Lawyers are nice people.

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Lawyers are nice people.

No seriously. I've heard the million jokes, how one hundred lawyers on the bottom of the sea is a good start and all that jazz. It's a grandiose approach, this, wherein four drunk teenagers driving a stolen car into a parked train blame the train. And obviously hire about five dozen wrongful death lawyers and personal injury attorneys to go after the unfortunate owner of the train that got in the way.

But it's really not the train's fault, and if you walk around and manage to step on a rake, it's neither the rake nor your shoes that are to blame. Dogs show about the same depth of understanding, in that if you squirt water in their face, they tend to blame the sudden rain.

And so people blame lawyers. If Joe starts a habit of going out drinking every night and coming home every morning covered in puke, six months down the road he won't be telling you about what an asshole he is. No, you'll hear all about how all lawyers are scum, especially if they call themselves attorney, or even worse attorney at law, and of all the bad evil lawyers and attorneys out there, the absolute worst are divorce lawyers and family law attorneys, and out of those, the absolute most heinous is the one unfortunate lawyer he hired.

Joe the drunk is an upstanding citizen and Republican voter, but Bill the lawyer is an absolute monster. Just like the drunk felonious teenagers are an shining example of the future of this here country, but the bad evil trains are getting in the way. By being parked. On tracks.

Do you know who's responsible for the broken glass, the bent fenders, the dislodged electricity poles, the remodeled drive-through ? That's right, the DUI lawyer. He did it all. He made the driver drink, he made the drunk drive, the lawyer did it all.

Just go through any prison you feel like. Half the people there will tell you, it's their lawyer that put them there. Crime is entirely the fault of criminal lawyers. You see, sometimes the police are particularly incompetent, or the prosecution manned by absolute lunatics, and a reasonably smart trial lawyer manages to get an otherwise solid case dismissed. That, then is the standard in the mind of each and every last two bit criminal.

Never mind that it doesn't happen every day the forensic lab accidentally drops the evidence in the New York harbor. Never mind that most prosecutors manage to go through life without visibly and provably breaking the law. Never mind that God himself would need to get pretty lucky to manage to dismiss a criminal case that already produced indictments.

Never mind all that. Some criminal lawyers get lucky occasionally, and therefore, being sent to prison is the lawyer's fault. It has nothing to do with the accused breaking the law in the first place, and even less to do with the accused being stupid enough to leave documentation behind. No, none of that. It's the lawyer's fault.

To further compound the problem, there is no such thing as "legal" in the United States. Yes, you've read that right. There's no such thing.

First, there's the question of whether legislation exists or not. If legislation does exist, then whether federal law is in disagreement with state law, also whether federal law is in disagreement with older federal law, and state law in disagreement with older state law.

Second, is there case law and precedent of interpretation, on one hand in federal court, on the other in state court. Also are there appellate and supreme court comments, interpretations and rulings.

Third, there's whether it's specifically regulated or not by some agency, which is irrespective of the legal issues above. If specifically regulated, whether those regulations are actually enforced.

All this comes from that darling American way, whereas if a kid isn't smart enough to be a lawyer, we can only hope and pray he becomes a Senator so as to not completely shame the family. Whenever the people using the tools are smarter than the people making the tools, there will be no standard tools. Everybody will fix the ones they use as best they can, resulting in a complete hodge-podge or unrecognizable bits and pieces.

In fact, things have gotten so bad in this field that if you assemble seven professionals, no six of them could guess aforehand what tools would the seventh use to go about any definite case. How's that for a mess ? Imagine if no six plumbers could tell you what a 7th plumber would be using to unclog a toilet ? Of course you'd have to pay people a bundle to work in that shit.

Some people occasionally get the rare privilege of forcing "authorities" to the point, under the terms of "make your fucking mind up", if those people happen to be willing to expend the money (in the millions) and the time (in the decades). These determinations are known as "fighting" for the idea/case etc. The problem with them is they are only good for the respective people and their respective case. They may say something, or may not say anything at all about another, different case, and that's the problem with them.

Because of that arrangement, nothing is legal or illegal in the United States. There exists no such thing as "legal". You can make reasonable guesses on the subject, as persay "Killing people is illegal", but really, you're just guessing. Killing people is for instance perfectly legal if the killed was either inflicting or convincingly threatening death or bodily harm. If you shoot the guy that just shot the policeman, killing people is suddenly not illegal.

On the other hand, the very deeply rooted doctrine of personal responsibility puts lawyers in a position where, if they say something to their client that's not true, they're liable. Lawyers don't want to be liable, so then they avoid saying anything that could come back and bite them in the ass.

To Joe this seems very suspicious shifty behaviour. Why not be a man and out with it ? Then again, as far as Joe is concerned, if it did come bite him in the ass, he'd just blame the lawyer. Or the Santa Anna winds, or the time of the month. Who's the lawyer gonna blame ?

By rights, he should blame you.

14 lawyers can't believe anyone actually gets it.

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this page was made using a bent spoon. anything else is for failures