Middle class guy gets busted for DUI, spends the night in the drunk tank and is hauled before the municipal magistrate for morning call, complains about having to stay overnight with people who are throwing up all over themselves. "Don't complain to me," snarls the judge, "every morning I have to come down here and talk to the scum of the earth, And then I have to talk to their clients."
Yeah, there are a lot of legal-related activities you don't need a lawyer for, and most of them, people don't _use_ a lawyer for. Virtually every state has form real estate and rental contracts (but you really should read them), etc. Most disputes are resolved, amicably or otherwise, by the people involved -- calling in a lawyer is really going nuclear. And the law, like every profession, is self-aggrandizing, seeking to profit from requiring lawyers where they're not really needed. Amicable divorces, Doug's example. As I have repeatedly said, lots of lawyers are sleazy or greedy or lazy, just like everybody else. What did you expect? That going to law school immunizes you against the usual temptations in a capitalist society or repairs human frailty?
All that said, the points I made about the need in a complex society for rules that require specialized interpretation and a group of specialized interpreters remain valid. Moreover, this is especially true in the society we have, which is in the US untypically litigious, and with the rules we have, whether or not concocted by lawyers for their private benefit. And btw I think that a lot of the excessively complicated rules we have, even if drafted in part by lawyers, are done so at the behest of corporate clients for _their_ benefit; the lawyers just get the incidental benefit of getting paid for drafting them. Which isn't an excuse but a reason to think that it's not really lawyers that re the problem.
Mostly lawyers are not powerful predators like the senior partners in large law firms -- even in those firms associates and non-share partners are just powerless grunts like everyone else, even if they are well paid. Most lawyers are small-to-medium business people or mid-level government employees who don't get paid particularly well and are just folks doing their job. I mean like 98% of lawyers fall in the category, if not more. And some lawyers are peoples lawyers who, whether pro bono or on contingency fight the good fight and defend the powerless and poor against the powerful and rich.
And sometimes you really need us -- as I said, if you get sued for real money, if you have a real tort claim against, e.g., a malpractcing doctor or polluting corporation or you lose your job because of your race or sex or are beaten up by the cops, or if you attract the attention of the criminal justice system.
OK, that's my piece, go on hating us if you will.
A postscript. The Milberg Weiss indictment is very interesting and rather suspicious. I have no idea whether MW is guilty, but it is the biggest plaintiff's-side securities shop in the biz. What they do is use the class action system to recover against really rampant securities. Most securities fraud cases are worthless and MW brings its share of those, less than others, because it's their money and they're damn good. But I can't help wondering whether this indictment isn't of a piece with tort reform and other corporate attacks on people's rights, sort of like the Lynn Stewart prosecution in the criminal realm. With MW, I'm going to presume they are innocent just like we're supposed to and let the gov't prove its case if it can.
The Constitution now. Doug likes to follow Dab Lazare about how undemocratic the document is and how the founders were a bunch of a rich slobs who designed it that way to keep their wealth and power. The later part is substantially true, and they said as much in the Federalist Papers, though it's also true they hoped to establish a prosperous Republic, which was a considerable advance on the usual conception of government in those days. Be that as it may, I'm not much of an originalist in Constitutional interpretation, nor have the courts really followed that approach, despite grumblings from Justices Scalia and Thomas.
The "undemocratic" part, though, is a different mater. Doug and Dan seem to equate democracy with simple majority rule without any real justification for this highly controversial idea. There's a good argument to be made, see e.g., John Hart Ely's Democracy and Distrust, that to avoid the tyranny of the majority, a phenomenon Doug ignores, you need constraints on majority rule to make sure that there is democracy, and that anti-majoritarianism can be democratic if put in the service of democratic inclusion and anti-discrimination. The 14th and 15th Amendments were anti-majoritarian; the incorporation of most of the Bill of Rights to apply to the states and its application on its face to the federal government itself is antimajoritarian, and I think that promotes democracy. So I'd like to hear from Doug and other fans of simple majoritarianism what's wrong with that. Or the separation of powers or limited government or the ex post facto clause, . . . . but anyway, with the Bill of Rights and the 14th and 15th Amendment, and why they think democracy means simple majoritarianism.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com