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New proposal on reorganization

Okay, everyone, several months ago I proposed splitting up this huge article. Now the result is an even bigger mess! We have massive redundancy and confusion across numerous articles, including: Admission to the bar, Attorney at Law, Education of Lawyers in the United States, Law school, Bar association, Juris Doctor, etc. Over time this mess is only going to become totally unmanageable (see the pigpen of an article on Divorce for an example of what I mean).

I believe the better solution may be to consolidate numerous articles together (probably Attorney at Law and Education of Lawyers in the United States) into a single Lawyers in the United States article. Redundancy could be taken care with a "See [article title] for more information on [subject]."

Also, the Lawyer article should probably be reorganized into large sections written in very general terms with specific clauses indicating country-specific practices. Then instead of large country-specific subsections, we should have a clause saying: "For more information on lawyers in specific countries, see:" and then links to "Lawyers in the United Kingdom," "Lawyers in the United States," etc.

What does everyone think? --Coolcaesar 09:21, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad to see that I have some support on this issue. Unfortunately, I'm too busy again at the moment to directly tackle the problem of cleaning up this huge mess (I've been busy dealing with a smaller but equally troubling mess at Freeway and Expressway). I'll get around to it sooner or later, I think.--Coolcaesar 18:50, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay, everyone, I think I will be trying to take care of this during the first week of January 2006 (if I have the time). I am thinking about creating a general Lawyers in the United States article with a lot of existing articles (like Juris Doctor, bar association, law school, etc.) as "subarticles" linked from short summaries in the main article. If anyone has any objections, let's here them. --Coolcaesar 00:04, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, go for it. AndyJones 09:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
I have an objection. I would like to see the training and expertise of lawyers in the USA compared to the training and expertise of lawyers in other countries. For example, I have been reading the section on barristers. Apparently, the UK has a better system than we do. Based only on what I read in Wikipedia, a trial conducted by barristers would be of much higher standard than one conducted by American lawyers. Also, again just from reading the little that is written on Wikipedia, apparently a trial in most other advanced countries would be of a higher standard than an American trial. LegalEagle1798 18:48, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

"higher standard?" What does that mean and where do you get that? As an American trial lawyer...I'm curious.Gator (talk) 18:50, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Apparently from reading the Wikipedia article on barristers, the standard for being a barrister practicing in a court room is higher than the standard for an American lawyer practicing in a court room. Again from Wikipedia,in the UK there are barristers and solicitors. These two groups together perform the analogous functions that lawyers do in America. Barristers are held to a higher standard than solicitors since they actually represent people in the court room.
This implies a higher standard in the court room, because if we took all the lawyers in America and only allowed the top 10-20% of them to practice in the court room(for example IQ tests could be given to determine the top 10-20%), we would immediately have higher standards in our court rooms.LegalEagle1798 19:59, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Followed you up until your logic leap ("This implies a higher standard in the court room") you're asuming and that's not logical. This: "Apparently, the UK has a better system than we do. Based only on what I read in Wikipedia, a trial conducted by barristers would be of much higher standard than one conducted by American lawyers. Also, again just from reading the little that is written on Wikipedia, apparently a trial in most other advanced countries would be of a higher standard than an American trial." Is entitrely unsupported POV and I take offense. Just ebcause someone has to junmp through more hoops to get into a courtroom in the UK or elsewhere does not automatically mean or imply that the trails are conducted to a higher standard. Please.Gator (talk) 20:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Agreeing with Gator, let me tell you about jumping through hoops. In order to practice law in the U.S., first you have to maintain high academic performance while getting a bachelor's degree and score well on a tricky test called the LSAT; then you must be admitted to law school, where you have about a one in four chance of flunking out in your first year, where you will be subjected to a nonstop academic schedule of reading cases, writing briefs that get torn apart by legal writing profs, being subjected to the socratic method by experts on the intricacies of the basics of law, and finishing each semester with a battery of three and four hour essay exams which require mastery of the field of law and the ability to do sharp analysis under pressure. And that's just the first year of a three year program which will also require you to write substantial (80+ page) seminar papers, compete in oral arguments before community lawyers, and volunteer 30 hours of your time in pro bono legal services. If you make it through those steps, you'll get a J.D., but still will not be licensed to practice law - then you need to study for the bar exam, a two or three day ordeal of twelve or more hours of testing on both universal common law and federal law topics, and on the intricacies of the laws of whichever state you are taking the exam in. About a quarter of exam-takers fail the bar, and are denied the ability to practice. There's also a separate ethics exam (the MPRE) which you take another week. So, assuming you've gotten into law school, put in the arduous three years and come out with a J.D., taken and passed the bar exam and the MPRE, now you get to go argue court cases - unless you get a good paying job with a major firm, in which case you'll be stuck in the file room doing research and writing memos and briefs for three years before you get to see the inside of a courtroom. By the way, you have to take yet another exam if you want to be admitted to practice in a federal court, and on top of all of the above, you have to do a certain number of hours of Continuing legal education credits every year to stay abreast of the law, or you'll lose the license you have. And, if you have a serious ethical breach (like spending your client's money without permission), you'll be disbarred. So, you go get a law degree and pass the bar exam, and get to a point where you can argue a case in court, and then tell me about jumping through hoops to get to that point. bd2412 T 20:20, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

The same argument can be made for any other graduate degree, but certainly since lawyers can do so much damage to the lives of people and to society they must be held to a higher standard. The only way to raise standards is to set the bar higher and cull the herd. LegalEagle1798 07:46, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

For example: I can run a legal systemt hat requires all lawyers to go to school for 12 years and pass numerous exams, but if there is no proper enforcement of ethics, continuing education and the courtroom procedure is uncivilized chaotic and there is no sense of justice in my legal system then no matter how qualified my lawyers may be my trials are gonna be crap. So you can't assume that trials conducted elsewhere are better based on simply one or a fe factors that requires a great deal of in depth analysis and some serious POV, one of which you are not doing and one of which you are.Gator (talk) 20:08, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Now I know for sure that LegalEagle is not a lawyer, and is probably not a mature adult. The last time I was as ignorant as LegalEagle about the legal system was when I was nine years old (right before I started reading through the World Book Encyclopedia).
The vast majority of American cases today are won or lost on the quality of the written pretrial motions, not oral argument to a judge or a jury! That's taught the first week in first-year Lawyering Skills! Oral argument is mostly a formality. In many states, like here in California, the court system is so overburdened that they have rules under which the court releases a tentative ruling on a motion the day before the hearing is scheduled, and then oral argument happens only if the loser specifically demands it. Also, more than 90% of civil cases are terminated in settlements. Indeed, both federal and state courts require parties to participate in mandatory settlement conferences with the judge before they can get to a trial.
Also, LegalEagle is an idiot to assume that IQ correlates to oral speaking ability or to assume that the ability to persuade a jury is all there is to being a good lawyer. There are many fine "paper" lawyers who write beautifully but are terrible when it comes to arguing on their feet to a jury, and there are many fine trial lawyers who can talk a jury into believing anything but are terrible at basic litigation tactics, motion drafting, and law firm management. I, for one, am not going to take anything else this idiot says seriously. --Coolcaesar 20:12, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Where is the evidence of raised standards???

I want to see evidence of raised standards. I think the bar is very low, and this is based on the very subjective observation that there are hordes of bad lawyers. But further on the damage lawyers are doing to society in all areas of the law.

  • See, e.g. "State bar officials in a number of other states -- most recently New York on Sept. 24 -- also have decided or are considering whether to make bar examinations more difficult to pass."[1] Where is the evidence of hordes of bad lawyers, or of the damage lawyers are doing to society? That's what politicians may be telling you to divert attention from the real problems of society, but I haven't seen it. bd2412 T 18:28, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

The strongest evidence of harm that lawyers do to society may come George W Bush's remarks on lawyers and the fact that he twice won the presidency for one. Further evidence will be provided in the appropriate sections of these articles hopefully despite your fevered efforts to sanitize these pages.

Using your source there is no evidence of raised standards. If anything those raised standards will come in the future. Please revert back to my last edits as what now stands is incorrect. Please someone tell me how this is resolved as this article does not clearly articulate the lawyer problem.

  • I happen to know for a fact that bar standards were raised in Florida, because I recently took (and passed) the Florida bar. But bar standards are just the tip of it, state bar associations are denying admission to applicants based on their past histories[2][3], a restriction that is not placed on members of other professions. Anyway, Bush has given plenty of praise to lawyers as well - when that's the audience he's in front of - and the fact that he twice won the presidency has nothing to do with whether lawyers are good or bad, unless you're assuming that the voters didn't care about taxes or abortion. Please do some actual research on the topic before you parrot someone else's invective towards lawyers. bd2412 T 00:59, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I happen to know for a fact that bar standards are low because the lawyer that lives down the street is an idiot. Of course, this type of reasoning is fallacious and it is humorous that you use it in the very same sentence where you are bragging about passing the bar and defending lawyer standards.

The fact is that the public perception of lawyers has continued to degrade, and you have provided very poor evidence of raised standards. Politicians are targeting lawyers because the public does not like lawyers. It is probable that most members of the public do not like lawyers because of unpleasant experiences that many individual members of the public have had with lawyers. It is for Wikipedia to ascertain more scientifically why the public dislikes lawyers. Instead of supplying rebuttals to the criticisms, the apologists for the lawyers are deleting or altering criticism to suit their own dogma. The practice of deleting and altering criticism is amply documented on this discussion page. This practice does not represent all views fairly and without bias. The American public’s disdain for lawyers is a major issue. LegalEagle1798 01:11, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Public perception and actual performance of lawyers are two different things. Please do not confuse or conflate the two. Also, correlation does not equal causation, something every intelligent child learns in eighth grade science (at least in California's high-quality suburban middle schools). Last time I checked, the consensus was that the public does not like lawyers because politicians and the media do not like lawyers because of the things that bad lawyers like Richard Nixon did (I am referring to Watergate). Furthermore, the tort reform lobby has made attacking the public image of lawyers a major part of their platform. Before you parrot their propaganda, read the works by major scholars on the public perception of lawyers like Richard Abel and Jerold Auerbach (which are available at nearly all well-funded public libraries).
Also, it is obvious that you are probably not a lawyer, and you have probably never dealt with the full range of legal professionals and the quality of their work product. If you had, you would realize that non-law-trained people make a lot of dumb errors. They confuse e.g. and i.e., they cite cases to the wrong reporter and year, they cite cases and statutes for rules that do not exist, they cite cases and statutes that do not exist, they do not conform their papers to basic formatting rules (margins, fonts, and so on) and basic rules of spelling and grammar, and so on and so forth. Plus they make a lot of tactical and strategic errors which one learns to avoid only through painful experience.
Finally, would you really like to live in a country where lawyers and the rule of law are not taken seriously, like China or Russia? I'm referring to the majority of countries in the world where if you are hurt in a car crash or by a defective product, and you sue the responsible party, the defendant could simply bribe the government to have you arrested and shot for the crime of revealing "state secrets." And they could ensure your lawyer meets the same fate too (as has happened on numerous occasions). Which is one reason lawyers are quite rare in those countries.
So, that is why dispute resolution professionals are a necessary evil in a civilized society. Or as the old bumper sticker used to say: America, love it or leave it. --Coolcaesar 17:54, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Criticism section

I think that this article needs a "criticism of lawyers" section, and should mention problems and concerns about excessive litigation, twisting the law, Critical Legal Studies and so on. Lawyers sometimes have a very bad name (law prof Jack Balkin apologizes to prostitutes for the indignity of being compared to lawyers), and I think that both sides should be able to address this issue in the article. Before add anything, I wanted to make sure there was consensus or at least assent to do so. Thoughts? Dave (talk) 23:46, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I used to be opposed to a criticism of lawyers section. But I was just reading Lawrence Friedman's History of American Law in the 20th Century this week (see the edit I recently made to the Nevada article). Friedman has a very nice section analyzing the poor public reputation of American lawyers and the huge variety of lawyer jokes. I guess if America's foremost living legal historian feels necessary to discuss why American lawyers are so poorly perceived, Wikipedia may as well discuss it too. But to maintain Wikipedia's neutrality, we should limit the discussion to paraphrases of the points expressed in neutral works by academics like Friedman. --Coolcaesar 03:06, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Are you saying that the Jack Balkin article I linked to is out of bounds, or just making a general statement? He's clearly qualified to write on the subject. [4] I'm not saying we have to quote him calling lawyers "whores," but the argument that legal interpretations can justify a lot of bad stuff should be included, and I think we would be doing a disservice to the reader if we didn't point out that lawyers were on both sides of a lot of important social issues, including ones we now consider to be crucial for human rights. Dave (talk) 03:26, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm saying the article is out of bounds because it's a blog posting. Blogs are inherently unreliable. Wikipedia policy is to use reliable sources when available, and there are already lots of formally published works on the negative public perception of lawyers. But you're right, the argument should be included. --Coolcaesar 20:13, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
As I noted above, Balkin is a Yale Law professor, and while his article wasn't reviewed before he published it online, he's still eminently qualified to talk about his profession. Dave (talk) 00:29, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, it's not the lack of peer review or his academic qualifications that's the issue, it's the reliability and seriousness of blog postings. The advantage of documents published on paper is that more thought and work goes into them because once it's out there you can't take it back. It's basically the online equivalent of a diary or thinking out loud. Again, I don't see Balkin as saying anything more than what's been said in a more refined form in many paper publications. --Coolcaesar 23:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
If you find something better, you can swap it in. Dave (talk) 00:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Still working on reorganization

Progress update for everyone: I got Richard Abel's comprehensive books on Lawyers in Society and Lawyers in America out of the public library to prepare for a full rewrite of this article as well as the drafting of Lawyers in the United States. Abel's books are a fun read, but it's also a lot of information to digest (for example, the incredibly messy situation with jurists in France). I hope that in a few days I will have absorbed enough to start drafting at a subpage of the talk page.

At this point, I think that there are enough general similarities between what lawyers do across the common law and civil law worlds to not have to bifurcate the article as it currently is. Rather, I will be structuring the article around "What lawyers do," "Lawyer regulation," etc., written in terms of very broad generalizations with appropriate digressions to cover the weird exceptions.

For example, one similarity I've noticed is the tendency of federal states like Switzerland, Canada, and the U.S. to regulate lawyers through integrated bar associations (or equivalents) at the state/provincial level. Another is the strong similarity between the Italian Ordine and the American integrated bar association (in terms of their connection to the state). --Coolcaesar 23:09, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I am starting work right now on a draft at Talk:Lawyer/2006 rewrite. It will take a while. --Coolcaesar 03:14, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

criticism of lawyers

An addition to the Lawyer article was deleted by coolCaeser and dishonestly described as vandalism. As the first step of the dispute resolution process I am posting the deleted text to the talk section after some discussion of the rules that have been broken.

The "too many lawyer" problem and its ramifications and variations is a major issue in this country and increasingly in the world. Whether a majority of people think that there are too many lawyers and too much litigation may be disputed. It cannot be disputed that this is a major issue. Perhaps this could have been written differently as I was focusing on verified quotes since I knew that the apologists for the lawyers would immediately try to water down and soften any criticism of lawyers in this article. This is against NPOV principles of Wikipedia which is that both sides of a contentious issue should be presented. Instead the whole addition was deleted with a dishonest comment, which is also against Wikipedia policy. But this was not surprising in this article.

It is against Wikipedia policy to delete this section and describe it as vandalism. I hope the apologists for the lawyers have enough integrity To agree that Wikipedia policy was broken here.

Lastly, it is clear that the apologists for the lawyers dominate the writing of this article. But this article should not be a mouthpiece for the lawyers. Certainly a large cross section of the United States and the world believe that the lawyers are in need of some criticism, and this view and the criticisms should be reflected in this article.

The deleted text follows: ___________________________________________________________________

Too Many Lawyers

The phrase "too many lawyers" brought 81,300 hits on Yahoo and 61,200 hits on Google on January 10, 2006. There are a myriad number of postings on both sides of the issue.

For every 320 Americans there is a lawyer - indeed, with 799,960 lawyers among a population of 255,600,000, America may have the highest proportion of lawyers per capita in the world. In England, there are 694 Englishmen per lawyer, in France 2,461 Frenchmen per lawyer and in Japan 8,195 Japanese per lawyer. Lest you think the Japanese are exceptionally poorly served, you may wish to reflect that there are 15,748 Koreans per lawyer, with a mere 2,813 lawyers for Korea's population of 44,300,000. "Law in Japan" by Bill Stonehill

The first hit on Google on this day brought the following:

"When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice." Lin Yutang (1895-1976), Chinese-American writer, translator, and editor.

In 1770, Grafton County, New Hampshire provided the following census report to King George III:

Your Royal Majesty, Grafton County... contains 6489 souls, most of whom are engaged in agriculture, but included in that number are 69 wheelwrights, 8 doctors, 29 blacksmiths, 87 preachers, 20 slaves, and 90 students at the new college. There is not one lawyer, for which fact we take no personal credit, but thank an Almighty and Merciful God.

Rhode, Too Much Law, Too Little Justice, 11 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 989.

Many of the apologists for the lawyers claim that if there are too many lawyers, then their incomes will decrease and the free market will rectify the problem. But the following rather amusing anecdotes suggests the problem is not so simple:


"Popular humor collections replay endless variations on this theme. A common and not necessarily apocryphal) example portrays a solo practitioner starved for business in a small town. A second lawyer then arrives, and they both prosper." In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession By Deborah L. Rhode; Oxford US

In the popular movie Other People's Money, Danny Devito's character said that "lawyers are like nuclear missiles, I have mine you have yours and when we use them we *%&* everything up."

Clearly lawyers don't follow the same supply and demand fundamentals that most other trades follow. Lawyers can create more demand for their profession simply by filing a lawsuit. The direct implication of the filing of a lawsuit is that the other side needs to hire a lawyer. If a shoemakers produces too many shoes than the supply of shoes increase effecting demand. If lawyers produce more litigation than it is not clear at all that this increased supply will effect demand, in fact the increased supply of lawsuits is likely to increase the demand for lawyers.

Dan Quayle, the former Vice President of the United States of America asked, "Does America really need 70 percent of the world's lawyers? Is it healthy for our economy to have 18 million new lawsuits coursing through the system annually?" These figures have been open to dispute, but it beyond doubt that the USA has by far more lawyers per capita than any country on earth.

"Bar passage in Japan was notoriously low, and practicing lawyers did not play the same prominent role in business and government as they do here. Commentators, including Derek Bok, then-president of Harvard University, suggested that if only our best graduates became engineers like the Japanese rather than lawyers, we would be better off." Tom Ginsburg, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Jerome K. Jerome, the turn-of-the-century British humorist (Three Men in a Boat): "If a man stopped me in the street, and demanded of me my watch," observed Jerome, "I should refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it. "If, on the other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply."

Scottish Parliament Wednesday 23 March 2005

Stewart Stevenson: "In business, it is said that it is possible to tell what phase a company is in by the following means. When a company is growing and developing, engineers-be they software engineers, textile engineers or traditional lathe-based engineers-are at its heart; when the company is mature, the accountants run it; but when the lawyers run the company, nobody should put their money anywhere near it, because it is on the home straight. One of the difficulties might be that we have too many lawyers and accountants and not enough engineers."


lawyer humor

The Lawyers Know Too Much Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

LegalEagle1798 04:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Possible copyvio material removed - please show permission to copy this poem before posting it it on Wikipedia. Thanks. bd2412 T 18:36, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

The Copyright Law of the United States Of America (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research."

It is certainly ironic that a lawyer removed this particular poem from Wikipedia using a legal contrivance. Let us all hope that this poem can remain.

  • Copyright law is not merely a legal artifice, it is a legal fact (and one, I might add, which your Congress and your Supreme Court have recently magnified, see Eldred v. Ashcroft). Wikipedia is neither a library nor an archive, and posting the poem here is not furnishing "a" photocopy or reproduction, but effectively publishing limitless copies of the poem. By removing your likely copyright violation, I have protected you, not myself, from the reach of the law. bd2412 T 03:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
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