , etc. -- but I'm not sure what parallel groups you would see on the left side: DailyKos nuts? Limousine liberal elites? ACS law professors? Without knowing what groups you see on the left as analogous, it's hard to get to the question of which groups of lawyers are similarly distrusted or reviled in those groups.

More broadly, I'm not suggesting that there is exact equivalence -- just that the demonization can be somewhat in the eyes of the beholder.

I think it is because they are always arguing. People just don't like those who are always so argumentative.

Actually, I have two observations based on my experience with agency general counsels.

First was when I suggested to my boss that we get the lawyers involved in developing a contract requirements document that seemed simple but had some potential issues. I was told, "No, they won't let us do anything." You have to admit that lawyers won't let you do a lot of dumb stuff such as using imprecise language that causes the contract award to be contested by losing parties. I unfortunately wasn't part of drafting the requirements but was forced to be part of the interminable selection process.

Second, was just before leaving when I needed an opinion on a potential large liability affecting a current and future contracts. I knew the answer as even I could understand the case law but couldn't get an opinion from the general counsel's office. I came to believe the only way I'd get an answer was to beat it out of them but they'd had a hand in the crafting the workplace violence policy, so policy prevented me from beating it out of them. In their defense, it was in an area of law not normally dealt with by the agency thus why they played hot potato with it but as I said, simple to research. Oh well, they'll bone up on it when some other lawyer sues them over issue. Oddly enough, it is a personal injury issue.

Dan Simon: It is not dishonest unless the people you are speaking to don't know what you're doing -- and they always do. It's no more dishonest than being an actor.

Everyone knows that everything a lawyer says, while in his professional capacity, is prefaced by an implicit, "it is my client's position that ...".

Make lawyers liable for damages like all other professionals. A doctor who operates on the wrong patient by mistake is liable for millions. A prosecutor who indicts someone who is most likely innocent enjoys prosecutorial immunity. A judge who makes a manifest error of law despite having all the time of the world to think about it is somehow not liable to the aggrieved party, while a doctor who makes an error in medical judgement in a life-or-death situation can be sued.

The vast majority of lawyers are liable for their errors like all other professionals. Most lawyers are neither prosecutors nor judges. And the actual occurrence of prosecutors indicting innocent people is exteremely low compared with the number of disgruntled guilty people who would file frivolous suits (plenty already do anyway despite immunity). As for judges, that's what appeal is for. And at the trial level, judges generally don't have infinite time, but rather crowded dockets.

As long as lawyers insist that their misconduct is best addressed by their own guild, while everyone else's misconduct is best addressed by a trial conducted by lawyers, I don't think lawyers can expect any respect.

2. Eliminate the jury from the courtroom. This will require lawyers to actually prove their cases, and also have other beneficial side-effects (such as requiring the trier-of-fact to provide a written explanation of its ruling).

Funny how complaints about the legal system often come back to those average people on the jury, as other comments here indicate. In a poll, people complain about ridiculous lawsuits, but put them in a box and they go haywire and reward those bringing ridiculous lawsuits.

3. Reduce society's litigiousness, lowering the friction between people and the law. The first step forward is a stronger understanding of "assumption of risk" and "personal responsibility". It should be understood that medical treatments do not always work; that climbing rocks in a state park is dangerous; that hot coffee is, well, hot.

True. And if most of those scenarios end up in a courtroom, they will often quickly be tossed out. It's the bad apples that get noticed.

As OK's post indicates and other have commented, despite being professional advocates, lawyers are poor advocates for themselves. They have an image problem. And that explains most of the negative reaction (though the reaction might be warranted on other grounds - there seems to be a disproportionate number of unpleasant people who have entered the legal world). But hey, at least we are more well liked than realtors, used car salesmen, and oil profiteers!

I wonder though about OK's thought that some of the attorney antagonism comes from lawyers protecting the guild. While lawyers are certainly good about protecting their racket, how much of this is actually something that filters into the public perception of lawyers?

One additional factor, I think, is a view of lawyers as essentially hyper-bureaucrats, authors of incomprehensible legalese and pages of forms to sign. When you run across an unreadable 15-page agreement with your bank, or some gigantic "terms of service" that purport to dictate legal terms for reading a website, or an employment contract that gives you the sneaking suspicion that buried in it is someone attempting to rip you off, people tend to blame that all on the legal profession.

I was once excused from being on the jury of a capital murder case, apparently because I have such a low opinion of lawyers. Nevertheless I agree that modern society depends critically on the rule of law which is the creation of and province of lawyers. Thus they are essential to our way of life.

Why such a low opinion? Two reasons. First, they steal my constitution and laws from me. I appreciate that ambiguities, changes through time and the need to keep the law fairly consistent require extensive interpretation of the constitution or law. However decisions should seem, at the minimum, plausible to an ordinary citizen in light of the original text. Decisions which are not plausible are the prohibition of the noncommercial use of marijuana grown and used within one state and the prohibition of the harvest of a crop for use on that farm, both based on the right to regulate interstate commerce; that's nuts. These are not interstate transactions nor are they commerce. Another example: I first read Roe vs. Wade and Griswold because I could not believe someone who claimed that our courts actually used emanations and penumbras to create a right to privacy affecting sexual matters. Crazy. I'm happy to let lawyers tweak laws while arguing about original meaning, counter-majoritarian stuff and social justice, as long as when I swear to uphold the constitution of the United States (which I have done four times) I have some idea what I am agreeing to. Also I want to know what we should teach our kids in school about the meaning of the law. When the meaning is clearly is the result of the judges doing whatever they want or believe would be good it destroys understanding and thus legitimacy. (Please note that currently in the United States the judges who do this are taking power from me and my representatives, not, as historically was true, when judges made stuff up, from the king of England.)

The first reason is not common, mostly a few outrageous distortions. The second reason is very common. Our lawyers have created a system with a bad balance between enough procedure to get approximately just results and so much procedure that lawyers can harass and extort victims for for the purposes of their clients or their fees. My career involved managing people and dealing with ambiguous, difficult issues. Yet the majority of times when there was a threat to sue or an actual suit (not usually carried through to a trial) there was no legitimate issue in my opinion. Only once were fees awarded to the harassed side (we never collected). Many of these situations arose through the extension of liability to deep pockets in the past fifty years. Others arose because someone wants to change our law and cannot succeed through elections. A few arose because of lawyers later convicted of some crime.

Nobody mentioned the first reason that came to mind for me.

There are almost no doctors, engineers, architects, etc. who are desperate to make ends meet. Obtaining one's terminal degree or license in these and many other professional fields corresponds strongly with a career path in which one does not have to compromise ideals for the sake of money or career advancement.

Yet there are so many lawyers who come out of law school saddled with 6-figure debt and weaker than anticipated career prospects. They reorganize their ethical closet, and shelve their ideals alongside baseball cards and other childish things.

Similar logic applies to any other professional group that consists of a large proportion of desperate people. Chiropractors, real estate agents, etc.

Of course a great many lawyers -- perhaps the bulk of the readership here -- went to schools and had grades that afforded them the luxury of not only maintaining but even expanding that collection of baseball cards.

So many of you are explicating reasons why the public has the impression that most lawyers don't own that '52 Mickey Mantle while ignoring the economics of it.

Orin,

I used "far right," "partisan right" and "Limbaugh crowd" interchangeably, and only to say I attribute those views to a narrow, relatively extreme faction of the right wing, not that I can identify the faction specifically. In retrospect, "Limbaugh crowd" was a bad choice. The other two, I think, make the point generically enough, which isn't to say I think "partisan" and "far" mean the same thing. Anyway, I'm open to better suggestions.

I agree demonization is in the eyes of the beholder. Sometimes there's a partisan aspect to it, sometimes not. As I said, to my eyes, demonization of lawyers has a distinctly right wing cast to it. Do you think it's fairly non-partisan or equally partisan? I respect your ability to correct for your biases, so if you see it that differently, I'd want to take a closer look at where I may have gone wrong.

FWIW, I think "DailyKos nuts" would be about as vivid and inaccurate as "Limbaugh crowd." In other words, I'd get the point plus too much more. I suspect "Limousine liberals'" best days are behind it, and "ACS law professors'" ahead, if ever. "Elites" is a keeper. Just don't count on who gets to keep it. :)

tvk: It's all about the robes.

But if this is so, then why are judges so insulated from this almost universal scorn? Judges inevitably take sides in a case; and besides which all of them are former lawyers. Yet we hear that the public trusts judges more than just about any other type of official in public life.

The judge as umpire "myth".

In part, it's a combination of 3 factors, two of which I think are fair, one unfair. 1) They help write laws no one can understand without them, 2) They charge tons of money to help people who run afoul of those laws, and 3) They appear to the average person to switch sides based on which side can pay the most (the unfair one).

Orin - you wrote:

"Given how much power lawyers can exercise"

In private practice, I feel just the opposite. We are merely agents and subject to many forces that dictate we act pursuant to the direction of our principals, as well as within a strict and unforgiving set of rules and standards.

I think you should write an article explaining this phrase, and giving it some thought.

Good job on this very interesting subject.

In private practice, I feel just the opposite. We are merely agents and subject to many forces that dictate we act pursuant to the direction of our principals, as well as within a strict and unforgiving set of rules and standards.

Which somehow don't preclude charging a half hour's time of the boss for every page of a boilerplate form he has his secretary photocopy. Or involve ACTUALLY being sanctioned when you bring a meritless lawsuit.

I don't want to quote Shakespeare again in this post to point out: this disdain has been going on for a long time. It applied before the Bush administration (believe it or not!), it applied before the ACLU, it applied before John Edwards.

My suspicion is that people don't like lawyers because lawyers are the direct contact people have with the LAW-i.e. lawyers are those who tell us what to do, or tell us what we can and can't do. I realize that is not entirely true: judges do it as well (and people don't dislike judges). But lawyers are our first contact. Lawyers, by definition, cannot be giving us good news. If I need a lawyer, or if I am contacted by a lawyer, that lawyer is in the business of telling me what to do-even if he is right, and even if I would choose to do it anyway. Interacting with a lawyer (i.e. interacting with the LAW) is like getting caught in a net: all you want to do is get free without drowning (without losing alot of money, or alot of stuff, or alot of freedoms, or going to jail).

Nobody likes inspectors, or inspectors general, or internal affairs either (if you own a business, and a city/state/government inspector comes through the door, the best outcome you can get is 'not worse than before he came'). But they have limited power-they can tell you to clean the kitchen, or add a handicapped ramp to your bathroom, or whatever. Lawyers can theoretically do anything: take your money away, take your freedom away, take your car, takes your kids, anything.

The absolute best you can hope for from a lawyer is no change from the status quo. Given that they charge money for their services, the best you can realistically hope for is no change except for the money you have given them-so you hope they don't take alot of your money.

Sk

Hmmm, only 25% of people polled have a positive view of lawyers. Is there another profession that has similarly low numbers? Ah, yes, purely a coincidence, I'm sure, but politicians, too, have almost the same ratings. Let's do some venn diagrams now: this one is of lawyers and this is of politicians. That's odd, there seems to be quite a bit of overlap. . . . Now don't try this at home, remember that correlation does not mean causality. Nothing to see here, move along, break it up, go back to talking about the adversarial system.

I think people hold the legal profession in low regard because they perceive (more or less accurately) that it's the lawyer's job to advance the client's position, whether or not the lawyer agrees with it.

...

We are merely agents and subject to many forces that dictate we act pursuant to the direction of our principals, as well as within a strict and unforgiving set of rules and standards.

While these play some role, I think that both of you are missing that people also dislike lawyers because they feel that they don't always serve the best interests of their clients.

I think that the principal-agent problem still exists and creates problems as it does in other fields. Lawyers with billable hours can make out pretty well by extending a process longer than it has to be. On the other hand, with contingency fees, certainly we've also all heard stories of class-action lawsuits where the class members got something useless (e.g., a coupon for buying more services from the company that they now hate) while the lawyers make out with lots of money; the class members have a difficult time rejecting the settlement.

Maybe one of the reasons is the car-mechanic syndrome. If I owned a car, I'd probably find it hard to trust the auto-mechanic who fixes it because I know nothing about cars and don't know, for example if I'm being overcharged. Similar thing with lawyers: people don't know the law and all the in's and out's. Of course, I doubt if people dislike car mechanics as a class to the same degree they dislike lawyers.

First, I forget who I'm probably slightly misquoting, but there seems to be 2 kinds of lawyers, the kind who goes out of the way to make your life EASY, and the kind who goes out of the way to make your life hard (Bet you were expecting the law/judge joke..)

I really think that the dislike of lawyers has to do with 2 major factors. The first comes from the fact that MOST people deal with lawyers a few times in their lives - wills, the selling of property and the like, and it's an expensive dealing that they really don't want to use, but they feel they have to cover themselves if the other guy lawyers up, or to get what they want done worded in such a way that the Government interferes as little as possible (wills). Why do they need lawyers to do this? Because laws are written by lawyers.

An example - about 20 years ago, I was selling a piece of property out of town that was selling for 18K - the lowest cost lawyer I could find around here wanted 9K to do the closing!!! I ended up hiring a lawyer up near where the land was located (nowhere near here) and the cost was around 2K. When I said to one of the local lawyers "10K is crazy, it's not worth it" his comment was "Isn't protecting yourself worth it?"

The SECOND problem people have with lawyers ISN'T really a problem with lawyers, it's the problem of precedent. Most people expect things to mean what they say, and say what they mean. Laws are, in fact, highly changed/have loopholes and gotchas in them that have seem to have nothing in them that's written (plus the little gotchas that a term of art can be defined totally differently than most people thing, and in a totally different place in the law books than where the law is). People like plain talk, and don't like "weasel words" - to use an example "It depends on what your definition of is is"

Most people, again, will never deal with a lawsuit, or criminal law, they will just have certain very simple needs that are mostly, let's face it, boilerplate. Selling an undeveloped piece of land SHOULD be a very simple deal, and in fact, the lawyer who did it said it was nice and simple, as I had bought the land from the Government who had previously used condemnation to buy it (75+ years earlier).

Basically, people have a problem because it seems that every time they hire a lawyer, they are doing so to protect themselves from "other lawyers" (not thinking that it's the client that has hired the other lawyer - then again, there are clients that use lawyers as a weapon)

I think its because - on the TV - they get all the hot chicks

Do the Conspirators think of themselves as "lawyers" as a primary mode of self-classification? I'd bet they think of themselves as "academics" first.

whit:

i have mentioned this many times. as far as i know, there is no "ride a long" program for corporate lawyers, etc.

If anyone, anyone at all, is interested in doing a "ride along" with a midwest patent attorney, I would be happy to oblige.

You may realize we are less blood-sucking than our criminal defense &prosecution fellows.

All of the above. Not to mention that lawyers often have to deliver bad news -- your contract doesn't say what you think it does; the guy who injuted you is judgment proof; there's enough evidence to convict you of a crime you did not commit; solving a problem that you did not cause is going to cost you $XXXX. Besides we use too many big words, we look for problems instead of solutions, and we are trained to be skeptics. These are not a recipe for popularity.

The dislike of course is not new. Carl Sandburg died in 1967; I'm not sure when he observed that lawyers know too much, that

In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob,
Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers,
Too much hereinbefore provided whereas,
*********

When the lawyers are through
What is there left, Bob? ************

Why is there always a secret singing

When a lawyer cashes in?
Why does a hearse horse snicker
Hauling a lawyer away?

Growing up as the son of a lawyer, I never understood what Sandburg meant. Once you start practicing, it's pretty easy to see.

It is like all these lawyers coming along out of nowhere. I mean the Founding Fathers were all engineers and doctors and . . .

When Granny spills coffee in her lap and sues McDonald's, her lawyer is viewed negatively by the general public. Correct or not, the perception is that this type of action is driven by the lawyer's greed rather than a plaintiff seeking just compensation.

And when I explain to people that the burns were so severe that the woman needed skin graphs on her vagina, that she originally asked McDonalds to cover her medical bills, but they refused, and that the award was eventually knocked way down, they seem to understand a bit more.

The McDonalds case is an example of (a) people making judgments based on headlines without the full story, (b) lawyers getting blamed for the actions of a jury, and (c) lawyers not getting credit when they fix the problems caused by the jury.

It's really very simple. People don't like lawyers because most politicians are lawyers. The two groups are inextricably linked. In my opinion, politicians are just a lower form of lawyer. More greedy and less skilled.

Too many of the comments in this thread focus on current issues. As whit and sk have noted, people have ALWAYS hated lawyers (at least in the Anglo-Saxon system). They hated them in 1750, they hated them in 1590, they hated them every day before and since.

It's pretty obvious that John Edwards and hot coffee and class actions and so on have nothing whatsoever to do with the explanation. Prof. Kerr was right to focus on structural issues; the incomprehensibility of legalese, mentioned in the comments, is another complaint which goes back a long way (and which had even more force when the courts operated in Law French).

In my experience, though, far more people hate the "other" lawyer than hate their own. Plenty in the latter category, of course, just not quite so many.

Lots of comments, apologies if this has been stated already.

One thing to add to the recipe of dislike - thousands or even millions of plaintiffs join class action law suit against big company. Big company settles. Plaintiff/customers get coupon for free product. Lawyers get $XX million apiece.

According to the great book Language of the Law, lawyers have been hated for centuries.

The blog entry, and virtually all comments, seem to regard dislike of lawyers as something modern. But the unpopularity of lawyers -- in common-law countries, certainly -- goes back at least to Shakespeare's day ("First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers! -- Dick the butcher (Henry VI, part II, act IV, scene ii, lines 83–84)), a probably a good bit earlier.

My own sense is that the controversies around civil rights and personal injury lawyers, plus the excesses of attorney advertising have exacerbated the problem greatly, but they certainly aren't the root cause.

Prof. Kerr,

I think your post on Ted Olson also provides a good sense of the reasons behind why people justifiably dislike lawyers.

I think the public's dislike of lawyers is the result of guilt by association. Most politicians are lawyers, and who likes politicians?.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that most lawyers just aren't very competent?

If there's a category of lawyers some left-wing faction loves to hate, it doesn't pop to mind, so help me out if I'm forgetting.

Glad to help, since you apparently missed Erin Brokovich and The Verdict. It's evil corporate lawyers who want to keep poor injured plaintiffs from getting what is obviously due [sic] because of their evil corporate clients. I think Scott Turow wrote some books about this, too (although he missed the endemic corruption involving the plaintiff bar and judicial system in his native Mississippi).

No one has mentioned some items that drive litigation prices up without benefit to the principals. One is a lack of gumption on the part of judges to grant summary judgment (partial or entire) or dismiss claims early in litigation. Part of this is due to the difference between what the public thinks "frivolous" claims are and what they are legally, part is due to the decision to let the jury make a decision so a bad verdict won't be blamed on the judge (who may have to stand for reelection) if the verdict is newsworthy, and part is due to fear that clever lawyers can convince some other lawyers sitting on an appelate bench that there is a set of facts that could possibly exist that would permit the litigation to continue.

Anecdote in this area, I participated in a case in which the defense moved for dismissal because the complaint was not definite enough to meet the pleading rules. The motion was granted, with leave to plaintiff to amend. The amended complaint was little better, but a renewed motion to dismiss was denied. After discovery on three continents and a verdict for the plaintiff, defense appealed to the state court of appeals, which reversed on other grounds without addressing the pleading issue. Retrial resulted in another verdict, which was appealed to the state supreme court, which ultimately reversed on the pleading grounds. Neither the trial judge nor the first appellate court would address the issue that disposed of the case and was raised at a point where seven digit discovery costs would be avoided.

Which brings me to the fact that litigation decisions are usually based not on the merits of the case, but on the estimated settlement value of the case. Modified pleading rules, expansive definitions of classes for class actions, and nearly unlimited discovery drive up the cost of litigation without adding to the value provided to the principals, and people can see that. Whatever increases pretrial costs increases costs that can be avoided by settling, unrelated to the merits of the claims.

I think the average joe loves their own lawyer and hates all other lawyers. How many lawyers deal with plaintiffs or defendants who want their "opponent" basically destroyed?

I see it on both sides. I am evil because I dared to represent a plaintiff against a defendant. I am evil because I refuse to act in an unethical matter toward opposing counsel. Many litigators see this every single day. In the end, we often obtain awesome settlements or full on victories, but our client (if plaintiff) sees that we could have obtained more, if we only did this, if we only did that.

Basically, lawyers and doctors are necesary evils in a way. I wish everyone got along with no problems and everyone understood each other. I wish everyone was magical and did not need medicine in a pre-apple eating kind of way. Too bad.

Actually, I don't think high-profile situations with attorneys advocating unpopular positions is all of it. New Pseudonym gets part of this - the bulk of interactions your average person has involving lawyers looks, to them, as if the lawyer was unnecessary. Everything goes according to plan, the papers are in order, and other than a (to them) large bill, they see no evidence that "all that legal gobble" was needed, and see lawyers as something between gatekeepers and leeches on the transaction.

In this sense, lawyers don't get praise for smooth transactions for the same reason politicians don't get praise when something bad doesn't happen because of their action. For that matter, it is the same in a lot of professions. I used to be a systems administrator, and when I did my job perfectly, and nothing went wrong, people wondered why they kept me around.

Orin, I'd like to expand on your last two paragraphs.

I see a difference between a lawyer, for instance, trying to make sure that Jeffrey Dahmer gets his civil rights, and viewing it as a win if he gets Jeffrey Dahmer acquitted so that he can go on practicing serial killing and cannibalism. I don't think the general populace looks kindly on aggressive attempts to get murderers off the hook. Because we or our family members are then at risk of being those murderers' next victims and we don't appreciate it. No, Dahmer didn't get off, but Mary Winkler is free after killing her husband in cold blood, and she has custody of her children. Her lawyer has a local reputation for creative defenses and he sure didn't let her down.

Also, it's tough for people who are not lawyers and who are not daily immersed in the subject of keeping the constitution pure and our rights untouched, to see cases like Lori Drew, who hounded that poor little girl into suicide, as only a freedom of speech case. As in, we have to defend Drew's freedom of speech, even though we think what she did was beyond the pale, or we're all at risk of having our freedoms suspended. I think we are seeing our big picture, of what kind of society we want to live in, and you are seeing your big picture, of what happens to our rights if we allow them to be constricted because of things like this. The woman who posted the 17-yr-old's info on Craigslist - I'd like to see the book thrown at her. You all aren't clear on whether there is a book to throw, esp. given that the 17-yr-old is of age to consent (not that she consented to this).

Things that seem clear to us aren't clear to you, and to be honest, I'm not sure who is right. Maybe this is one of those situations where it's best to have disagreement, and people tugging at both sides, to keep either side from going off the deep end.

I think the average joe loves their own lawyer and hates all other lawyers.

The average joe does not have a lawyer. They may know one or two socially and think they're good folks. Or not. Doesn't matter. But about the only time they "have a lawyer" in a professional sense is if it's largely forced on them. Either they're being sued, they need to sue someone, they have a contract/property issue, or they need a defense lawyer to represent them before the state.

Laura - You dislike the evil defense lawyer who "aggressively" represents the murderer. If the perp is so obviously guilty, where's the disdain for the prosecutor who failed to get a guilty verdict? Why are you questioning the morals of the defense attorney rather than the competency of the prosecution?

illram:
Laura - You dislike the evil defense lawyer who "aggressively" represents the murderer. If the perp is so obviously guilty, where's the disdain for the prosecutor who failed to get a guilty verdict? Why are you questioning the morals of the defense attorney rather than the competency of the prosecution?

Illram: Incompetence is not equivalent to bad morals. A better analogy would be a prosecutor who views putting an innocent person behind bars as a win - see Nifong, as noted above - and I have the same disdain, as you say, for that person.

Do you see it differently?

And of course there's the fact that lawyers are bad people.

Remember the kids -- some of us were some of them -- about whom it was said: "You'd make a good lawyer?" That was never a compliment, and the kids were never likeable.

This will get lost in the flood of comments, but I must interject that Lawyers are viewed so poorly because they are a protectionist racket that works (a) to create a monopoly gov't that extorts obedience, (b) excuses the monopoly gov't in all of its actions, and (c) is highly over-priced and under-supplied because of monopoly favor from gov't.

If there were allowed to be a competing company to the US gov't offering Justice services, and a competing license-granting agency to the ABA, the major problems that people have with "Lawyers" would disappear: they would be just another service profession that rewarded skill, instead of a profession viewed as being filled from a factory for drones that are experts only at excusing criminal behavior and obfuscating issues behind unjust case-law and jargon, and are cogs in the favor-granting machine that is closed to competition.

It seems that Cobblers (or even international shoe corps.) aren't so nearly hated, even though they provide a more necessary service and good. Maybe if they were forcing you to use their shoes, you'd start hating them, too.

Per Son wrote: I see it on both sides. I am evil because I dared to represent a plaintiff against a defendant. I am evil because I refuse to act in an unethical matter toward opposing counsel. Many litigators see this every single day. In the end, we often obtain awesome settlements or full on victories, but our client (if plaintiff) sees that we could have obtained more, if we only did this, if we only did that.

What can you do, man- people shoot the messenger. That's the nature of the beast; you could get a great result, but if the client doesn't like it, it's no good. If it's a bad result but the client's happy, then it's good. Part of our job is to TRY to make them understand why they got the result they did, but like many of us I have a lot of trouble getting through to some clients.

Lawyer's billing may play a role, though of course many people who've never hired a lawyer dislike lawyers. But consider two simple experiences of mine:

1. A ".2 hour" ($70) itemized charge for "Updating client database". This consisted of reading and filing a 2 sentence email I had sent the attorney that contained a simple factual statement to the effect I had completed a task I was working on. It required no input from him, and was merely generated to keep him in the loop.

2. Many years ago I had to present my version of events to a committee. I discussed this with my attorney. He wrote up his understanding of my version as I had told it to him. This draft went through 3 revisions, all related to my correcting spelling and grammatical errors in his work. He billed me for every revision.

I'm a lawyer. Here's what I think:

1. A lot of lawyers are jerks;

2. Suing or getting sued is expensive and unpleasant. The lawyers get blamed for that, even though its the clients who create the cases;

3. People usually get mixed up with lawyers because something bad has happened to them. As a result, people are usually already mad before they ever see a lawyer;

4. After years and years of dealing with the same issues over and over again, even lawyers who weren't jerks to begin with can appear jaded and cynical.

We work every day in a process that exists to regulate and mitigate and clean up the results of ignorance, folly, greed and the like. A lot of the muck spills onto us. People see us profiting from that, and some of us reveling in it, and it causes them to dislike us.

"But as a matter of substance, outside of the class action arena and consumer protection laws, I don't see many laws out there that benefit lawyers directly. "

Are you kidding? The entire realm of victimless crime laws benefits lawyers directly.

I have several friends that I knew growing up or in college who went on to law school and became lawyers. By far the most successful of them was a sleezy, two-faced, lying bastard, who would do anything to get ahead.

My biggest problem with lawyers is the fear of inaction that they have put into our lives. The multitude of incomprehensible laws and stories of huge amounts of money taken from people or companies for small mistakes or forgivable oversights is frightening. The feeling of powerlessness when it comes to legal proceedings scares me to death. The risk of making a small mistake that will be blown out of proportion to give someone a lottery payday makes me think twice of taking any business risks at all.

Compounded on top of all of this you have real manipulation of the basic legal tenants of this country. The empowerment of the federal legislature by the federal courts. Freedoms taken away from people to correct historical inequalities.

Lawyers have the real power in this country. There is no balance for anyone else. If someone gets too uppity, the lawyers draft new laws or interpet old ones differently to keep them down.

I have never seen a lawyer with a similar policy.

I have. Several, in fact. But many people go to lawyers who are fancier than they actually need - big practices with big ads in the phone book - when a randomly chosen solo practitioner will do. (And will as often or not, actually have a better education under his belt.)

Years ago on Crossfire, the topic was about whether lawers should be covered under hate crime laws or something like that. And right out of the box, Pat Bucchannon turn to the lawyer on the left and said,

"You lawyers got your reputation the old-fashoned way, didn'tcha?"

If you want to complain about the legal SYSTEM, go right ahead. Please try to come up with something better.

It is the lawyers that allow the small minority of lawyers who are pond-scum to continue to get away with the things people complain about. Specifically, it is their fellow lawyers who control licensing.

Or they want to draft a will, open a trust, divorce, etc. I am not sure what forced upon means. Is that kind of like when a doctor is forced upon a someone with strep throat, or a mover is forced upon someone moving who is not capable of moving themselves.

Yes, my list was not comprehensive. The point is that:

(1) They probably do not have a personal attachment to "their own" lawyer. They probably do not do regular business with him. He is a contractor hired to do a specific job.

(2) The specific job probably isn't a happy one. Most people do their best to avoid needing the services of a lawyer. Lawyers are expensive and most of the situations that require them are not positive ones. You're paying a lawyer to help make a bad situation go away or mitigate its badness. But mostly the positive outcome is relief when it resolves. People are not generally winning some lawyer lottery.

(3) With medicine, I can assess my symptoms myself and determine whether I need to see a doctor. If I'm moving, I can enlist the aid of friends and pay them with pizza. But with the law, I need a lawyer for even the most basic things. And the other side has lawyers too. When I get sick, I don't have a showdown between opposing doctors.

Sometimes hiring a lawyer is just a technicality or tax. Sometimes it's like hiring a legal mercenary to do courtroom battle for you. Once in the courtroom, he's doing battle with other lawyers. You're most likely to come out of the experience thinking "he's a competent barrister with reasonable rates" or "glad he's on my side" rather than "he's a wonderful guy."

People's general hate of lawyers stems from the combination of zealous advocacy and fee arrangements based on a contingent component. Zealous advocacy imposes not just a right, but an ethical obligation, on attorneys to assert even in cases in which the law and facts are against them, any argument that can be made in "good faith" in favor of their client, even when the lawyer lacks belief that the argument is correct. If a layperson made a statement that he believed to be not correct, but that could be supported by some "good faith" argument based on what other evidence existed, he would be prosecuted for perjury. In other words, what is treated as lying by a layperson is in fact an ethical obligation of a lawyer -- a lawyer is ethically obligated to lie if necessary on behalf of his client. The contingent fee part of the equation puts the lawyer into a conflict of interest which results in the "good faith" standard of zealous advocacy to be pushed far, far over the line. So the general public views lawyers, rightly, as a profession of liars.

But with the law, I need a lawyer for even the most basic things.

I don't think that's true. For example, people send demand letters and form contracts all the time without lawyers.

Jeff:

But with the law, I need a lawyer for even the most basic things.

Hmm.... I disagree here. When I was trying to get my then-fiancee/now-wife into the country in 2003, I looked at working with lawyers and eventually decided I was better off handling things myself. The bad lawyers were really sleazy, and the good lawyers didn't have the options I had (quitting my job, moving in with my in-laws, getting a job in Indonesia, and re-applying through the Embassy).

When it came time for adjustment of status, we handled this ourselves.

I have been looking at incorporating my business. I can do that without a lawyer. I need to write a contract? Might ask a lawyer for revision help, but might not.

Yet I also routinely ask legal advice for some things. I expect to handle everything myself until I get over my head, but most cases are pretty clear.

Mike:

For example, people send demand letters and form contracts all the time without lawyers.

On the other hand, I am surprised how often I get form contracts from folk who didnt read them. For a software job I got a contract from a customer once which read "All projects will be completed according to proper building codes..." Evidently he read "contractor" and didn't figure the contract was specific to construction. Not hiring a lawyer is no excuse for laziness, though....

illram:
Laura- Does advocating for an accused criminal mean you have bad morals? Should an accused child molester not get a defense attorney? If he does, should the defense attorney base his level of advocacy on his personal judgment of his client's guilt? E.g. if the lawyer thinks he did it, should the lawyer provide only a half-assed defense?

Doesn't that kind of ruin the whole point of innocent until proven guilty?

Illram, first of all, if the person molested a child, he is guilty, period. The court is to consider him innocent unless and until he is convicted. That is in order to make sure that he gets a fair trial and the innocent are not railroaded. Let's not pretend that what happens in the courtroom retroactively changes what happened in real life. Ideally the guilty are punished and the innocent go free. Ideally the verdict doesn't favor whichever side has a more eloquent, aggressive, or unscrupulous lawyer. Do you disagree?

Second, I'm not sure if you are not getting what I'm saying, or if you are being disingenuous.

Let's take the case of a person who has actually molested children because he's a compulsive pedophile. He is brought to trial and his lawyer knows that he is guilty, i.e., that he did in fact molest them, and he'll go on doing so if he can.

Scenario 1: The prosecutor's case rests on evidence collected by the police, who improperly searched his house without a warrant and lied and tried to cover that up. The defense lawyer complains and gets that evidence thrown out. There is now not enough to convict. I do not blame this lawyer, although if he rejoices in the fact that the man can now go victimize more children I would find that off-putting. I blame the police for being sloppy and doing illegal things, and missing this chance to get the perp put away.

Scenario 2: The lawyer does dishonest and deceptive things to try to get his client off. Maybe the guy has 5 lie-detector tests and fails 4 of them, and the lawyer presents the 5th one in court. He hires "expert" witnesses that he knows either are incompetent or can be bribed to lie. He bullies bona-fide witnesses until they either are too flustered to give coherent testimony or refuse to give it at all, and does this deliberately. Helps his client make up phony alibis and bullies his friends into backing them up. Then when the jury is swayed by his garbage, and the client goes free to molest more children, the lawyer has another acquittal on his record - whoopee!

I see a distinction between these two scenarios. Do you? Or not?

Also, (to Laura) I am having some difficulty seeing the bright line between your scenarios. In both scenarios, the lawyer impeaches the prosecutor's evidence until there isn't enough to convict.

As long as the actions have some basis in law or fact, I wouldn't fault either lawyer. However, if the actions have no basis the lawyers should be disciplined by the bar association.

einhverfr:
Also, (to Laura) I am having some difficulty seeing the bright line between your scenarios. In both scenarios, the lawyer impeaches the prosecutor's evidence until there isn't enough to convict.

As long as the actions have some basis in law or fact, I wouldn't fault either lawyer. However, if the actions have no basis the lawyers should be disciplined by the bar association.

Okay, I think this pretty well explains the breakdown here, and why some of us think ill of some of you.

Look again at scenario 2. You are saying that his actions here as I describe them may have basis in law or fact. And you are equating those actions with scenario 1, in which the lawyer merely defends his client's 4th amendment rights.

I think one of the biggest problems is that the common image of lawyer is that of a adulterous, alcoholic hired gun with a coke and prostitute habit (in vary degrees). And in some ways, looking at classmates of mine from undergrad that had gone on to law school, I would have to agree. Most were part of that sort of scene (at most, just partiers and alcoholics), and I think that the profession is hampered by the horrendously bad selection mechanism of law school. Law school really doesn't do a good job of selecting these individuals out of the professional pool since everything is hinged not on professionalism and learning, but on a single final in a class. The ABA should not have make a rule requiring that a student attending 80% of lecture time to take a final (which raises serious doubts about the profession if one can do well on a final and not attend class). Additionally, law students have the ability to use and rely on commercial briefs (which sounds like cheating to any other profession). There is a cottage industry based just on prepping students for tests. In the end, law school really doesn't do much to select out those who would add to the profession (Harvard not using grades is just one egregious example). And then reliance on bar exams are similarly problematic, since everything on the bar exam is taught in a review course (which costs extra as opposed to learning it in law school) but has high passage rates and lax re-attempt standards. Combine that with no journeyman or apprenticeship requirements (unlike the medical profession) and you end up with only front end selection (based on LSAT and general undergrad performance, but mostly just LSAT) and an informational problem in professional selection at the working end. GIGO then contributes to the public perception of the profession.

A fascinating thread, but nowhere do i see the usual response to "Lots of lawyers do very noble things."
So, "It's the other 95% who besmirch the legal profession."

einhverfr and Laura,

There's theoretical wiggle room in the second scenario, except for this:

"Helps his client make up phony alibis"

It's a violation of the ethical rules for a lawyer even to allow his client to testify to known falsehoods, much less assist him in concocting them, the latter of which I assume would be illegal in most if not all jurisdictions.

Okay, well, take this one:

He bullies bona-fide witnesses until they either are too flustered to give coherent testimony or refuse to give it at all, and does this deliberately.

Remembering that the witnesses here are most likely children. I know you have to be careful bullying children in front of the jury because they won't like it. But perhaps he does it where the jury won't see.

Now suppose that due to his tactics, which go over and above making sure that his client's civil rights are protected, remember, that man goes free and subsequently molests a child of your acquaintance. Maybe your own child. This child has been somewhat damaged both physically and psychically, will require therapy, and may never be the same; and the molestation would not have happened had the perp been convicted of his original crimes, of which he was guilty, and had been in prison where he belonged. You'd still think his defense lawyer did nothing but what he ought to do, and his conscience should be clear?

In other words, the bright line a lawyer can't cross is knowing falsehood. What confuses many people into thinking that line is routinely crossed is the lawyer's obligation to construe every fact in his client's favor and offer what may like seem far-fetched hypothetical alternatives to his client's guilt.

That's not entirely true. He can knowingly state falsehoods during arguement, i.e. "My client was elsewhere at the time of the murder. He is innocent.". He just can't allow witnesses (including his client) to testify to knowing falsehoods under oath.

He can knowingly state falsehoods

I am hard-pressed to think of another occupation where bald-faced lying is considered acceptable and more-or-less routine.

...For contrast to lawyers and acceptable practices among them, look at the salmonella-in-peanut-butter outbreak. Apparently the company where the contamination occurred lab-shopped until they found a lab that didn't detect salmonella in their product so that they could package and ship it. Their motive was to maximize profit, which would mean not landfilling that peanut butter; and everyone knows that manufacturing companies exist to make profit.

But the fact that this particular lab didn't detect the salmonella didn't mean that it wasn't there, in the same way that an acquittal doesn't mean that the accused actually isn't a molester or whatever; and the innocent peanut-butter-buying public suffered for it. Making a profit should never have come at the expense of falsifying - that is, disregarding the positive salmonella reports in favor of negative without a compelling rationale. We get that where peanut butter is concerned. But if the innocent public is put at risk b/c a lawyer lied his head off and got his guilty client acquitted, that's OK? Not seeing it.

ShelbyC:

He can knowingly state falsehoods during arguement,

That's news to me.

i.e. "My client was elsewhere at the time of the murder.

Even if he knows his client was at the crime scene? Again, news to me.

He is innocent.".

That, he can always say, since it's a legal conclusion. If that wasn't his position, the client would have plead guilty.

Anyway, here are the relevant ABA Model Rules:

Model Rules of Professional Conduct
Advocate
Rule 3.3 Candor Toward The Tribunal

(a) A lawyer shall not knowingly:

(1) make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer;

[...]

(3) offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false. If a lawyer, the lawyer’s client, or a witness called by the lawyer, has offered material evidence and the lawyer comes to know of its falsity, the lawyer shall take reasonable remedial measures, including, if necessary, disclosure to the tribunal. A lawyer may refuse to offer evidence, other than the testimony of a defendant in a criminal matter, that the lawyer reasonably believes is false.

and here's the California rule:

Rule 5-200 Trial Conduct

In presenting a matter to a tribunal, a member:

(A) Shall employ, for the purpose of maintaining the causes confided to the member such means only as are consistent with truth;

(B) Shall not seek to mislead the judge, judicial officer, or jury by an artifice or false statement of fact or law;

(C) Shall not intentionally misquote to a tribunal the language of a book, statute, or decision;

(D) Shall not, knowing its invalidity, cite as authority a decision that has been overruled or a statute that has been repealed or declared unconstitutional; and

(E) Shall not assert personal knowledge of the facts at issue, except when testifying as a witness.

As a transactional lawyer, what little I know about this is from 20 year old law school recollections, so you may well be aware of something I'm not. But the rules do seem to confirm what I remember. So what's the basis of your understanding?

Laura:

I am hard-pressed to think of another occupation where bald-faced lying is considered acceptable and more-or-less routine.

Subject to ShelbyC proving my wrong, as far as I'm aware it's not considered acceptable for lawyers either. As you can see from my post above, "bald-faced lying" is clearly contrary to the ABA Model Rules, the California rules, and I would assume the rules of every other state.

Well, jurors are instructed that argument is argument, not evidence, so I guess technically it's not lying. And you could imagine the problems if lawyers had to say, "The evidence shows my client is elsewhere at the time of the murder" if he knew his client was there, but could eliminate the "the evidence shows" part if he knew his client was innocent. A juror who knew the rules could tell what the lawyer knew about his client's guilt.

It is interesting seeing this from the outside. While I (obviously) haven't been a lawyer all my life, I have lived with lawyers all my life. My father was one of the most ethical attorneys I have ever met - the one time he got a speeding ticket, he plead guilty, figuring that any defense would require him to lie a little bit. And, because he practiced law for almost 50 years, many of his friends were lawyers and judges (i.e. former lawyers).

So, it is sometimes hard to fathom why non-attorneys hate attorneys so much. Sure, I have seen dishonest lawyers, but never worked in a firm where I thought the other attorneys were dishonest. And, my impression, having spent nearing 60 years around them, is that, on average, they are more honest than the average citizen.

One thing that used to drive my doctor friends crazy was when I would point out that while they were taking creative billing as CME, we would be taking ethics courses where we were being taught even the most ridiculously remote ethical violations. And, if anyone ever claims that the problem with lawyers is lack of discipline, just look at the figures comparing attorney discipline to doctor discipline. A couple of years ago, I looked at Colorado, and noted that there were as many attorneys disciplined a month as there were doctors a year in that state. And, when I was an undergrad, we had a strong honor code. The only group of students who consistently violated it were the pre-meds. There was a big to-do when the biology and chemistry profs started sticking around in class for the tests.

Yet, to some extent I understand. Today, a friend called for help. He apparently has a pre-trial conference tomorrow, and was overwhelmed by the blizzard of paper work from the other side. And, yes, the lawyers there are trying to pull some fast ones. And, yes, he will probably get screwed because he isn't hiring an attorney and the attorney on the other side is going to beat him on procedural grounds. My view is that they are cutting corners enough that they would be easy to beat - if he were willing and able to hire a decent attorney.

As a lay person (not a lawyer), I think the overall dislike of lawyers is simple. The three C's:
1. Cost
2. Clique
3. Condescension
Plus - dragging things out as long as possible (as in filing only on the very last day etc.) therefore extending pay.

1a. Not many people understand or appreciate $250++ per hour charges (billed by every quarter hour) and the justification that you can be billed for every minute your attorney thinks of your case (as in he/she is in the shower and has a brilliant idea regarding your case. In this case 1 minute of an idea is automatically billed as 1/4 hour of billing hour price.) For people working for an hourly wage and for some salaried workers - that just does not compute.

2a. Not everyone understands or believes that you can play golf/have dinner with an opposing lawyer and NEVER discuss a case or make a deal. Here in our small state - ask an attorney from any state outside - and they LAUGH and tell you good luck trying to find an attorney who will buck the system - Of Course there are honorable and dedicated attorneys here - but in a small pool not too many want to rock the boat - and when outside attorneys say you won't get a fair shake unless you are a multimillionaire - it surely makes you wonder.

3a. Having dealt with some wonderful attorneys and some poor attorneys -the poor outnumbered the wonderful beginning with the condescending attitude - which is a HUGE turnoff.

All that being said - if you have a good attorney who believes in you and knows his stuff. You are lucky. And that attorney will help make or keep things right for you.

Without an attorney on your side - you are screwed. With a poor attorney, you are doubly screwed.
I guess you can say attorneys are like spouses - you can't live with them and you can't live without them.

Everyone needs to remember that lawyers aren't gods - they have the same (or more) propensities that the general population has.
Meaning that there will be a percentage that are lazy. There will be a percentage that aren't knowledgable enough in the area that you need them and yet won't admit it. Another percentage will be dishonest. Another percentage will have emotional or physical problems that make it hard or impossible for them to do their jobs.
Another percentage will be just too damn busy to do you justice.
Another percentage couldn't care less about who you are or what you are going through.
On the plus side - when you can find them or should I say IF you have the time and resources to find them - a percentage will care and stand by you. A percentage will find the time for you. A percentage will go above and beyond duty and expectations. If you find that - Hang on to them - they are worth their weight in gold - literally.
It is just life and lawyers are a part of it - but they are people too - all the faults as well as the shining glory.

Lots of good reasons to dislike various lawyers are given above.

For me, the biggest problem is that everything, absolutely everything in this economy, costs a hell of a lot more than it should, because of lawyers.

Medicine, products that by some lunatic stretch may cause harm, anything involving real estate, getting rid of crappy employees, etc.

The giant class action cases where no one EXCEPT the lawyers makes anything, are the worst.

1. Lawyers charge way too much for their services...$500+ an hour is more than any lawyer is worth...plus, they don't offer itemized bills so people can see what they're paying for. In the firm where I worked, clients were charged the fee for the Westlaw search plus %50 extra plus the billable hours of the attorney doing the search!

I think that lack of itemized bills is mostly in the past. It used to be the mark of the very top firms that they could get away with it, and their clients would put up with it. But there are few corporate clients that will put up with it any more.

$500 an hour does seem a bit high, but I see it all the time. Right now we are selling hard into CA, because we have lower rates for a given level of expertise due to our lower costs. Part of $500 an hour is greed. Part is what the traffic will bear (which is why there are blood baths right now at some of the firms charging that much, or $250 or so for fresh outs, etc.)

The Lexus/Westlaw stuff is likely on the way out. At one point, it was a significant cost. But now, the bigger firms have flat rates, and their biggest clients refuse to pay for it. For $500 an hour, Lexus/Westlaw should be free, as well as long distance, (excess) copying, FAXes, etc.

Indeed, the small firm I was with before we merged into the firm we are now in figured that it would only cost about $5 an hour in higher attorney fees to cover all those added expenses, and clients were a lot happier paying $305 an hour, instead of $300, and not being nickeled and dimed on top of that.

2. Lawyers make everything needlessly complicated - common things like divorce, running a small business, etc should be easier to figure out if you'd rather "do it yourself" and not hire a lawyer. Sometimes, even just talking to a lawyer is like pulling teeth...

Agreed. Lawyers are taught to see the complexity in things that others do not. Also, the higher the IQ, the more enjoyment there is in dealing with complexity, on average, and the more complexity that someone can handle.

3. I have several lawyer friends...that said...I've encountered many lawyers who are condescending, egotistical jerks and who think anyone who is not a lawyer is dumb...(and many are pretty boring people, consumed by their work to boot)

Boring, yes. Most lawyers are insanely boring. But so are engineers, and maybe even doctors. I do sometimes feel sorry for my daughter, when a legal discussion breaks out at a family gathering. My father, brother, and I, and sometimes a cousin, start off on some subject that bores everyone else at the table to tears (most often the daughter).

Condescending? No worse in my experience than any comparable professionals. My view is that MDs can easily be worse - many of them spend their days making life and death decisions, etc., and some seem to get a god complex as a result.

ShelbyC:

And you could imagine the problems if lawyers had to say, "The evidence shows my client is elsewhere at the time of the murder" if he knew his client was there, but could eliminate the "the evidence shows" part if he knew his client was innocent.

I think you're using "knew" much too broadly. For purposes of legal and professional responsibility, I think a lawyer is only imputed with knowledge of the things he knows directly and personally. If lawyers had to treat "convinced by the evidence" as equivalent to "knowing," many if not most criminal defendants couldn't get a defense.

Laura,

Prosecutors and defense lawyers have asymmetrical responsibilities. The defense lawyer's sole loyalty is to his client, subject only to the professional rules. The prosecutor, on the other hand, has a duty to his client (the state) and a separate duty to bring about a just result. That imposes obligations on the prosecutor the defense lawyer is free from. The two biggies are that the prosecutor is only supposed to charge defendants he believes are guilty, and he has to show the defense lawyer the evidence he plans to use to prove guilt. The defense lawyer doesn't have to believe in his client's innocence, and doesn't have tip nearly as much of his game plan to the opposition.

Dee:

Not many people understand or appreciate $250++ per hour charges (billed by every quarter hour) and the justification that you can be billed for every minute your attorney thinks of your case (as in he/she is in the shower and has a brilliant idea regarding your case. In this case 1 minute of an idea is automatically billed as 1/4 hour of billing hour price.)

I believe some years ago there was either a Bar or court decision that effectively prohibited lawyers from charging more than one client for the same billable unit. Say you're in the office for 12 hours, you take an hour for lunch, you spend an hour on administrative stuff (like billing) and you waste an hour at Volokh Conspiracy, you can't bill for more than 9 hours. That means, assuming 15 minute billing increments, you can't charge more than 36 clients for your work, even if you did work for 50 clients. If during one 15 minute increment you worked for 2 different clients, you charge one and give the other a freebee until the next time when it's that client's turn to pay for the unit. At least that's how it's supposed to work. I'm sure a lot of lawyers aren't perfectly scrupulous about it, but whether it's a higher percentage than anyone else who bills by the hour (e.g., mechanics, accountants) I wouldn't know.

As for billable showers, does it really matter where your lawyer is when he's thinking about your case, assuming it needs thinking about?

Well, I actually like my lawyer. He's a pretty good guy. But our last interaction symbolizes the problem I have with lawyers.

Turns out my last traffic ticket was handed to me by a cop who was angry that I flashed my headlights to oncoming traffic to indicate the presence of a speed trap. He told me as he gave me the ticket that I was not allowed to signal to other motorists that they were under surveillance. I looked up the code I supposedly had violated; it had nothing to do with surveillance - it simply forbade using your high beams within 1/10 mile of oncoming traffic (and I was about 1/2 mile from the cop when he saw me flash my highbeams).

So I turned the ticket over to my lawyer, and he got it dismissed with no court costs. Good job. $250. Considering my company charges about $1000 a day for my consulting services, I can't really complain.

Or can I? You see, the way I look at it, lawyers decided to write the traffic rules that create the opportunity for revenue-generating speed traps. Other lawyers (or maybe even the same ones) write the rules like the headlight rule that cops distort to punish the behaviors they want to see punished. Other lawyers create the rules that say when and where I (or my lawyer) have to appear to defend myself. Other lawyers sit in judgment. And even when my lawyer gets the charge dismissed (for a fee), the judge has no incentive to go after the real screwup, namely the cop who is issuing citations based on a malignant interpretation of the law.

So, from my perspective, all those lawyers making rules and charging money to bend (or in my case, unbend) them form a racket. I seem to derive very little utility from this system and even less justice.

And this is symptomatic of the legal system at large. Believe it or not, most people manage to go through life without ever looking at the U.S. Code, much less the CFR, even less state and local statutes, most of which aren't even online. Yet lawyers have erected this gigantic edifice of RULES for the rest of us to obey. The process doesn't seem remotely democratic -- it's bureaucratic. And when some lawyer (or cop) alleges we have broken those rules, we have to hire a lawyer to defend us.

And of course, the profession is set up to defend against assaults. Tort reform? Dream on. Lawyers are more than willing to destroy the health care system -- but who among them champions "single-payer legal"? It would seem that the arguments for universal health care apply multiplicatively to the system of justice -- so where are the congressmen who cry "justice is a right, not a privilege!" and "our nation is too wealthy to settle for a two-tiered system of justice!"? Is it any wonder that people are cynical about the legal system, and hold lawyers in low esteem?

But, just as people like their own congressman but hate everyone else's, I like my lawyer. I'll keep him around.

BBB

As for billable showers, does it really matter where your lawyer is when he's thinking about your case, assuming it needs thinking about?

How does it get determined whether my case needed thinking about, or whether his mind wandered unnecessarily onto my case when he's in the shower? Also, if he's in the shower, do I have to pay him to sit there and wonder whether, say, rule A or B applies, when he could just look it up if he was at his desk. As an engineer, I bill clients for thinking pretty often, but I wouldn't think of billing unless I'm sitting at my desk and focused. If I think about their problem while I'm doing something else, that's free. I wonder why lawyers think differently.

Laura:

One of the issues is defining dishonesty and "bald-faced lying" on the part of defence attorneys.

For example, consider the hypothetical guilty defendant who his lawyer believes is probably guilty. Let's say it was a heinous murder of a child (going along with your examples). Let's further say that the evidence against the defendant is somewhat shakey. What is honest or dishonest of the lawyer to do?

Do you think it is better for the defence attorney to let his client fry because he thinks the evidence suggests guilt? Or is it better for him to poke every hole in the evidence he can within the rules?

Let's take this a step further and say the suspect confides in his lawyer that he is guilty of the crime just before closing statements. Is it honest of a defense lawyer to go into closing statements and argue to the jury that the evidence is not strong enough to support a conviction and to imply that he has reasonable doubt that the guy did it even if he knows the guy is guilty?

I don't see any of this as dishonest on the part of a lawyer.

ShelbyC,

I've done a lot of productive thinking in the shower, and never charged a client for it. That said, if it's productive, why not? And if it isn't, why should a client pay more for it just because you're at your desk?

I have generally agreed with Leo Marvin's comments on this thread.

The problem is that people think they know what lawyers do and most lawyers will tell you that what you THINK a lawyer does and what he actually does are two very different things.

einhverfr (mail) (www):
Laura:

One of the issues is defining dishonesty and "bald-faced lying" on the part of defence attorneys.

For example, consider the hypothetical guilty defendant who his lawyer believes is probably guilty. Let's say it was a heinous murder of a child (going along with your examples). Let's further say that the evidence against the defendant is somewhat shakey. What is honest or dishonest of the lawyer to do?

Do you think it is better for the defence attorney to let his client fry because he thinks the evidence suggests guilt? Or is it better for him to poke every hole in the evidence he can within the rules?

If the lawyer believes that the client is probably guilty, but he's not sure, and the evidence is shaky as in witnesses aren't really believable or have strong motivation to lie, then it is the lawyer's job to poke holes in the evidence within the rules.

I'm talking about cases where the lawyer is convinced that the client is a child murderer, and that the client will murder more children given the chance. As noted above, how many times does it happen that a person performs some unthinkable crime and it turns out that he has a long rap sheet? Defense lawyers may view acquittals of clients who are guilty as hell, or ridiculously short sentences, suspensions, probations, as victories; but law-abiding John Q. Public, who doesn't want himself or his family falling prey to these people, doesn't appreciate it.

As I said, if the defendent's civil rights were violated, the lawyer needs to point that out. But I like the rules Leo posted, where the lawyer is prevented from presenting known falsehoods to the court in an attempt to get these people back on the street.

In short, my life provides a series of daily reminders that many lawyers are simply parasites who get rich by bleeding money off of productive citizens.

QFT. It doesn't take "most" of the lawyers, only a significant enough number to count as "many".

If you want to do something about people hating lawyers, do something about the problem lawyers.... which will require doing something about the areas of the law they are exploiting, or you'll just get more of them.

Low-hanging fruit:

* Jury selection. Our jury selection process is ridiculous, such that a skilled lawyer can win the case before a single argument has been made simply by choosing the right jury (and yes, they practically hand-pick the jury in some cases - the OJ case is one high-profile example of ridiculousness).

* Loser Pays. In a civil case, the plaintiff's side almost never gets stuck with the bill, essentially allowing them to inflict significant costs on anybody they feel like, for any reason, at any time. Oddly enough, in many of those cases, it feels like legal theft (or at least major vandalism, as it goes to a DIFFERENT lawyer, but still), and people don't like being screwed like that.

Those two things would help IMMENSELY in reducing the behaviour that makes people hate lawyers so. There are other issues, of course, but they aren't as ridiculously simple as those 2.

I've done a lot of productive thinking in the shower, and never charged a client for it. That said, if it's productive, why not? And if it isn't, why should a client pay more for it just because you're at your desk?

Well, IMHO probably because there's really know transparent way of measuring productive thinking. So we should take kind of a heuristic approach. Any approach that requires a financially interested party to measure time spent in productive thought would be so prone to abuse as to create the type of distrust that this thread is about.

Laura:

I'm talking about cases where the lawyer is convinced that the client is a child murderer, and that the client will murder more children given the chance. As noted above, how many times does it happen that a person performs some unthinkable crime and it turns out that he has a long rap sheet? Defense lawyers may view acquittals of clients who are guilty as hell, or ridiculously short sentences, suspensions, probations, as victories; but law-abiding John Q. Public, who doesn't want himself or his family falling prey to these people, doesn't appreciate it.

So, if a lawyer reasonably believes his client is guilty, he should do as little as possible to prevent conviction?

I find such a statement dangerous to individual liberty in this country.

What to fix it?

Swear EVERYONE in, including the lawyers.

Pound it into the heads of the judges that they are NOT in charge but are servants to the will of the people through the laws the people write. Blackstone taught it, today we forget it. Good behavior means following the law as written not pulling ones "crystal balls" out and playing with them. Constitutions are superior to judges. Judges are subordinate. The subordinate is not lawfully empowered to determine the superior's extent or meaning. If the boss says "Jump!", you ask "How high?"

Keep lawyers out of politics. Lawyers, who maintain membership in the bar, are officers of the court and as such as part of the judicial branch, Serving in either the legislative brnach or executive branch while keeping bar membership violates the core values of separation of powers. If a lawyer wants to be in politics, the lawyer MUST quit the bar.

I'm a nonlawyer who has a reasonable amount of respect for lawyers. However, I think I understand the popular resentment against them.

In addition to the things you mention -- the guild effect and the isolation effect -- which are undoubtedly part of the picture, I'd also add the perception that lawyers put legalism ahead of equity. In other words, the lawyers are more interested in what is legally correct than what is just or fair. This is a bum rap, of course; anyone with a teenager knows that "unfair" describes the speaker's emotional reaction to a situation rather than any objective feature of the situation.

I think the key is educating people on why the procedures and legalisms are necessary. Nifong may actually have done an inadvertent service to us all, by providing an excellent negative example that has been thoroughly dissected in some popular books on the subject.

It would be nice for schoolchildren to get some of this education. Unfortunately, their educators are usually highly clueless about the law. And much of their time is being spent on frivolities.

Now, einhverfr, let me ask you one.

Suppose that a man doesnt't want to be married anymore, comes home one evening, waits till his wife is asleep, strangles her, and then gets up the next morning and goes to work. He is arrested by the police and you are his defense attorney.

"Where were you that evening?" you ask.

"I was at home killing my wife," he says. "But I can get Bo to say I was with him that evening and spent the night at his place. Bo's drunk half the time anyway - if I tell him I was with him he'll think I was. Want me to talk to Bo?"

What do you do?

But if he doesn't urge his client to go talk to Bo, is he not "doing as little as possible"?

I'd like to expand on my previous minimalist comment. The reason it is frustrating for people such as myself (lawyers) when they read comment by people like Laura is the sheer amount of misinformation that gets thrown at you. Because of that, it's very hard to cut through the clutter of the nonsense to get to the common themes on which lawyers and non-lawyers might find common agreement. Laura mentioned, I believe, that she was a Quality Control manager; a similar analogy would be if I started ranting about how all quality control managers were scum because it was their job to lie and let the worse products through because they were paid to poison children. Laura would spend so much time debunking the misinformation that there would be precious little time to actually address any real concerns she might have (and I might share) about Quality Control managers. In order, a few of the biggest issues I have seen:

1. All lawyers are not defense lawyers, heck, all lawyers are not involved in criminal law. And not all civil lawyers are "personal injury" lawyers. Would I start every comment about doctors talking exclusively about, say, plastic surgeons?

2. WRT to defense lawyers, many people have a misperception (shock!). Most aren't "high priced" private ones. Most are overstressed, overworked, idealistic PDs. And most cases aren't won by "clever" defense attorneys excluding evidence and making creative arguments- most cases are settled. Of the cases that go to trial, most times, the "bad guy" loses. In some PD offices, they'll bake a cake or throw a party when the PD so much as *wins a motion to suppress*, let alone an honest-to-goodness trial. Most judges follow the "guilty as hell" rule- if the defendant looks guilty as hell, they'll usually be some way to let the key evidence in.

3. So why do people have these misperceptions about trials? Well, duh, why do you think? Do you hear about, or remember, someone copping a plea? Or a run-of-the-mill conviction? No. But when one bad guy gets off... every media outlet in town will be there to cover it. And it builds up over time. As do the urban legends (how many people with the 20+ crime rapsheets are out there today in all their murderin' glory.... are we talking jaywalking?).

4. Then people (like Laura) have a fundamental misconception about both the adversarial process and the ethical rules lawyers must abide by. This is because our job is somewhat bizarre, and our ethical rules don't precisely map on to "real world" ethical rules- they can be more strict in some areas and more lax in others. But the adversarial process is the main one- the belief is that in our system, the adversarial process is used to uncover the truth. We set up this system with its rules, and when both sides abide by those rules, the truth will be uncovered. You may (or may not) believe this, but it is *our system*. The prosecutor and defense attorney or playing their roles in the system, and were either to abdicate their duty, the system would not work. Many argue that because of various factors, the system is broken, but nothing would be worse than to say that defense attorneys should place themselves as the unilateral judges and determine how much "justice" their clients should get- then a client would have to not only convince the judge/jury (finder of fact) but their own advocate of their innocence? Sounds kafka-esque to me.

5. But these mounds of misperception are widespread, and obscure what I feel are damaging issues. I personally don't like the lawyer advertising I see, and I think it does a disservice to our profession (but thanks to SCOTUS and the 1st, it is what it is). I wish we were a little more like the AMA and had stricter barriers to entry, not from a price-competitive standpoint, but from a quality control standpoint (do we really need all these law schools churning out JDs with little hope of employment?). I wish there was a stronger emphasis on ethics than we currently have in the profession, AND that the emphasis we have was better communicated to the public (I bet Laura and many of the commenters on this thread are not aware that state bars have moral character and fitness requirements, and that we are tested, albeit just the MPRE, on our ethic separately and in addition to the ethics questions we get on our state bar).

But if he doesn't urge his client to go talk to Bo, is he not "doing as little as possible"?


Short answer- no. Lawyers shall not elicit perjury in front of a tribunal. Period. There are some complicated rules that I learned back in law school for a criminal defendant that demands that they testify on their own behalf due to the Constitution (I believe the lawyer has to let him, but cannot ask any questions- testimonial, which is a tip off to the court- if someone more recent criminal experience wants to step in, feel free), but as a general matter, you cannot.

Again, there is a difference between what you understand lawyers to be allowed to do and what they can do. Advocating zealously does not allow you to lie your a$$ off.

Laura:

Suppose that a man doesnt't want to be married anymore, comes home one evening, waits till his wife is asleep, strangles her, and then gets up the next morning and goes to work. He is arrested by the police and you are his defense attorney.

"Where were you that evening?" you ask.

"I was at home killing my wife," he says. "But I can get Bo to say I was with him that evening and spent the night at his place. Bo's drunk half the time anyway - if I tell him I was with him he'll think I was. Want me to talk to Bo?"

What do you do?

Well the lawyer here can do the following things:
1) Try to get evidence thrown out.
2) Try to get the jury to doubt any other evidence allowed in court
3) Tell the jury that the evidence leaves reasonable doubt that the guy is guilty.
4) If the guy is black and the PD has a history of racist statements, state that he might be being railroaded on account of his race, and that the police can't be trusted here. Why, maybe they framed him!

What the lawyer cannot do is:
1) Ask Bo to testify.
2) Ask the accused to testify and ask where he was.

The lawyer can thus offer an extremely vigorous defence aiming to impeach every witness and piece of evidence.

Each of these things that the lawyer can do would be considered dishonest in other contexts after all, he knows his client is guilty and his job is to make sure the jury has some reasonable doubt if possible that this is the case. If this can be done within the rules, great. But it can't be done by soliciting perjury because at that point, there is no basis in fact anymore.

This is why I say one has to be careful about using the word "dishonest" in an adversarial process.

Does your hypothetical PD have a history of racist statements?

Laura:

Accept the idea that it does. Anyway the lawyer (who knows his client is guilty) is playing on other facts to sow doubt as to the guilt in the minds of the jury. At what point do you see bald-faced lying appearing?

When they are asked how they could possibly do anything in their imaginations (read - lie, fabricate or confabulate) to get heinous, patently guilty clients "off", I'm always amused when lawyers pontificate righteously about the nobility of what they do “because everyone is guaranteed a right to legal representation." Yeah, OK, that's true. As it happens, there is another profession in which the practitioners will, for pay, do anything you ask them to do; it is the oldest profession in the world.

In both cases, the professional practitioners are simply, for a price, providing a 'critical' service that fulfills a fundamental need. But in both cases, - and here's the thing - most people are morally unable to do those kinds of things. I guess we can be glad that there exist those who aren't unable, repugnant as that is. But don't, please, be confused about why they garner no respect.

I didn't have time to read all of the comments. One main reason lawyers are held in low esteem is because they use arcane language most of the rest of us don't understand. This makes it seem like they are trying to bamboozle us. Another reason is that lawyers seem to be the proximate cause of the huge amount of laws (and their complexity) that we have to deal with in our lives.

Didn't read the whole thread, but in case this hasn't come up, the (admittedly unsurprising) fact that judges are apparently biased toward the legal profession can't help matters.

Wait, so,there's no need for defendants that "everyone knows" are guilty to have the same defense as other defendants, because not guilty is not the same as "didn't do it"? Therefore, for defendants that we "just know" DID do it, it's a bad thing if anyone defends them, and tries to get the "not guilty." Yeah, that's not a philosophy ripe for abuse.

I'm always amused when lawyers pontificate righteously about the nobility of what they do “because everyone is guaranteed a right to legal representation." Yeah, OK, that's true. As it happens, there is another profession in which the practitioners will, for pay, do anything you ask them to do; it is the oldest profession in the world.

There may be some attorneys who will, for pay, do anything you ask them to do, just as there are some contractors, and some engineers and some chefs, that will, for pay, do anything you ask them to do. But acting like this is a built in part of the job is just plain ignorant. And, as someone pointed out above, believing, because one lawyer will defend you and another will prosecute you, that they are acting inconsistent, well, the logic boggles the mind.

I'm a little surprised by the vehemence with which people seem to hate the law itself. Well, actually, that doesn't surprise me so much as the number of people who believe that gosh, if only there were no lawyers, we wouldn't have any of those pesky laws, and it'd be pink unicorns and puppies all day long.

Linus (mail):
Wait, so,there's no need for defendants that "everyone knows" are guilty to have the same defense as other defendants, because not guilty is not the same as "didn't do it"?

Linus, could you point to a single comment in this entire thread that states what you just said?

4) If the guy is black and the PD has a history of racist statements, state that he might be being railroaded on account of his race, and that the police can't be trusted here. Why, maybe they framed him!

Can't do this? I'm pleased to hear it.

Have written my own post on this from the perspective of an Australian lawyer.