Yeah, there's no harm done, you just cause your clients to lose their money or their freedom. There is no physical harm, the physical harm might have been done by the defendants, by what do you care if the clients don't recover as long as you get your jollies? All jolly good fun.
All law is bullshit anyway, there is no real knowledge
or skill involved, just "pretensions of professional
speech and manner,
> employing wikipedia and
> half-remembered old episodes of Night Court" are
enough to do what lawyers do. And naturally law
professors impart no actual information or skill, just
teach student how to bullshit in the appropriately
impressive manner. The biggest scams are the big law
firms who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to
associates when after all any glib talking scamster in
a suit could do what they do.
FYI the not-a-lawyer guy in Chicago had completed all but one course of a University of Michigan law degree. Lacking that course, I think it was professional responsibility (legal ethics) he did not graduate.
People did use to practice without going to law school, but they apprenticed themselves to practicing lawyers for years and had to be admitted to the bar.
--- Jim Straub <rustbeltjacobin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Of all the crimes I hope one day to commit,
> "Practicing Law Without A
> License" sounds perhaps the most fun and jovial. A
> real Falstaff's con. I
> mean, pretending to be a doctor or a nurse, that's
> no fun, you just wind up
> harming random people physically. But procuring a
> nice suit, adopting the
> pretensions of professional speech and manner,
> employing wikipedia and
> half-remembered old episodes of Night Court to get
> one through faking a
> couple months worth of motions filed and briefs
> cribbed, before arousing
> more and more suspicions and eventually having to
> excuse oneself from the
> legal profession out your firms bathroom window one
> day when you overhear
> the partners calling the law school you listed
> yourself summa cum laude just
> to check up on that strange new fellow... oh to have
> never gotten into
> politics, and just become a con artist...
>
> In the O Where Art Though Brother movie, the great
> understated punchline of
> the movie in the end is that the george clooney
> character was convicted, not
> of the serious crimes he claimed, but rather of
> practicing law without a
> license. Just cast such an awesome low-grade sleazy
> shadow over him in all
> his mustachioed dapper dan glory.
>
> It's funny because, I've lately been considering
> trying to get a free ride
> at a college somewhere, and find myself wanting to
> study something thats
> potentially socially useful that I couldn't learn on
> my own. My brain is
> definitely too feeble for the straight-up hard
> sciences, but a degree in
> history or literature seems like nothing I couldn't
> learn without a library
> card and more free time. So the field of study I am
> interested in is
> economics. Maybe Doug could tell us what its like
> to be an official student
> of the dismal science.
>
>
>
> >
> > No, a real crasher is like the guy who notoriously
> got
> > a job here in Shytown maybe 12-15 years ago as an
> > associate at a big law firm, did fine, no one
> > questioned his competence, then it somehow emerged
> > that he had never graduated law school or passed
> the
> > bar. He was Not A Lawyer. Obviously he was fired
> and
> > will never BE a lawyer.
> >
> > This incident was partly memorialized in Scott
> Turow's
> > Personal Injuries, facts changed for reasons of
> the
> > story, which was blended with a fictionalized
> account
> > of Operation Greylord, the feds' early 80s attack
> on
> > crooked judges in the Cook County Circuit Court, a
> > prosecution in which Turow played an important
> > supporting role as an ASUA.
> >
> > Simply being the "wrong kind of person" to get
> into a
> > "good law school" or a big firm of whatever is not
> > crashing if you do finish law school and pass the
> bar.
> > Then you are a lawyer and legally entitled to
> > victimize the weak and helpless, oops, I didn't
> say
> > that. But as a prof at 4th tier law school I am
> > concerned to get the Wrong Kind of Students (who
> > graduate law school and pass the bar) into those
> sorts
> > of places.
> >
> > Btw, I don't believe that giving right wing
> answers
> > helps a bit. Associates and many partners at big
> > firms, especially in Chicago, are more likely than
> not
> > to be liberal Democrats. One May First some years
> go
> > while working at Jones Day, I was riding the
> elevator
> > up with a partner, and I said to her, Happy Law
> Day.
> > Or, if you prefer, Happy May Day. I prefer May
> Day,
> > she said.
> >
> > And law professors DEFINITELY tend to be liberal
> to
> > mildly leftish (not hard left, so I have to be
> well
> > behaved -- I'm too left, or if I'm not I don't
> want to
> > find out) as a group, unless you area applying to
> > George Mason (yikes) Ave Maria or Regent's School
> of
> > Law. Even at U of C law profs are reasonably
> likely to
> > be liberals, and the conservatives are are too
> smart
> > to be buffaloed by ideological smoke. I send Ian's
> > post on a Marxist analysis of law firm life to a
> well
> > known right wing instructor at U of C LS with whom
> I
> > am friendly, and he said it was "spot on," totally
> > persuasive.
> >
> > I didn't see conservative bias in the LSATs, but
> it
> > has been some time since I took them.
> >
> > --- Andy F <andy274 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On 3/26/07, Tayssir John Gabbour
> > > <tayssir.john at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Here are the examples of "crashers,"
> > > non-professionals who
> > > > successfully posed as having credentials:
> > >
> > > I haven't gotten back to the book yet, but at
> least
> > > from what you
> > > posted they sounded like people who just were
> > > skilled without having
> > > credentials. That doesn't prevent them from
> having
> > > the right
> > > professional attitude/ideology (maybe the ex-con
> > > lawyer was
> > > different). In fact, if they didn't exhibit
> that
> > > sort of outlook they
> > > probably would have had their credentials
> examined
> > > more closely and
> > > been uncovered sooner. People with faked
> > > credentials don't do well by
> > > sticking out.
> > >
> > > By comparison, consider the experience of my
> > > well-credentialed (AFAIK)
> > > environmental lawyer friend: for coaching for
> the
> > > LSATs he went to a
> > > fellow who specializes in getting the Wrong Kind
> of
> > > People into law
> > > school. He explained that one session went
> like,
> > > "NO! You're
> > > thinking like [some famous leftist attorney].
> > > Think! How would
> > > George Will answer that?" That's a crasher
> > > schooling crashers.
> > > (Apologies to Andie.)
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Andy
> > > ___________________________________
> > >
> >
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
> > 8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time
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> > http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 9
> > Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 19:53:29 -0700 (PDT)
> > From: andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
>
=== message truncated ===>
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