> Their job is to represent their client and bring about the best case possible
To be clear, the current issue is not that they do or don't believe the case on its merits, but that they don't believe they have enough time to push the best case possible.
A lawyer's job is ultimately to present the strongest case that they are able. If the strongest case they are able to present is not very strong I guess they're in trouble.
> Law firms are expected to represent people accused of the very worst crimes in order to promote a just outcome.
We're entitled to an attorney when defending ourselves from criminal prosecution, but where does it say we're entitled to legal counsel at any other time?
At the end of the day Law Firms are businesses, and again these are just businesses protecting their own self interests.
If they end up needing legal counsel for a criminal trial they'll receive it. Otherwise they can just grab a phonebook and start calling ambulance chasers until they find one who will meet their other legal needs.
> This may explain why lawyers are motivated to stir things up, rather than settle them. They're motivated by the wrong metric
Most lawyers I know have many clients and are swamped with work. They have little incentive to "stir things up". It's similar with accountants and plumbers in my city. They aren't trying to make more work for themselves because they already have their hands full.
But in regional markets where supply isn't so constrained relative to demand then, sure, there's an incentive to make-work once you've wrangled a client, just as with any other profession.
> and most of them interact with the public, who can override their expert opinions.
Does the law office receptionist get to tell a lawyer which pieces of evidence should be brought to trial, and which shouldn't? What are the parameters and limits around 'managing' attorneys? I worked in a couple law offices (office stuff and deliveries) and while there was some 'management', it was generally 'top down', and had to do with billable time and court deadlines. Coordination between lawyers to help each other or work on a specific case together happened, but even then the deadlines were generally based on external dates, and were generally not company-imposed ("gotta get all these items done by Q3 for the Q4 launch!")
> Lawyers get paid, and are legally bound, to faithfully represent the interests of their clients, so they make the best argument they can towards that goal.
In this context that is often the cause of a very serious inequity. The government has lawyers funded by the taxpayers arguing for the government's position against the public, but no taxpayer-funded lawyers are provided to represent the public against the government. Predictably the public interest then gets the short end of the stick in any case where there are no well-heeled private interests willing to pick up the tab.
> The best case is that lawyers feel the pinch, because that’s maybe the only way we’re ever going to see real legislation to protect people in this area.
Probably not; while lots of legislators (and lobbyists) were trained as lawyers, protecting the jobs of people who actually practice law isn't really something that shows any evidence of being a priority in that class; in fact, a large majority of them spend much of their time railing against practicing lawyers as a class.
Unless the political and electoral calculus forces them to adopt protections (to which the threat to practicing lawyers is pretty much irrelevant), don't expect any action.
> A lawyer has every incentive to take a case on contingency, in the hopes that a few of them will strike gold. In doing so, the lawyer is incentivized to never turn down a case, no matter how frivolous.
No, they are more selective about taking on contingency cases. Every losing contingency case is hours of unpaid work.
> why not fold it all in the legal counsel's office?
That would not help because an in-house lawyer represents the company and a lawyer can’t represent both sides in a dispute. In other words, company lawyers can’t represent a complainant in a dispute against their corporate clients.
By contrast, HR are not lawyers so HR can pretend to be on the complainant’s side.
> An attorney is called upon at the birth of an organization and then, later, when it is sick or dying. Two or three times a month like clockwork I would sign up a new client in the throes of a software warranty dispute; I would usually find out that the deliverables had been ill-defined, that there was a mismatch of expectations between the parties, and that the warranties and the conditions of acceptance had not been specified.
This is an apropos description of what a litigator does. They're there when the optimism and hype if a project "to be" gives way to the cold hard reality if a project as it "turned out." I imagine many people find this depressing.
That said, its really fun in its own way. My wife is a bankruptcy attorney, and loves this aspect of her practice. Bankruptcy practice is all about expectations meeting reality. The $40 billion EFH bankruptcy winding its way through the courts was a bet on gas prices going up that hit the reality of fracking driving up supply. Its fun, in its own way, to try and clean up the resulting mess. If I had my way, I'd only ever take cases where things had gone really sideways.
To be clear, the current issue is not that they do or don't believe the case on its merits, but that they don't believe they have enough time to push the best case possible.
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