[Closed] Lawyers,the scum of Capitalism, discuss

My best mate was a solicitor, he was such a decent bloke that sometimes he would represent people who had got themselves in a mess and "forget" to bill them. He drank himself to death, sadly, leaving a huge gap in the lives of those who knew him as most of us used to rely on him for sensible, measured and experienced advice.

Just to redress the balance before the slagging starts.

My wife is a lawyer.

A more principled, moral and kind individual you are unlikely to find. Before she went on maternity leave she would regularly advise her clients on the best, most cost-effective solutions to their problems, and as such was held in high regard both by them and her employers (because people used her for repeat business as a result).

Never really thought of lawyers that way. My girlfriend's sister is one although there are a few ****ty people at her [Magic Circle] firm, probably as in any workplace.

Hardly the scum of capitalism. Generally just normal people doing their job. Have you had to pay one of them a few hundred quid when you've moved house for them to provide a service you can't do yourself and now you think they've pulled yer pants down?

Most i have come across through work or personal life have been totally decent earning an honest living helping and advising me / the teams I work on.

Edit-all

friend of mine works in IT for a big world wide corperate legal company, and they bill for absolutely everything. They would invoice for the use of oxygen and letting heat out of the build when you leave 😉 It's quite a eye opener.

Yep lawyers are all scum
Coppers are all thugs
Builders are all dodgy

Sorry but 🙄

Lawyers, no, they're not as the OP describes.
IME principled , decent folk.
Bankers, now thats a different matter...

Lawyers, no, they're not as the OP describes.
IME principled , decent folk.
Bankers, now thats a different matter...

I blame Thatcher! No, really. She legalized advertising for the legal profession.

That in turn has led to the ambulance chasers (Claims Direct et c.) that are now all over the TV.

In turn that leads to an increased fear of litigation from everyone else, which has spawned the "health and safety gone mad" culture we all like to bemoan so much.

Anybody's car insurance gone up recently? That's to pay for the outbreak of "whiplash" and the like that has happened since the above started.

So, not all scum, but any where there's blame there's a claim sorts certainly are!

Rant over, sorry for the grammar.

APF

I'm a lawyer (and IMHO a decent one - I'm ranked in legal 500 and chambers in my subject area). I try to give sensible, commercial advice, try to make it value for money and know what the professional code of conduct says. My clients keep on coming back.

I think there's a distinction between people who see it as a profession and those who see it as a business. At my firm there are some people intent on squeezing every last drop of profitability out of us, and getting processes in place to churn bulk insurance claims with the minimum qualified lawyer input they can get away with.

Personally I'd rather have slightly lower profitability and higher morale,  happy clients and all that but as I'm unlikely to ever get a share of the profits I would say that 😉

The other issue is those lawyers who want to be bankers and get in on that slice of the action. I'm sure some of them are decent but I get the impression that there's probably a lower proportion of the traditional decent lawyers in that sector.

Where was the party last night? Must have been a good one judging by the OP and some of these posts. Good luck with the headaches!!

if i could find the Lawyer that invented the phrase "please retain packaging for future reference" I'd be round their house with an f'ing big van full of trash and some big questions

The only expectations I have of Lawyers is that they are back in there box by Sunrise.

round here we call them accountants

potatoe, pohtartoah

Well yeh,they are a bunch of self serving moneygrabbers.

The mrs does a bit of lawyering mainly stuff that involves kids.
oddly from where she is stood as a lawyer she often finds it hard to find anything good to say about joe public. 😐

a few things from experience:
only a minority of lawyers are minted.
they often don't get payed.
most of em hate doing claims work.
some of them are indeed total w@nkers.
some are nice folk.

I'm a Lawyer here is a genuine character reference i just got from a client.
"I have the same opinion as I had when I first met you. You are full of yourself, like to bull yourself up and when it comes to it. Not very good. As for all the swearing on Friday by you in your office, I found this very un-professional and offensive."

To be fair i have represented him for the best part of a year without difficulty the cause of the above quote is the discovery of a new piece of evidence and my refusal to become involved in a dishonest defence. I think the swearing (which i do a lot with my clients) on this occasion comes from my use of the word lacuna.

crankboys post is fairly normal stuff.
a difficult job dealing with difficult folk.
no way could i do it.

to stupid to do it anyway but you get my drift. 😀

Lunch ?

Lunch ?

The only serious profession left where there is no one available between 1 and 2.

And for that, I agree with the OP

How about the fact they tend to engineer argument for extra work,Ha Ha I mean fees.They bully and intimidate,lie and in the end become a bit threatening when you don,t do as they want.They are bigger greedheads than the bankers.

I've got a mate that's a brief and he's a nice chap and very ready to help mates out with advice. All told, he's a good person.

I'm also moving house right now and the woman doing the conveyancing seems to be friendly and good at her job. Ok, it's a bit more expensive than last time I moved house, but it beats doing things myself.

The only difference between a dead dog in the road and a dead lawyer in the road is there would be some skidmarks in front of the dog.

Coppers are all thugs

Not [i]all[/i] of them.

One or two are ok.

I can't fault them for exploiting a broken system- lawyers aren't the problem, they don't make the rules.

they don't make the rules

Er, they do, actually....

monkey - are they still serving you? Are you still standing? Obviously you lost coherence a while ago, so I hope everything else is ok?

Marx didn't think so.

Just to reinforce the stereotype and turn on my own creed, someone sent me this today...

[url= http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/opinion/nocera-bp-makes-amends.html ]Thieving Lawyers[/url]

Generally been happy with mine except my divorce lawyer. She was 2 months late on her own schedule for doing some work and when I phoned to chase her I was billed for the phone call. Then when I phoned to complain about the bill for chasing her I was billed for that as well.

The majority of the ambulance chasers I have to deal with at work though are scum.

lawyers / solicotors only exist beccause a great many would rather take advantadge of others in one way or another, its the people using the lawyers to make a fast buck that are the problem.

lawyers / solicotors only exist beccause a great many would rather take advantadge of others in one way or another, its the people using the lawyers to make a fast buck that are the problem.

Bollocks.

[img] [/img]
is all I'm saying.

It's 99% of lawyers that give the rest of them a bad name.

"I think there's a distinction between people who see it as a profession and those who see it as a business."

Absolutely true of all professions. The trick is always to identify people who regard their work as their vocation, and avoid those for whom it is merely work.

INteresting thread...I can conclude, usig the same "logic" as certain forum "members" that all of stw are stupid 🙄

My Daughter's a lawyer - certainly fleeced me over the years,,,,,,, and that was [b]before [/b] she qualified 😉

INteresting thread.

it's not though al it's just some clown having a moan because he got ripped of by a crap lawyer. 🙄

STW is a stupid.

stupid as an stw.

nonk=corrupted nieve simpleton who can,t see beyond his own limited horizon.

lawyers aren't the problem, they don't make the rules

They do though to some extent don't they, precedents and case law etc? Barristers who become judges? And politicians rely on legal advise to create policies? Cherie Blair fgs?

But there's a big gap between pro-bono human rights type work and compo-encouraging no-win-no-fee companies advertising in the breaks in Jeremy Kyle. Lawyers are not all the same but I expect it's like big business and politics, nice guys rarely make it to the top or if they do they loose something on the way up. Scum forms on most ponds and usually it floats.

nonk=corrupted nieve simpleton who can,t see beyond his own limited horizon.

it's bliss in my head mate. 😀

nonk - Member
it's not though al it's just some clown having a moan because he got ripped of by a crap lawyer.

I was surprised by the (mostly) rational and balanced comments...and depressed by the loons like the OP.

So in summary, Lawyers on the whole [i]aren't[/i] all 'scum of Capitalism' after all then.

And this thread is definitely a stupid.

hmm. afraid i'm a little jaundiced. split up with my ex last year.
the first lawyer who drafted our separation agreement got my name wrong, at the first meeting seemed to be telling me that everything was fine and it wasn't going to cost a lot of money, then at the second meeting told me everything was fine but that it was actually going to cost me a lot of money ( though i'm fully prepared to accept that i may just have misunderstood the first time ). he also obtained copies of documents that we had agreed i would submit to him ( ie he did not need to get the copies as i provided the documents ). and charged me what seemed like rather a lot of money ( though i do understand everyone has to make a living ).
the person in their firm who did the conveyancing, in conjunction with my ex's solicitors, took nearly six months to do it ( when the house was bought, using 'her' solictors, all paperwork was done and dusted in just 2 weeks ).
it was suggested i take out insurance to protect against any claim that the house was disposed to me for a 'small amount' in the event of my ex going into bankruptcy. there was no explanation of the relevant legislation referenced, nor that there was a more recent piece of legislation passed that suggested such insurance was not required. it was presented that the building society required that i take this protection. it was also not made clear that the insurance was provided by the solictor's firm until i asked who the provider was. the building society's mortgage advisor had to ask his head office what it was all about when i asked him, as he'd never heard of it. later, when it came for me to settle up, the cost of this insurance had dropped by nearly 50%. when i enquired as to why this cost had changed, i was told that the original quote was wrong because it applied to a commercial property.
when it came to settling up with my ex, they told me to pay the money into their account, so that they could then pay into hers. presumably so they could earn a bit on interest and on the necessary admin.
how they managed to get things wrong, delay so long, charge so much money, and inadequately explain things to someone who is, by definition, a lay-man, and look themselves in the mirror in the morning amazes me.
naturally, at the end of the day, i just ****ing paid. the ex was already taking my trousers down, a few more hundred quid to them really wasn't the be all and end all, and i just wanted it all done.
i was in a 5hit situation but they really didn't make things easier.
now i just hope that i do actually own my house and i'm not going to loose it because of some **** up the lazy, greedy, inadequate tossers have made while they were otherwise engaged counting my money.
forgive me. i am certain that there are some very good, conscientious processionals out there who provide good value and good service. sadly i had the misfortune of dealing with this lot.

lawyers can only make money if they find a client (someone either genuinly agreevied or someone out to make money rather than MTFU)..
if the public were geniune and honest about what they were claiming as being unjust / a loss to them their would be no market for no win no fee ambulance chasers and the more commercial side of lawyering as their would be insufficient business to sustain them..

have a public believing someone else is always to blame, and you create a desire for free and easy legal representation that feeds on society perpetuating the ever increasing need for everyone to insure themselves their property against ever increasing stupid claims etc, etc... a self fulfilling downwards spiral, created through mankinds greed but ONLY facilitated by the legal system that has developed through our Greed..

society is at fault..

i'm very pleased for you that life is so black and white. i can only hope you never find yourself on the arse end of a bad relationship or other slightly more 'grey' situation. unfortunately life has a habit of throwing up situations where people, however reasonable under more normal circumstances, turn into something altogether different under more abnormal circumstances.
selah.

where people, however reasonable under more normal circumstances, turn into something altogether different under more abnormal circumstances.

At risk of commenting on a situ that's personal and difficult and maening this more generally, so with respect, I'd say that abnormal situations reveal people's true character rather than turning people into something different. Personal morals are those shown under duress, it's easy to be a good guy in easier situtions.

society is at fault..

I'm a lawyer (and IMHO a decent one - I'm ranked in legal 500 and chambers in my subject area)

What firm? I was once a region editor of one of the publications you listed, before I escaped.

Big national firm - nowhere near magic circle level though.

So has the jury arrived at a unanimous decision?

Big national firm - nowhere near magic circle level though

What practice?