>As for lawyers, they are no more or less prone to use straw
>arguments than anyone else.
You just get paid better for it!
Really, Justin, don't you see that most nonlawyers see lawyers as holding to "a strategic view of the truth" (as a former editor of a celebrity left intellectual once said of said intellectual)? That truth is what you can prove? Granted there are other professions that do that - advertising and PR, Enron's accountants. And all of us do that to some degree - teachers, writers, pipefitters, seamstresses, farmers. But it's not quite so prominent a part of the job description. A lot of people think there's something unseemly about being so nakedly an opinion for hire. Why do you think there are all those lawyer jokes?
Doug