How Low Will The Lawyers Go?

[Growltigger]

Well Geo old chap, I am slightly incorrect in my statement that 90% of the world's lawyers are American. In fact, I believe the figure is closer to 92%.

I would not have the temerity to say that practically all of the objectionable offences commited by lawyers are done so by American lawyers, as that would be arrogance, and would not take into account that the other legal systems of the World do have their own right royal cock-ups. Human rights cases in quite a lot of the Eastern hemisphere spring to mind.

That being said, the matters being complained of here, eg sueing the fast food industry for making people fat, sueing the video game industry for causing people to be violent (a nice one in a country that let's people freely have automatic and assualt weaponry!!), are particular to the US legal system.

But, this is not a pure American forum. So any generic statement that lawyers are the scum of the earth and the lowest of the low, by its very necessity is a remark which equally applies to lawyers from all the other countries represented here on the forum, England, Germany, Australia etc., and that is what I dislike.

I am fed up with being tarred with the same brush which is applied to what I can only describe as misconceived spurious money grabbing claims brought by profiteering types which unfortunately, make regular headlines in the US.

Let's look at what the majority of lawyers throughout the world do. You can split them into two generic types, corporate lawyers and private lawyers. This is further split into contentious and non-contentious work.

Non contentious Corporate lawyers deal with companies, whether it be employment, pensions, corporate, mergers and acquisition advice or whatever. We deal with corporates, we act for corporates in doing things that corporates do. I am not aware of too many headline cases where non contentious corporate lawyers have shocked the world with the daftness of what they are doing.

Non contentious private lawyers deal with people. When you buy your house, when you get divorced, when you want to make a will etc basically, when you have problems, you turn to these people to help you. Keep in mind that for most people, they only deal with lawyers when there are problems in their lives, so it is fair to say (and I accept) that we get tarnished with being only around when the fecal matter hits the rotary air impeller.

Now, we turn to contentious lawyers. These are the litigators, which make up a sizable chunk of the American legal fraternity (I believe more as a percentage than other jurisdictions). These are your contingent fee chappies, these are the people who sue McDonalds cos their food makes you fat, these are the people who sue hospitals cos they didnt test you for Growltigga's dribbling backside syndrome.

Contentious lawyers are everywhere, but the cases which make the headlines are those in the US. And this is not because the US has more legal cases per capita than anywhere else, it doesnt. They make the headlines for 2 reasons - (1) the US legal system allows claims like this, which pretty much any other jurisdiction would chuck out for abuse of process and (2) the jury based system of damages means the awards granted in US courts are, by comparison with the rest of the world, absolutely unbeleivable (I remember one case where a neighbour reversed his car over the foot of his neighbour, and broke two of his toes - that neighbour was awarded $950,000 in damages - where the hell is the justification in that, how do you prove that injury is worth that amount?)

I resent being associated with that.

Fine, in your opinion I may be being unduly sensitive, but I dont think so. Perhaps Atrocites should have entitled this thread "How low will lawyers in the US go" - that would be more accurate.

The same would apply if I started a post saying "are all people employed in IT a bunch of dreming overpaid tosspots?" - I would be insulting everybody in the industry, and not just the people say on the help desk at Microsoft who I really meant. A defence of saying "Hey, we are mainly Americans so therefore we only mean America is a bit egocentrical" in my opinion, unless this thread is only meant to be for Americans and the rest of us dont have an invite.

I do beleive in reasonableness, and yes, it can strongly be argued that since Atrocities is a US citizen, he is only talking about US lawyers, but it is dangerous to leverage generic statements such as "lawyers are scumbags" on the back of that interpretation.

Finally, I wouldn't dream comment on whether or not the majority of Americans are basically uneducated about life and circumstances out the US. I haven't really met enough to know whether this is a fair statement or not. Some certainly are, but then so are a lot of British who wont go abroad because of the greasy food, funny people and heathen language. I do not think America has a monopoly on introverted types.