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What do lawyers do?

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Re: What do lawyers do?

#71

Post by quacked »

Hendrikto wrote: post #26
quacked wrote: post #22

I believe Law is one of the fundamental industries of civilization, along with Textiles, War, Food, Medicine, and Shelter. Without a way for disputes to be settled in a (theoretically) predictable and well-documented manner, the other "fundamental industries" will suffer output and availability problems.

> […] Law is one of the fundamental industries of civilization, along with Textiles, War, Food, Medicine, and Shelter. I think Entertainment is missing from that list.

Entertainment doesn't need to be an industry, that will happen naturally among peers unless it's artificially restricted.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#72

Post by quacked »

notriddle wrote: post #70
formerkrogemp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot entertainment and accounting.

Also forgot midwifing, babysitting, and education. No professional lives forever, so a civilization must constantly grow and train replacements.

Midwifing is medicine, babysitting is not an industry, and formal education was invented in the 1800s. People have been capable of educating each other and watching children without full-time school for thousands of years, it's only recently that westerners completely forgot how to do it.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#73

Post by AlbertCory »

Sharlin wrote: post #48
groestl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're assuming the barrister doesn't have theoretical knowledge, which I can tell you from experience is not true. Good lawyers have an incredible ability to grasp the theoretical underpinnings of almost anything very, very quickly.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#74

Post by thesausageking »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #55

“I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one.” ― Voltaire Where US civil litigation (disputes) are concerned, a good lawyer looks to end the dispute before the cost of litigation approaches the value of the dispute. Once might argue the feature and bug of US tort law is the litigation becomes a third party in the case, against whom both sides must fight, hopefully finding a commo…

A great lawyer can also cause the other side to spend a ton of money responding discovery requests and motions. In fact, a common strategy is to get the other side's legal bill to be so high they eventually give up.

I've seen this kill multiple startups who end up in disputes with large tech companies. Even if the startup is 100% in the right, the large co can tie them up in a lawsuit for years and VCs won't back a startup actively involved in a lawsuit, so the startup runs out of money before the case is ever decided.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#75

Post by johannes1234321 »

skybrian wrote: post #47
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.

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

True, few cases go there, but the recent decision means, that there is no such thing as "settled law" anymore. The Supreme Court may change its oppiin on any thing, thus on lower courts it's harder to say "see, there was that decision, we follow it" but there is more freedom to derive from it.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#76

Post by dcow »

mlyle wrote: post #43
short_sells_poo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

I have no religious affiliation beyond accepting others’ religions (I’m not atheist because ultimately atheism is overly restrictive in its worldview) and agree that abortion is way more nuanced than what modern feminists present. Personally, I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum at different points in my life. I believe I am now somewhere in the middle and the reasons are not in any way religious. They’re based on my lived experience more-so than high school ethics. But man the amount that people want to reduce this to “fuck religion” is really annoying. No one wants to admit it’s a yucky issue.

Re: What do lawyers do?

#78

Post by [deleted] »

giantg2 wrote: post #63
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…

My experience is that the system is rife with incompetence and convenient inconsistencies.

[deleted]

Re: What do lawyers do?

#80

Post by ABCLAW »

thesausageking wrote: post #74
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #55

“I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one.” ― Voltaire Where US civil litigation (disputes) are concerned, a good lawyer looks to end the dispute before the cost of litigation approaches the value of the dispute. Once might argue the feature and bug of US tort law is the litigation becomes a third party in the case, against whom both sides must fight, hopefully finding a commo…

A great lawyer can also cause the other side to spend a ton of money responding discovery requests and motions. In fact, a common strategy is to get the other side's legal bill to be so high they eventually give up. I've seen this kill multiple startups who end up in disputes with large tech companies. Even if the startup is 100% in the right, the large co can tie them up in a lawsuit for years and VCs won't back a s…

This isn't a "great lawyer" play . It's the standard play for any unscrupulous party engaged against a party with limited funds.

Even if a case is pretty open and shut, you can tie it up for years in motions for little benefit. This isn't hard at all.It's hard to be on the other side and respond to it.

A great lawyer can achieve a settlement against a party like this without the need to throw sacks of cash onto a firepit.

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