Elizabeth
In your legal practice, you may prefer not to employ legal aides at all. But those among your compebreastors who do, and who then outsource as much of that grunt legal work as possible in order to save money, they will almost certainly outcompete other attorneys who do not embrace the marketplace of the New World.
Engineering as a career. 3966Ahhhhhahahahahaha And, lets see, the kid (how old is he?), makes all his decisions based on reading comic books. You were discussing matrix algebra...
Of course, the trend in the legal trade toward downsourcing has been ongoing for a long time in this country. How much legal work has been outsourced from attorneys to legal aides in the past 50 years? Now it's just going down the ladder one more rung, as well as far far away. The difference now is that one US attorney can do the work of many, if s-he is compebreastive and adaptive enough to beat the compebreastion by undercutting their costs.
I don't know what sort of legal work you do, but it's my impression that 99% of The Law does not require the live hand of a licensed local attorney. That means very little legal work cannot be done by the lowest bidder, where ere they be. What's more, there's nothing to stop Indian attorneys from pbutting the bar in any US state and exporting the work wholesale. Literally.
And if you don't like it, you too can "take it up with the legislatures and administrative agencies."
Lawsuits are but a fraction of the legal system, and IP lawsuits even fewer. IP probably makes up a large portion of any involvement that engineers may have in the law, but that's not my topic; it's yours. I'm denigrating the legal system as a whole, not just its role in adjudicating IP claims.
But again, you gloss over the gist. An attorney's integrity isn't measured merely by whether s-he plays by the rules. It isn't about what's permitted by authorities: what's legal. It's about Justice. Each person are responsible for their actions and their outcomes. No laws, no court, no lawmaking body can take that burden from them.
Every attorney willingly participates in that system. They play the game, knowing its failings, its inequities, and the commonplace lack of character endemic to many-most of its pracbreastioners. Therefore, regardless of how high minded each lawyer may wish to be, they're a member of a profession that demands that it live up to NO ethical standard at all. The standard for behavior among legal pracbreastioners is ONLY whether an action is legal -- *ignoring* their actions or outcomes.
Supposedly the strictures designed into the system will lead to "justice". But when the system never looks back to ask whether justice is being done, and no participant is charged with seeing that justice is done, where is that going to lead? When the system has to choose which among the goals of its purveyors to serve -- justice, power, or profits -- justice is going to lose out almost every time.
Just because we have a legal process does not mean Adam Smith's invisible hand is absent in the courtroom, let me tell you...
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OK. Here are examples of misbehavior or iniquity within the legal system which is condoned, and as such, made integral to its workings.
A few misbehaviors:
- Judicial tolerance for commentary from attorneys in court which is clearly inadmissible, but which once introduced, cannot then be withdrawn from the mind of the jurors, making it admissible, ad hoc. When's the last time you heard of an attorney getting a substantial fine for violating legal practices in order to deliberately misdirect the jury?
Engineering as a career. 3962Randy, You make a few points here and there but for the most part your commentary indicates that you really don't understand the work of a lawyer...
- The fact that DAs are involved in any way in the decision whether convicted defendants deserve reconsideration when new evidence arises (such as exonerating DNA evidence). The fact that a DA can prevent reconsideration is proof positive that the system is not only broken, but that it actively and knowingly perpetuates its mistakes.
A few iniquities:
- The rarity of prosecution for perjury.
- The nutty policy of rewarding the attorneys 35% of the take.
- Punitive damages should *never* be awarded to defendants. They should go to a nonprofit fund that is independent of the interests of the defendant or attorneys.
- The inability (unwillingness?) of the system to dismiss spurious lawsuits early, based on evaluation by subject matter experts.
- The fact that losing plaintiffs are not obliged to pay the defendant's legal fees (as they are in many other countries).
- The fact that the police are paid by the state to prosecute defendants but EQUAL resources are not made available to the defendant to defend himself. Leveling the playing field may tie the system in knots, but there's no question that it's the only way to be fair.
- They jury system is incredibly broken. Few jurors understand their role, how to weigh evidence, much less even what consbreastutes cause and effect, much less proof. To build a system based on the integrity of todays jurors -- retirees, homemakers, the unemployed, or the reluctant businessman -- is hopeless. This is surely NOT a jury of peers. This is NOT the jury system intended by the founding fathers. Until it changes for the better, no other change in the courtroom can compensate.
- The system takes no responsibility for seeking "justice", claiming that the jury will decide that. But as I've just said, that's not going to happen with the present state of American juries. Ergo, there is NO participant in the legal system that serves that end. But justice was the the whole point of the exercise. So what's left if justice is not only blind, but deaf and dumb as well?
- Lawyers make the very laws they use. The wolves guard the hen house.
If that's not enough, I'm sure I can find more flaws in the legal system. Visit the following links if you need more:
So who's best able to fix what's broken in the legal system? Spectators like me? Or pracbreastioners like you? Physician, heal thyself.
Gee, that never would have occurred to me. ;-
Making peace with practices and policies you know to be wrong is exactly what was said and done by every organization that committed every atrocity in history. You're in some very ugly company if your defense is "I was only following orders" or "It's not my job, man." Well it *is* your job. You'll have to find another excuse.
What's worse, attorneys not only follow such orders, but by participating in a system they know to be unjust without trying to reform it, they endorse and perpetuate the status quo. That crosses the line between indulgence and participation. Now the failings in the system *are* their fault. It's their doing.
Pracbreastioners in any discipline are the first line of defense. They're the only ones with the practical knowledge of how to fix what's broken. Whether police, physicians, accountants, or preachers -- if the buck doesn't stop with them, it'll never end.
Is it enough for legal non-participants to accept your advice and hear your paean: "If you don't like what I do, vote against it?" Hell no. That's where our responsibility *begins*. It continues through active opposition to every single legal misdeed, through active denigration of the character of the profession's willing participants, through reminding everyone who cares enough to see. "The Emperor is naked. AND THE JACKbutt THINKS WE DON'T KNOW IT."
Just because you personally didn't make the world in which you choose to live doesn't mean you can avoid responsibility for perpetuating it.
When the system is broken, all cases suffer regardless of their merit. Good cases ones are merely those who manage to survive the melee, whether by good fortune or the application of enough force to the right pain centers. If that's not righteous, then I don't know what's not.
Randy
