We’re really nice guys, and if you don’t back off, we’ll sue you back to Stonehenge.

Now why would Americans have such negative feelings toward lawyers? What have the little dears done to incur the public’s wrath?

Are they clueless?

Posted by: torpedo_eight at July 22, 2004 09:18 AM

Maybe if the Bar did a better job of policing its members and curbing abuses and didn’t stand in the way of even the most basic of reforms with populist b.s. and acknowledged the true cost to our society of such uncontrolled litigiousness, people wouldn’t have cause to think of lawyers, especially plaintiffs attorneys, as parisitic scum.

But then again, when we keep getting crappy judges, it shouldn’t be a surprise that lawyers drop to their level.

Posted by: TL at July 22, 2004 10:18 AM

What the need is something like LAL the laywer’s antidefamation league.

they can hang around in bars and threaten people who tell lawyer jokes. Maybe they can do like ASCAP and make restaurant owners “buy” a sticker for the door that says” LAL member, thank you for not repeating lawyer jokes.

Hey, I could work, right?

Posted by: skip at July 22, 2004 10:50 AM

Of all people, they should know what Freedom of Speech is.

No wonder they have no respect. Someone slams lawyers, and the ABA shows its selective ignorance and proves the original point “irrefutably correct”. Just like Ah-nuld’s “girly boys” comment, and the California Assembly’s whining reaction.

Posted by: gus3 at July 22, 2004 12:53 PM

sorry, I can’t resist (my apologies to all the “good” lawyers here)

What do you call 100 lawyers skydiving?

a skeet shoot!

WPoS

Posted by: WPoS at July 22, 2004 01:21 PM

Everybody hates lawyers until they need one.

As for judges, the ones I know are, with rare exceptions, very bright, hard-working, and extremely conscientious. Some of the Reagan appointees to the federal bench are too ideological, and we have a couple of local guys that are overly political (as in local favoritism) and/or intellectually lazy/challenged, but these really are the exceptions not the rule.

Posted by: rdelephant at July 22, 2004 05:49 PM

“Some of the Reagan appointees to the federal bench are too ideological” - rdelephant

Not at all like Rose Bird or the Florida Supreme Court right?

Flick the speck from your neighbor’s eye and I will find a winch to remove the lumber from yours.

Posted by: torpedo_eight at July 22, 2004 09:34 PM

If I were elected President I would issue an Executive Order within an hour of taking the oath of office banning class-action lawsuits. You wanna sue somebody? Get a fucking plaintiff.

Letting lawyers hold elective office is like letting Exxon run the EPA. Unfortunately this has to be endured as one of the trade-offs of an open democracy.

:jackson

Posted by: jackson zed at July 22, 2004 09:55 PM

Actually, I am a Florida lawyer, and no the Florida Supreme Court is not ideological in the least. It upholds deal warrants seemingly every week of the year. Its decision to recount the ballots in Gore v Bush was required by state law. It was the 5-4 majority of the U.S Supreme Court who ideologically halted the recount so that their would be no cloud cast on Bush’s claim to victory, a truly astonishing basis to halt a recount (which happen all the time in close elections).

Posted by: rdelephant at July 23, 2004 05:57 PM

That should read “death warrants”

Posted by: rdelephant at July 23, 2004 05:58 PM