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What do lawyers do?

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Re: What do lawyers do?

#41

Post by short_sells_poo »

gunfighthacksaw wrote: post #35
pixl97 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sometimes judicial controversies spring up in the US. I think you are massively understating the instability the SCOTUS has presented in the past few weeks by overturning existing case law.

The repeal of Roe v Wade was a gut punch for me, but I’ve known it was entirely possible for quite a long time. Plus some states have had trigger laws forever so that’s hardly surprising. Yes, there will be instability, but it’s not the chaotic out-of-the-blue kind, unless you’re wilfully ignorant of the anti abortion movement, or extremely naive to the motivations of that bloc.

As a slight tangent since you seem to be knowledgeable: what is the motivation of the anti abortion bloc? I feel that godliness and a true care for life yet unborn is not it, because the bloc does not exhibit these qualities in many other areas...

Re: What do lawyers do?

#42

Post by AlbertCory »

elSidCampeador wrote: post #33
AlbertCory wrote: post #10

One story about India. I didn't go there for the patent case I was on, too bad (I'm not Indian, so please pardon and correct my ignorance if you are). They have barristers and solicitors, like the UK. The barrister is the one who goes to court for you. What I found interesting is, you meet your barrister for about half an hour before he goes to court. That's the extent of your contact with him. His main job is to kno…

Oh no India did away with the solicitor - barrister distinction. There's only one category now - advocates. So you'll find people who will use the title ``solicitor'' to describe themselves and the work they do, which is akin to what UK solicitors do - but every lawyer in India can go officially go to court and fight cases. The solicitor types are mostly seen in specialised fields like patents and revenue law, and th…

Great, thanks. This was indeed a patent case.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#43

Post by mlyle »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #41
gunfighthacksaw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The repeal of Roe v Wade was a gut punch for me, but I’ve known it was entirely possible for quite a long time. Plus some states have had trigger laws forever so that’s hardly surprising. Yes, there will be instability, but it’s not the chaotic out-of-the-blue kind, unless you’re wilfully ignorant of the anti abortion movement, or extremely naive to the motivations of that bloc.

As a slight tangent since you seem to be knowledgeable: what is the motivation of the anti abortion bloc? I feel that godliness and a true care for life yet unborn is not it, because the bloc does not exhibit these qualities in many other areas...

Eh, I do think it's being repulsed at the idea of killin' babies.

Combined with not weighting the value of the choices of women or the impact on them or their bodies very high.

Look, uh, abortion is kinda a yucky thing. There's not some bright-line moment of change and investiture with consciousness and being that happens at the moment of birth. It's only when you decide the choices and bodily autonomy of the adult woman is more important than the potential of the life growing in her that you can support abortion.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#44

Post by mypastself »

Interesting viewpoint. Never thought of lawyering as essentially professionals contending with their own predictions of a judge’s behavior, but it makes sense.

> Law is an impressionistic business, much less scientific than macroeconomics or inflation management

It must be pretty unscientific if it’s worse than those.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#45

Post by pm90 »

gunfighthacksaw wrote: post #35
pixl97 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sometimes judicial controversies spring up in the US. I think you are massively understating the instability the SCOTUS has presented in the past few weeks by overturning existing case law.

The repeal of Roe v Wade was a gut punch for me, but I’ve known it was entirely possible for quite a long time. Plus some states have had trigger laws forever so that’s hardly surprising. Yes, there will be instability, but it’s not the chaotic out-of-the-blue kind, unless you’re wilfully ignorant of the anti abortion movement, or extremely naive to the motivations of that bloc.

If you read the opinions they’re not very convincing. They’re making up principles to adhere to which did not exist before, and doing this for things that have broad support in the US population.

So it is quite chaotic out of the blue kind. Essentially the Judges are ruling by decree and will strike down any law that’s not explicitly enumerated in the constitution (and even there they will certainly weaken the law as we saw with Roe v Wade).

Re: What do lawyers do?

#46

Post by pigtailgirl »

berberous wrote: post #7
pigtailgirl wrote: post #3

-- having been through a fair share of business lawyers over the years - i've finally figured out what I like about the guy I settled on - risk assumption & mitigation - my lawyer explains the risks of different approaches - as well as the potential costs - many lawyers I've used in the past are expensive & cause a lot of issues - I'm not a lawyer - I understand business law at a basic level - if my lawyer says: do i…

Do you have some sort of personal dislike for the period?

-- our quake/ut clan used a double dash at the start & end of msg's on forums & irc back in the day - don't recall why our clan leader came up with it - we already had a -[nick|tag]- - either way it stuck with me - the middle dashes mostly because I think they are marginally easier to read - when I write my notes with a dash to separate the thoughts - i've found it's a bit quicker to skim through - happy to change if you find it annoying --

Re: What do lawyers do?

#47

Post by skybrian »

pixl97 wrote: post #29
roenxi wrote: post #14

> In societies somewhere in between, with a flawed rule of law, like India, these predictions are impossibly hard to make. I think this is overselling the stability of the judicial process in the UK, US and other countries with a strong grounding in the rule of law. Without getting to political, sometimes judicial controversies spring up in the US. The issue is there are centuries of norms to fall back on. India does…

> sometimes judicial controversies spring up in the US. I think you are massively understating the instability the SCOTUS has presented in the past few weeks by overturning existing case law.

Yes, that has added to the instability, but most court cases are unlike the ones that go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#48

Post by Sharlin »

groestl wrote: post #23
AlbertCory wrote: post #10

One story about India. I didn't go there for the patent case I was on, too bad (I'm not Indian, so please pardon and correct my ignorance if you are). They have barristers and solicitors, like the UK. The barrister is the one who goes to court for you. What I found interesting is, you meet your barrister for about half an hour before he goes to court. That's the extent of your contact with him. His main job is to kno…

I've witnessed that, in Ireland though, which has a similar system. On a very technical case. The barrister failed to set up WIFI in the meeting room 60 min before going to the court, not even reading the error messages. Which scared me, but then he proceeded to explain the most complicated details in front of the judge. I was stunned.

Goes to show that theoretical knowledge doesn't nearly always correlate well (or at all) with practical skill, and vice versa.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#49

Post by AlbertCory »

johndhi wrote: post #20
voisin wrote: post #4

What do barristers do. The author seems to skip the entire solicitor component of the legal profession.

I'm a USA lawyer so not hyper familiar (we have no such distinction here) but a barrister is licensed to put on a funny hat or wig and actually speak to/interact with a judge. If you're only a solicitor (you can be both) I believe you're limited to interacting with your client and describing the law for them. I believe this distinction exists on the premise that barristers, being more independent from their clients,…

See the comment on my post -- apparently in India, any lawyer can go to court. But some just choose not to.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#50

Post by throwaway5752 »

jrm4 wrote: post #38

Great analysis. Even though we see the warts all of the time, I'm so incredibly impressed by "law," and I didn't get to this point until I was well out of law school. Why I'm impressed is how well the law holds itself together in the face of the massive weight of influences that have every reason in the world to try to corrupt it. It's just all too easy to speculate (or read historically) how easy it is to corrupt th…

Great point. The difficult thing, on this forum, is it is weighted towards younger and very accomplished computer scientists. Sometimes the impulse, when seeing complexity that's hard to understand (medicine, regulation, law), is to be frustrated and dismiss it. Law is amazing and much older than programming, and one of the underrated human inventions. The fact we aren't constantly killing each other over small disputes is amazing when you really consider it.
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