"The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift" • Hacker News Board

Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"

#41

Post by etherael » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 12:42 PM UTC

jgfoot wrote: post #39

etherael wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's an interesting segue to this is that fundamentally the "language understanding" issues are mostly red herrings. The gold standard within the legal profession we are constantly led to believe is to pursue a standard of objective fairness and justice which would be better defined by deterministic, logical languages like programming languages rather than fuzzy, broad languages like English. It is far, far easier…

Although there are some laws that can kind of be represented as computer code (for example, TurboTax captures a good portion of the tax code, and programming a 55 mph speed limit into a car shouldn't be hard) for the most part the law acts as a system for delegating to judges limited authority to exercise discretion. Ultimately, the decisions are made through that discretion, and they aren't entirely predictable. If…

I'll give it a look in, but yes, my general opinion is that discretion leads to subjectivity and unfairness. Unfortunately the attempts to reduce discretion have historically resulted in malicious arbitrariness, sentencing teenagers to sex offender status for sexting, silly three strikes laws ad et al. At the same time it seems to me that a more richly detailed granular objective system with oversight into the actual code to any interested parties with a clear and concise method for changing that code would be a far superior approach than either of the previously mentioned extremes.

Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"

#42

Post by gaustin » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 12:57 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #40

noonespecial wrote: post #9

“The biggest problem,” says Ury, “is that ordinary citizens cannot afford to hire a lawyer. The bread and butter of small firm practices are criminal defense work, wills and trusts, leases, closings and divorces. Yet in Connecticut, 80 to 85 percent of divorces have a self-represented party because most families can’t afford to hire one lawyer, let alone two. Nearly 90 percent of criminal cases are self-represented o…

""Why did anyone ever do so in the first place?" might be closer." I'm interpreting this as "why would we need lawyers, we did fine without them", but that is very untrue. In the past there simply was much less rule of law, with the cronyism and systemic state of fear of citizens that follows from it; as is still the case in most of the Third World and especially in places like China and Russia. But to a lesser degre…

I think what was intended was "Why did anyone ever hire us for $500/hour in the first place?"

I'm not the author of the post, so I'm not authoritative but that would be my reading.

Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"

#43

Post by VanL » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:01 PM UTC

sunchild wrote: post #21

wooUK wrote: post #11

I've spent the past 10 years working in global corporate law firms as a software developer and have witnessed this change first hand. The legal profession is based around chargeable hours. This is not a good deal for the consumer of legal services. Billing by the hour does not encourage lawyers to work more efficiently or effectively, in fact it rewards the opposite. Recently larger clients have started to stand up t…

Based on your experience, I'd love to chat with you offline. My law firm (together with another firm in London) is building software for deal lawyers. If you're interested in meeting, you can reach me via the email address on my firm's page: http://yusonirvine.com/ If nothing else, I'd like to introduce you to my UK counterparts.

Interesting - I would be interested in chatting with you too. I am a lawyer at a Big law firm. One of the things that I have been doing (which clients love) is writing software to automate or enhance parts of what I do.

Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"

#44

Post by a3camero » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:02 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #8

chopsueyar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would allowing non-JD degree holders to take the bar help?

Yes, but the legal profession has incredible sway and power, so that won't happen. It would absolutely be possible for someone to specialize in just a single specific kind of law, become very knowledgeable about it, and make normal skilled professional money in the $25 to $75 per hour range. This is prohibited by regulation and licensing which amounts to a huge windfall for the legal profession. But it's unlikely to…

The thing you're talking about is actually done already by embedding non-lawyers in legal groups or having non-lawyers on payroll at law firms.

Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"

#45

Post by a3camero » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:05 PM UTC

etherael wrote: post #41

jgfoot wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although there are some laws that can kind of be represented as computer code (for example, TurboTax captures a good portion of the tax code, and programming a 55 mph speed limit into a car shouldn't be hard) for the most part the law acts as a system for delegating to judges limited authority to exercise discretion. Ultimately, the decisions are made through that discretion, and they aren't entirely predictable. If…

I'll give it a look in, but yes, my general opinion is that discretion leads to subjectivity and unfairness. Unfortunately the attempts to reduce discretion have historically resulted in malicious arbitrariness, sentencing teenagers to sex offender status for sexting, silly three strikes laws ad et al. At the same time it seems to me that a more richly detailed granular objective system with oversight into the actual…

You might want to look into the civil code system of law. It might appeal to you more than the English-derived system that I suspect you live under. Check out the Quebec Civil Code: http://www2.publicationsduquebec.gouv.qc.ca/dynamicSearch/te... (ignore the bizarre English translations of some concepts...).

Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"

#46

Post by a3camero » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:09 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #34

I am waiting for the day when there are laywers in single practice who charge rates of less than $100/hr like many other professionals do. I know some laywers who are complaining about tough times but they still think they are worth $250/hr.

To play devil's lawyer: lawyers have very high fixed costs due to insurance + bar fees. In Ontario they're about $6k a year. Database subscriptions are also very pricey. The expenses are considerably higher than that associated with programming.

Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"

#47

Post by sethg » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:10 PM UTC

jgfoot wrote: post #39

etherael wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's an interesting segue to this is that fundamentally the "language understanding" issues are mostly red herrings. The gold standard within the legal profession we are constantly led to believe is to pursue a standard of objective fairness and justice which would be better defined by deterministic, logical languages like programming languages rather than fuzzy, broad languages like English. It is far, far easier…

Although there are some laws that can kind of be represented as computer code (for example, TurboTax captures a good portion of the tax code, and programming a 55 mph speed limit into a car shouldn't be hard) for the most part the law acts as a system for delegating to judges limited authority to exercise discretion. Ultimately, the decisions are made through that discretion, and they aren't entirely predictable. If…

How much of this is a characteristic of law, in general, and how much of this is a characteristic of the English common-law tradition?

In a civil-law system where laws and regulations are more minutely detailed, and judges have less discretion, would law-as-computer code be more feasible?

Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"

#48

Post by scythe » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:12 PM UTC

etherael wrote: post #32

ph0rque wrote: post #10

What would be really nice is if law was machine-readable (and interpretable). But that would probably require computers being able to understand language.

What's an interesting segue to this is that fundamentally the "language understanding" issues are mostly red herrings. The gold standard within the legal profession we are constantly led to believe is to pursue a standard of objective fairness and justice which would be better defined by deterministic, logical languages like programming languages rather than fuzzy, broad languages like English. It is far, far easier…

>a standard of objective fairness and justice which would be better defined by deterministic, logical languages like programming languages rather than fuzzy, broad languages like English.

Can you formally define concepts and events occurring in a "fuzzy, broad" world in a useful way? It is kind of amusing to imagine that someone out there is sitting around with a recursively-enumerable objective statement of what constitutes fairness.

Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"

#49

Post by etherael » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:14 PM UTC

a3camero wrote: post #45

etherael wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give it a look in, but yes, my general opinion is that discretion leads to subjectivity and unfairness. Unfortunately the attempts to reduce discretion have historically resulted in malicious arbitrariness, sentencing teenagers to sex offender status for sexting, silly three strikes laws ad et al. At the same time it seems to me that a more richly detailed granular objective system with oversight into the actual…

You might want to look into the civil code system of law. It might appeal to you more than the English-derived system that I suspect you live under. Check out the Quebec Civil Code: http://www2.publicationsduquebec.gouv.qc.ca/dynamicSearch/te... (ignore the bizarre English translations of some concepts...).

You are correct, I currently live under a common law derived system, and my research into actually translating a legal system to code has led me to believe that the best place to start would be a civil law based system, though I had been mostly looking into scandinavian countries prior to this link. Thanks for that, just to be clear though, is civil code specific to Quebec or is it all of Canada on a civil law derived system? If it's Quebec only I'm guessing my grasp of English isn't much going to help me but if it's all of Canada I'm thinking this could be a much better starting point than the Scandinavian systems as I don't speak any of those languages fluently.

Re: "The legal profession is undergoing a massive structural shift"

#50

Post by geebee » Wed, Jun 29, 2011, 1:14 PM UTC

swampthing wrote: post #20

noonespecial wrote: post #9

“The biggest problem,” says Ury, “is that ordinary citizens cannot afford to hire a lawyer. The bread and butter of small firm practices are criminal defense work, wills and trusts, leases, closings and divorces. Yet in Connecticut, 80 to 85 percent of divorces have a self-represented party because most families can’t afford to hire one lawyer, let alone two. Nearly 90 percent of criminal cases are self-represented o…

I hope you don't take this as a flippant comment, because it isn't meant to be, but the answer to your latter question is - it's what the market bears (or did bear). There's plenty of lawyers out there - but, like in programming, there are a lot fewer good ones. In general, people are willing to pay $500 / hour because they can't find one of similar quality for a lower price.

One huge difference is that the practice of law is still controlled by a professional association that many people feel behaves like a cartel. Anyone is free to read an online python book, install mysql, and hang out a shingle as a web programmer. In my opinion, that's a really good thing.

There's a lot of disagreement around "scope" - some people are actually opposed to almost any restriction of practice, even in areas like medicine and law. Other people want to see similar associations/cartels (depending on your point of view) set up for software development. There's also a big middle ground, people who do see a justification for credentialing and licensing in some cases, but who think that the scope of what requires a license has expanded far beyond what was reasonable and needed to protect the public. I tend to fall in the middle group, but with a high degree of suspicion of cartels.

There's also some funny business on the demand side for law. America's truly byzantine tax code, for instance, provides lots of employment for $500/hr lawyers. Imagine if programmers could mandate that all code had to be written in the most bloated enterprise java possible, and had to be written by people with three year graduate degrees from programs largely inaccessible to international students. This would include many tasks that could otherwise have been handled by smart people with no degree who read the book. Anyone who didn't comply could be prevented by legal force from practicing, or even sent to prison. Now you'd have something comparable to the legal profession.