Evaluating the Current Reputation of Lawyers
Remember the old saying that "One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch"? Well, in the legal field it doesn't apply. It appears these days that the entire bunch is spoiled with only a rare exception of a good apple.
Lawyers, attorneys, litigators, officers of the court - whatever you wish to call them, they have become modern day prostitutes. Today, the majority of them will do anything for money. Their motto has become 'Sue the bastards - Ethics be damned!'
I believe that lawyers can be blamed for the skyrocketing costs of auto and health insurance as well as medical malpractice insurance. Lawyers today will make claims and file lawsuits for any reason because right or wrong it will put money in their pockets. Insurance companies have reached the point they will offer what they refer to as 'nuisance value' in even the most insignificant cases to keep from being sued and having to pay a lawyer even more money. Yes, when you sue someone, their insurance company has to pay all the legal expenses charged by the lawyer plus any settlement or judgment. And you wondered why your insurance rates went up after that last little fender bender that resulted in less than $500 damage to either vehicle.
And these days if you are charged with a crime and seek the services of a lawyer, chances are he will charge you a huge up-front retainer fee just for taking your case. In addition to the retainer he will quote you an hourly fee of around $200 - $300 for any work he does before you go to trial. If he has to go to court with you, his hourly rate increases significantly. Most of them charge you a minimum of two tenths of an hour just to tell you on phone that they will have to call you back. Two tenths of an hour is twelve minutes. At $200 per hour twelve minutes is $40. And they don't bother to tell you that their legal assistants and secretaries handle about eighty percent of the work performed in your case. Most documents they file with the court in your case are actually forms their assistants maintain on their computers and only have to change the date, your name, what you are charged with - very minor changes taking five to ten minutes. Of course, the lawyer charges you to draft or create the document and then make revisions to it, usually in the range of one to two hours.
Genuine automobile accidents turn lawyers into ambulance chasers and street whores. If someone is really injured they will walk over anyone who gets in their way just to make sure an injured person receives their business card. A lot of them even have staff members who listen to police scanners for accident locations and then show up at the accident scene. And look at the commercials on television and highway billboard signs promising to get you hundreds of thousands of dollars before they even know what a case is about.
Criminal lawyers don't care if their clients are innocent or guilty. For the right amount of money a lawyer will say whatever it takes to get a jury to believe his client is innocent even if multiple witnesses state otherwise. Some of them will instruct their clients to change their version of how something happened just to throw doubt into a juror's mind.
Today's Lawyers, those individuals we expect to have the highest ethical standards because they are officers of the court, the ones we expect to strive for equal justice for all, the ones we expect to be honest and ethical, today's lawyers are no better than today's criminals. They have worked very hard to obtain the tarnished reputations they bear and they deserve them.
