What the truck?

England is known the world over for its legal system, replete with tradition and prestige.  Wigs and robes in court - it doesn't come much more "we're not changing with the times!" than that.

Or does it.

Turns out that a trucking company, Eddie Stobart, is bidding for contracts to provide legal aid services, much to the chagrin of traditional law firms that typically provide such services.

Read all about here.

Just to be clear, though, we're not talking about truck drivers offering legal services. From what I can gather, we're talking about a law firm that is a subsidiary of Eddie Stobart, Stobart Barristers, which has very little to do with Eddie Stobart.

But to hear the complaints from the traditional lawyers who are trying to protect their high fees, you'd think that Stobart Barristers was proposing that the poor should be represented in court by truckers who are known by "CB handles" like "Slippery Jim" and "Madcat", and who would replace the horsehair wigs with those trucker hats that your grandfather wears sometimes.

"That's a big 10-4, judge".

Here's some quotes from the article, and there's plenty more articles out there on this matter too:

The row within the legal profession over the plans is intensifying. The head of Stobart Barristers has described traditional law firms who rely on legal aid as "'wounded animals waiting to die" and accused rival lawyers of sending his firm messages urging it to "Truck Off".

 He's right. Traditional law firms are wasteful, slow, and expensive. Where legal aid money is concerned, economy should be the number one priority; providing the most people with adequate services, rather than providing a select few with premium services.  It's the same over here.  Traditional law firms are wasteful and serve not for the benefit of clients, but partners' wallets.  And little anonymous attacks from those trying to protect their incomes?  Sounds like law professor tactics.

[Said Trevor Howarth, legal director at Stobart,] "We at Stobart are well known for taking out the waste and the waste here is the duplication of solicitors going to the courtroom. At the moment there are 1,600 legal aid firms; in future there will be 400. At Stobart, we wouldn't use 10 trucks to deliver one product."

Again, correct. Law firms are just so damn inefficient.  Hourly billing, overstaffed, making problems where none exist. It's a broken system, both here in the US and over there in the UK by the sound of things.

On removing a defendant's right to choose their solicitor, Howarth said: "I don't think the lack of choice is damaging. [People are not] entitled to access justice with an open cheque. No one is stopping them paying for their own choice of solicitor."

Common sense, and to be clear, he's talking about a defendant who is generally in the lowest court and charged with a minor offense, and whose legal fees are being footed by the taxpayer.  Nobody is talking about removing anyone's choice of legal representation if they can afford to pay for it themselves.  But don't expect lawyers to agree.  In fact, expect them to tell lies to protect their business (remind you of law professors perhaps?):

Paul Harris, president of the London Criminal Courts Solicitors' Association, warned that the quality of legal representation would decline. "How is anyone facing serious criminal allegations going to feel being represented by a haulage company?" he asked.

Ah, there we go.  The deliberate misrepresentation, the lie, designed to align the stupid or lazy with his cause. Circulate the myth that this change will mean your lawyer will have dirt under his fingernails and an STD from a truckstop hooker, and of course nobody wants this. His income will be saved, and who gives a damn about all the defendants who get no representation because there's no money left.  Of course, in reality Stobart Barristers is staffed by real lawyers, with real training, just like every other law firm.

While this interesting little story has lots of relevance to us over in the US, it's also useful for drawing parallels with our system of legal education. Our 200 schools, all offering a three year program, ultimately paid for by the taxpayers in many cases, are a prime example of using ten trucks to deliver one product.

We need 100 schools, each offering a two year program, at a quarter of the current cost.  And that's being generous.  But try to make such common sense changes, and you're met with attacks and lies from the legal education establishment.  Untruths about how the public will suffer, how standards will drop, how the entire legal system as we know it will crumble into a world where truck drivers are representing people in court and prestigious lawyers are forced to dirty their eyes by even looking at such vile creatures.  Of course nobody wants reform when law professors circulate such lies.  We need to have our voices heard a little more.

I hope Stobart wins.  It's good for everyone except those who live high on the hog by overcharging for legal services.  Or law degrees.

And I hope we can all learn some valuable lessons over here about stripping the waste from the legal system.  Because if they can do it in England, where legal tradition was born, then we can damn well do it over here to those law schools that were created in the past two decades for the sole purpose of milking the system.

Epistle 7: Behold the Mighty Paralegal

Dear Disgruntled Law Grads:

Recently, there's been much discussion of making attorneys more "practice ready."  Please, stop.  You're only embarrassing yourself further, as this option already exists.  It's called being a paralegal, and you declined it in your pursuit of the prestigious riches of lawyerdom (which do, despite your claims otherwise, exist).

Have you ever actually looked at what they teach paralegals?  I'm guessing not, since you couldn't even be bothered to read the fine print (and do your own verifying research) on our misleading employment statistics.

Here is the syllabus for an introductory paralegal course in real property at Oakland University, a place not even (yet!) blessed with a law school.  Note that the class appears open to undergraduates, as many - if not most - paralegal studies courses are.

Here is a list of some of the topics covered/words mentioned on the syllabus that were not even remotely covered in my own 1L property class (it doesn't matter where I went - they're all basically the same):

Why do unqualified SLU law professors promote the teaching of "cultural competence"?

Here are a couple of quotes from two law professors at St. Louis University School of Law (SLU), that wackiest of all law schools. The law professors, Eric Miller and Jeff Redding, propose expanding or enhancing their law school's curriculum to include instruction in what they call "cultural competence." Now, I am progressive too, and would like to believe that cultural competence pedagogy produces young lawyers with enhanced abilities to help people who are suffering. But a cruel suspicion remains--are these academics just seeking a cheap way to feel noble and self-righteous while scamming their students, the kids who are borrowing $100,000 to pay for a legal education? First the quotes and then a few more thoughts below.

But even if a professor teaches nothing but (supposedly) abstract ideas of subordination: a class that is at its core focused on cultural competence addresses one of the most pressing needs in the curriculum, and especially one that low-end practice requires. Too often, the core classes (and sometimes the skills ones too) dismiss as irrelevant the features of race and gender, or power and subordination, that students raise and that that clients experience. So if we’re going to have students think outside the box to engage with the sorts of clients the traditional law firm overlooks, then how better to train students do so than to identify with those clients."  SLU Law Prof. Eric Miller  

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2013/02/the-laundry-list-of-irrelevant-subjects.html

"I am a co-chair of our Multiculturalism Affairs Committee here at SLU Law, and our (faculty/staff/student) committee is in the midst of discussions about ways to enhance ‘cultural competence’ at SLU Law. One thought as to how to do so is to introduce changes into the curriculum, concertedly oriented towards exposing students to the legal and social issues faced, both historically and contemporarily, by racial minorities, immigrants, women, Native Americans, queer folk, the disabled, and others. Discussions are at a very preliminary stage, but different thoughts have already emerged about how best to better incorporate the teaching of cultural competence into the curriculum" – SLU Law Prof. Jeff Redding.  

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2013/04/cultural-competence-the-curriculum.html    

Student loans as consumer spending

One angle of the student loan scam that is just starting to get some attention is the over borrowing of student loans for the purpose of living expenses.

The Wall Street Journal (paywall) reported (as re-reported by the libertarian Reason.com) on the case of a law school graduate named Lilianna Rodriguez-Marshall, a 30-year old mother of three. Ms. Rodriguez-Marshall graduated from the Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles in December owing more than $300,000 in federal loans. Ms. Rodriguez-Marshall is apparently applying for government jobs in the hopes of entering the federal loan forgiveness program.

According to a right-wing think tank who crunched the numbers on her loan, assuming Ms. Rodriguez-Marshall lands a government job paying about $55,000/year (good luck, big assumption), she will have payments of $273/month instead of the $3,562/month she would otherwise be obligated to pay. Her payments under the program would total about $102,000 over 10 years while the balance of approximately $639,000 including interest would be forgiven.

Ms. Rodriguez-Marshall acknowledges that her debt is so large in part because she spread out law school over 4 1/2 years instead of 3. However, what is interesting is that she also says that she and her family used the student loan money for living expenses. She reported that her husband was laid off twice and she took out emergency student loans totaling $30,000 to "make home repairs, pay unexpected medical costs and keep up with the families $1,000-per-month health-insurance bills." 

It's not solid gold every day...

Sorry for the temporary lapse in coverage.  You've got me filling in for today.  Hardly the quality stuff you're used to, but whatever.

I wanted to revisit something from an earlier post about attending networking meetings.  Here's my experience:

A few years ago, I was encouraged to go to local business meetings, breakfasts, lunch groups, etc. And they all - yes, all! - had the following composition:

- Attorneys
- Real estate agents
- Insurance salespeople
- Mortgage brokers
- Random chick selling gift baskets

Nothing else.  They were pathetic gatherings where people whose businesses relied upon sales handed out business cards to each other.  Look at who your fellow bottom feeders are.

You would be very wise to note that attorneys like me were at those groups - our business relies upon sales too.  There were often multiple attorneys, multiple bankers, multiple insurance hawkers, all trying desperately to get new business, looking for "leads", all handing out the same old cards, scrambling for scraps and clutching at straws.

If you're not a salesperson, you will not be a successful lawyer. If you're uncomfortable shaking hands and schmoozing and networking and spending half your life working the room in sleazy gatherings, you will not be a good lawyer. Law is not about law. Nothing that makes you a successful lawyer is learned in law school.  You would be better off spending three years slutting around on a used car lot, because that's how you learn how to snare people into deals they don't need for prices they can't afford.

You could be the smartest person who ever lived, with a brilliant legal mind and superlative writing skills. But unless you can dance the salesperson dance better than a disgusting car salesman, you're going to be the poorest lawyer who ever lived.

Sales.  That's today's law. But not even classy sales. In my opinion, it's below used car sales.  At least with a used car, you have some value for what you've bought, and you can always sell the beater to regain some of your losses.  With legal services, the client has nothing of value at the end.

Kind of sounds like law school, no?  The dupes are left holding the bag with no tangible asset that can be resold?  Just like a JD?

Always Be Closing.

(And for the best Glengarry Glen Ross reference ever, see this classic post from Prof. Campos.  That guy could write!)

Now I'll tapdance back off the stage, cane in hands, tipping the top hat.  Back to the professionals tomorrow...

Legal Urban Legend Myth Buster #5

MYTH #5

THE CLIENT IS BETTER SERVED WHEN THERE IS AN OVERSUPPLY OF LAWYERS BECAUSE OF SIMPLE SUPPLY AND DEMAND PRINCIPALS.

The reality is that the nature of lawyering and its so-called "zealous advocacy" means that clients probably get a worse outcome when there are a bunch of starving lawyers in their community, particularly young starving lawyers. 

Back in "the old days," there was a sense of community and professionalism among attorneys. They knew each other on some level personally and professionally. They treated each other with respect knowing that they would encounter each other throughout their careers. A good professional reputation actually meant something. They tried to work out resolutions with opposing counsel that left both their client in a good position as well as their own reputation in tact.

Now practicing law is nothing more than a hyper-partisan, full-contact, blood sport. More experienced attorneys routinely take advantage of personality intangibles to gain an advantage over the younger inexperienced attorneys. It is common to witness attorneys bullying and being unreasonable simply for the sake of being unreasonable and trying to gain an intangible advantage quite unrelated to the merits of the case itself. Today when you sit through a deposition the testimony is incidental to the proceeding. It is all about attorneys sniping, obstructing and objecting at each other.

Legal Urban Legend Myth Buster #4

MYTH #4

YOUNG ATTORNEYS JUST NEED TO JUST GET OUT THERE AND START JOINING COMMUNITY GROUPS AND GET KNOWN AND THEY WILL PICK UP LOTS OF LEGAL WORK.

Back in "the old days," there would only be a few attorneys in town. If a youngster hung up a shingle, chances are he grew up in the town and knew those attorneys. The young attorney would join the local civic groups and take his place in society. By doing so, the young attorney would be in the mix of things and the business community would feel comfortable with him. There was no pressure on anyone because there was lots of work to go around.

That model really doesn't work so well anymore. Consider that there are 1,268,011 active attorneys in the United States versus a total U.S. resident population of 315,816,000 (2013 statistics). This means there is an active attorney to resident population ratio of 1:249. That's a lot of attorneys for not a lot of people.

Ever hear of six degrees of separation? I guess if you were a glass-half full kind of person you would think that you are six degrees away from being Kevin Bacon's attorney. The reality is that today's legal market saturation is so great that just about everybody has an attorney in their family or already knows an attorney. By way of example, on the blue collar residential street where I grew up on, in the five houses on my parents' side of the street among the kids I grew up with, there was one law student who dropped out after the first year, four kids who grew up to be attorneys and seven who did other things in life. So, like 1/3 of the kids on one stretch of the street grew up to be attorneys. 

I hate to break the news but joining a local community group probably isn't going to get you any paying work. Chances are there are already a bunch of attorneys that belong to the group and they won't be too receptive to your not too subtle attempt to poach their contacts. What you probably will end up with is a bunch of non-paying work for the group itself. After all, no one else in the group gets paid so why should you? To the extent you join this group and become friends with the people in it, any time these friends call you with a legal problem, they will expect the legal work to be done for free. I can also guarantee you that if they don't get the outcome they expect, they will trash you within the group and say you are not a good attorney; if they do get the outcome they expect, they will think it was obvious and they shouldn't have to pay you as a result. Any time you do legal work for a friend, relative, or member of a group you belong to, expect no money and social problems as a result.

As an aside, when you join a local community group, don't be surprised if you become unpopular in a hurry. Chances are unless there is another attorney already in the group, the group has not been following any standard business practices. Probably "Good Old Joe" has been the treasurer for twenty years and no one has seen a bank statement that entire time and no one really understands Old Joe's financial statements. Probably even though the group seems to do well at its fundraisers it always seems to be low on funds. Probably you as an attorney will want to sort this out. Probably things will come apart for the group once you start pursuing that. Probably the group will fall apart and blame you. So, think hard before you join any group and disrupt "Good Old Joe's" management.

The myth that "young attorneys just need to get out there, join some community groups and get some work out of it" is BUSTED.