"
If the market for legal services were deregulated, practitioners would quickly figure out the optimal kind and duration of training for them to succeed in business. It isn’t the years of law school classes (almost all of which is quickly forgotten) that make one competent, but instead the need to build your reputation through good service."
"In short, the licensing regulations in the legal profession don’t protect the public, but merely raise the cost of services, doing the most harm to those who can least afford to pay." (
read the whole thing)
Would deregulation lower legal fees... what are your thoughts?
31 comments:
Would deregulation lower legal fees... what are your thoughts?
It would absolutely lower costs and bring more legal representation to the poor. The same would hold true for medicine. Why shouldn't Mexican doctors and lawyers be allowed to practice here in the future without cumbersome accreditation?
This is exactly what we did to science and engineering already to encourage foreign competition because we needed more science and engineering. If we need more healthcare, open the doors.
One of the most important rules of life is stay as far the hell away from lawyers as you can, particularly when you are poor.
Once you are entrapped in the legal and/or judicial system, you are truly screwed. You will be cleaned out financially.
The trick, if you are poor, is to do everything you can to avoid needing a lawyer.
ST is right and that advice applies whether you are rich or poor. Litigation will eat your soul.
If you are sued, and insured, or an agent of an insured, insurance and/or the principal pays for your attorney. If you feel the need to sue, you might get a free attorney if your circumstances (e.g., black woman detained by police) fit the needs of an ambulance chaser who will take the case on contingency. There are a lot of statutes that provide for attorneys' fees. So, for example, suddenly landlord-tenant cases are big money for attorneys and tenants with a grievance, any grievance, can work that situation to (their attorney's) financial advantage.
Big companies and big grievances can roll the dice and hire lawyers. They've got the money to gamble.
So the very poor and the very rich are generally well served but the people in the middle, as usual, get screwed by regulation.
There are many aspects of the practice of law that non-lawyers could do much more cheaply than lawyers. In California, you can hire a paralegal to do prepare legal documents for you (that's the one concession so far and the state severely prosecutes unlicensed law practice).
Most of the legal issues we encounter in our individual lives could be resolved with a few forms. The problem comes when someone hires an attorney. For example, do you want to go up against, or hire a non-lawyer to go up against, your ex's lawyer? No, right? If you're going to shell out, you want to maximize your chances. Also, the law is byzantine so you save money hiring an experienced attorney who is familiar with it and not someone who is starting from scratch even at a lower hourly rate.
Law firms hire paralegals to do everything short of taking a deposition and trying a case. And bill them out at $60-150/hour and up. Might as well hire an attorney at those rates.
You can always represent yourself. This rarely goes well, even if you are smart. I have a number of sad stories about pro se litigants. Just go down to your local small claims court. It's pitiful in there. People do not know how to answer a direct question, much less ask one. They're unused to listening or hearing an opposing point of view and engaging in reasoned debate. Things get emotional quick; that's the usual response.
It's not even necessarily a question of being smart and hardworking. Most people are simply unused to direct, in your face, confrontation and disagreement, and don't know how to present themselves and frame their case in a compelling manner.
I'm just talking this out. I'm an attorney but I'm also very open to a free marketplace.
I was given good advice and was fortunate enough to be able to afford to hire a great lawyer when I went through my divorce.
Ultimately I lost half my net worth, but all things considered, it could have been worse - I might still be married!
But seriously folks, over the years I have learned that it's not how much money you have, it's how much money the government or opposing counsel can prove you have. Hold your cards close to your chest. Keep your friends close and your money closer.
How are lawyers regulated? They're all over the TV inviting people to call them to sue anyone, anytime and for no fees pending a win. Personally I think they should be heavily regulated and then we should kill them anyway.
Lawyering and the law is a strange world of work. I don't know any other profession where regardless of how well you do your job or how experienced you are, the outcome is entirely up in the air, not because the competition might be just as good, but because in the end the rules and values are mostly smoke and mirrors of kafkaesque ephemeral dice rolling. This is mostly the fault of judges who ignore the law whenever following it interferes with their personal emotional or self-image needs. Many many cases are obviously in need of immediate throwing out, and the lawyers and plaintiffs need to have their peewees whacked with small wet and resilient stick. Whether or not you prevail should be primarily how much your side of the facts is inline with the law, but it seems to me it's more dependent on the personalities of the lawyers and judge you happen to get stuck with.
High End, Low End.
Who would get each?
---
What I would recommend is this: If someone can pass the bar exam in a particular state, whether or not that someone went to law school ought to be if not irrelevant, then at least a secondary consideration.
It would absolutely lower costs and bring more legal representation to the poor.
Are you sure that this is true? If you are sure, explicate how and why.
I don't know any other profession where regardless of how well you do your job or how experienced you are, the outcome is entirely up in the air, not because the competition might be just as good, but because in the end the rules and values are mostly smoke and mirrors of kafkaesque ephemeral dice rolling.
You don't? [know + etc]
I find that shocking.
Not to mention entirely unbelievable, unless you're willing to disavow great chunks of stuff you've avowed for previously.
The TV/movie stereotype of the courtroom litigator is what the vast majority of people conceptualize when they imagine what the vast majority of lawyers actually do for a living.
There's an evolutionary explanation, probably.
The answer probably isn't too far away from the ubiquity of the rescue fantasy.
When a cat kneads the instep of your foot, it's duplicating what it did as a kitten to its mother's belly, which enables the delivery of milk.
We were all kittens once.
Explains a lot.
I don't accept your premise.
Shakespeare really did want to kill all the lawyers.
You see his wife's lawyer threatened to bankrupt him if he got divorced so he could marry Gwyneth Paltrow
On the other hand you could argue that the lawyer did him a big favor.
You make the call.
Some people are just completely untrustworthy and just fucked up. Like Chris Christie.
He is the head of the Republican Governors Association and he refused to spend a dime on Rob Astorino who is running in New York against Andy Cuomo.
You see Christie says he can't win so he will do nothing to help him even though Cuomo took a big hit in the primary and is under federal investigation.
Even if he thinks that is true it is not something you say and trumpet in the media. He is not a loyal Republican and no loyal Republican should support him.
I absolutely agree that Chris Christie absolutely [repeating that word is not accidental, btw] should not be heading up the Republican Governors Association.
I also agree that no head of a national party group ought be supporting (tacitly or otherwise, de facto or otherwise) the candidacy for a state's executive leadership by or of a member of a different party.
I agree, and I am being specific.
I think that while leadership as a skill is an important thing, leadership as a sense of entitlement and a license to demand "follow[er]ship" is bullshit. I do think that, as always I have, from the start and unto this very day.
---
It's highly unlikely that will ever change.
I also despise bullying of all types, especially when great groups of folks think that's all OK.
*shrug*
I am "old school" with regard to bullying, by the way, which is why I recognize true bullying when I see it.
I see it.
"Bully" is what Teddy Roosevelt used to shout when somebody did something good or manly like ride a bronco or shoot a Cuban or something.
It is a shame how people have stolen that word and corrupted it.
It's like the word gay. It meant something totally different when Fred Flintstone had a "gay old time." But that was caveman times so I digress.
Chris Christie does in fact most resemble Fred Flintstone out of all cartoon characters of the 1960's.
Scott Walker looks most like Top Cat.
Sort of slick and sedated in some way.
Neither one of them finished college.
Hillary is of course a dead ringer for Elmer J Fudd.
They have identical ankles.
Joe Biden has never been seen in the same room with Bullwinkle J Moose. Just sayn'
Of course Obams is Wylie J Coyote.
With the same success ratio.
Meep meep!
Trooper York said...
"Bully" is what Teddy Roosevelt used to shout when somebody did something good or manly like ride a bronco or shoot a Cuban or something.
I played Teddy Brewster in a high school play "Arsenic and Old Lace." "Bully" was my big line. At least it was a speaking part.
Trooper York said...
Joe Biden has never been seen in the same room with Bullwinkle J Moose. Just sayn'
Valerie Jarrett is Natasha from that same show. Have you ever heard her speak? She has Russian accent.
Are you sure that this is true? If you are sure, explicate how and why.
Because in addition to setting "standards" for lawyers and dosctors, bars and boards are also guild memberships -- one purpose of which is to control supply in an otherwise "free" marketplace. The economics should be self-explanitory.
Trooper: I must say, in all honesty, you just made me laugh out loud akin to the way you made me honestly laugh out loud often from the start, back in the day, which thing both then and now I appreciate. I do.
---
Still, you and I both know that such as I will never be embraced by you and yours. That, too, has been true from the start.
---
Bless your heart, and all best to you and yours.
--
chickelit:
O.K., whatever: *shrug*
chickelit:
If you truly think that Jarrett=Natasha, what that tells me is that you have neither an understanding of Natasha (which really doesn't matter) nor Valerie Jarrett (which truly does matter).
---
I suggest you try again.
Post a Comment