What do lawyers do?

When I started handling a business, I had stumbled upon several problems dealing with our accounting firm (big 4). I caught several mistakes the people they assigned to our account made (such as including VAT in an six figure invoice that was exempted in a particular case. It almost seems they were working for the revenue service). Worse, once they made a mistake registering a new employee for social security, then sent us a recourse document to sign that stated that we made that mistake. It was classless and unprofessional as they either should have owned that in the document or used the passive voice. Our questions went unanswered. We ended up firing them.

When we were looking for a new accountant (another big 4), I made a document with questions that served to interview the lawyer, and all the issues served to draw up the contract and service agreement.

I used to see one to two emails per day from the first accounting firm. Our accounting is basic. One enterprise client. One invoice per month. Few employees. Social security cheque every quarter. Taxes every month. Salary bank transfer every month. Nothing fancy, but somehow the first firm managed to screw this up so badly it ended becoming a massive cognitive load.

> 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 doesn't have that yet - they have millennia of history in being the centre of civilisation but not in how the current legal system should be applied under the governance of the sweaty masses of voting Indians.

India is going to be more politically dynamic than the US at the moment because it is bigger and its ability to direct itself democratically is a bit younger. So judges are going to be harder to predict regardless of how strong the rule of law is - there is effectively less data even assuming a perfect rule of law.

His lawyer advised him not to end sentences.

In the U.S.

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, will be more honest and fair when interacting with the judge.