Winston Gutkowski wrote:
Stevens Miller wrote:Heh. You're up against a lot more than American jurisprudence when you take that maxim on.
Believe me, it wasn't American in particular; but jurisprudence in general.
I think it's more a matter of human nature.
Our system doesn't guarantee representation so that lawyers can squeeze fees out of defendants who can't handle the law; it exists so defendants can squeeze acquittals out of juries that can't handle innocence.
Hmmm. Sounds like a nice aphorism from your (I mean lawyer) side of the fence;
You can't beat the old parallel structure when trying to sound profound. Here's an excellent example you may recognize:
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender
especially as you are the guys receiving whatever money there is being squeezed.
That depends on where you are. In New Jersey, court-appointed lawyers don't get paid. In New York, they get paid about what a good Java programmer makes with two years' experience.
I don't know what the rules are like in the US, but in Britain you can't even bloody talk to your lawyer in court. So...what? You come in with a pre-ordained script and you sink or swim on that? Sod a lawyer, give me Anthony Hopkins.
Yes, that solicitor/barrister thing has always seemed odd, to me. Our system eliminated that distinction from the start. Later we elminated the distinction between law and equity. We actually have simplified things quite a bit. Meanwhile, Hopkins is a great actor, but even his dramatic skills are no match for the words, "You objection is sustained." And mine usually are.
Sorry, but the whole darn process is far too entrenched for me: Too good at making money for the people involved; too much of a "closed shop"; too couched in Latin; too much about pageantry and procedure; and presided over by someone who is a petit Dieu and almost impossible to remove from office, no matter how incompetent or senile they get.
Would it amaze you to learn that I know businessfolk on Wall Street who have almost these exact same complaints about the programmers who write code for their trading systems? They think we deliberately keep it all to ourselves, using needless jargon and confuse and mislead them, while we annoint our own priests and demi-gods (network admins and DBAs, we call them), while creating fiefdoms no one else can comprehend, just so we can hold onto our jobs long after we have become otherwise obsolete.
A lot of this perception would seem to depend upon who is on the outside, looking in, and who is inside, trying to keep the others out.
You'll forgive me. It's simplistic; but I'll bet I'm not the only person who feels that way about our system of "justice".
I certainly will, and you certainly aren't. And I'm not really trying to defend anyone's system. I am saying that improving it while simplifying it isn't as easy it might seem.
And just as a piece of evidence to back my claim: I bought an apartment in Scotland back in 2000 and was sent the title document (at least I think it was; I wouldn't stake my life on it) - 11 tightly-spaced A4 pages of legalese; 4 (yes, four) sentences.
FWIW, at my law school (New York Law), they made quite a point of emphasizing that, if you can't write in plain English, you can't prove what it is that you think your words are saying. Of course, one could, again, point out that some code is just as dense and impenetrable as some title documents. Does that make it bad code? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the alternatives available.
C'mon, tell me you aren't (or weren't) in it for the dosh.
In what? Computer programming? Yup, that was easy money. I went to law school so I could get into policy. Worked pretty well and I've done some interesting cases. Alas, it worked so well that I got elected to local government in 2007. Finished my four-year term and, at the end, I was dead broke, kind of like I was when I finished law school, fifteen years earlier. I'm trying to claw my way back into the computer field so I can catch up on some of what I and the missus have foregone during what were supposed to be my peak earning years.
Mind you, I'm not asking for a medal or any sympathy. I made my own choices and I knew the costs involved when I made them. And I do still get some benefits out of being a lawyer. For example, when the furnace in our new house wouldn't light that first winter, and the builder jerked me around for weeks and weeks until it got so cold I was worried for my wife and myself at night, I simply sent a letter saying that, if a new furnace weren't installed in five days, I would buy a new one from someone else, document all costs, and take them to court for the total amount incurred. I signed it with my name and Virginia state bar ID number. Gee, funny thing about what happened three days later. (When the roof--still under warranty--started leaking two years after that, and they again jerked me around for weeks and weeks, I just backspaced over "furnace" in that letter, typed in "roof," and sent it again; I believe you know what happened next.)
No, I was never in it for the money. I mostly went to law school to prove that computer geeks can do anything that other professionals can do, if we set our minds to it. (Guy I went to law school with, who was a police officer at the time, has since become a doctor, partly for similar reasons. I believe he's broke too. Lesson in that, somewhere, eh?)