Source: Lawyers wouldn't have the reputation they do if all the members of the club had integrity.
Some anecdotes:
- A company I started, hired a big-brand SV legal firm, super expensive. We thought they would be great. But we were so little to them, it was sometimes even hard to get a timely response. In the end we stopped using them, but not before we signed a bunch of documents they reviewed and told us were fine to sign, when in reality those contracts left us fatally exposed (and were in great part responsible for the downfall of the company later).
- Had a complaint filed against me personally earlier this year. The complaint has some truths twisted to paint a mostly false story, but it also has plenty of lies and omissions. The lawyer(s) that wrote the complaint knew what they were doing, yet no one is ever going to get punished for it.
- Looking for lawyers to defend the case (and in previous experiences), I realized that most lawyers have certain formulas or patterns they follow for specific types of situations that they already know how to address, if you don't fall into those, then they'll either pretty much fail at the job, not do what they actually should do (sometimes even if you ask them directly), or just refuse you as a client. It is very hard to find a lawyer that will actually take the time to really listen to you, understand your story/situation and then work on a personalized strategy/solution.
I think that any lawyer that intentionally mis-represents stuff in their work, or tries to shoehorn their clients into their formulas, or just half-asses their job, are seriously lacking in integrity. And by my experience, this seems to be the case for 50%+ of lawyers. A lot of them will probably do a ton of damage both to their clients and their counterparties, and they will never be held responsible.
Per your third point, I was once wrongly accused in a criminal case. I was a nobody, random person making like $30k a year at the time but was able to retain someone from K&L Gates. I think he felt bad for me because he basically lobbied the partners for permission to take me on at a reduced rate (like $1.5k total). A couple letters and a court appearance later and the misunderstanding was rectified. But the important part is I was obviously a nobody, the partners at this firm bill tens of thousands of dollars a day. $1500 is probably less than a single office location spends on coffee in a week. But this guy sat with me for hours going over the case and where the problems were.
I agree 100%. One thing I do is look for similar cases and contact the lawyer on the winning side.
The "formulas" do save you money, though. Would you rather pay 5k for them to use an existing template slightly edited, or 25k to write a complaint from scratch? It depends on the case, there is no right answer.
You can also literally just look up a lawyer's cases on PACER and see how they write, see if they've won, and use your judgement as to whether they're an effective advocate. If you're dealing with a big case, this is absolutely worth doing.
"Under no circumstances will vendor be liable for any damages in excess of 10% of the purchase price of the vendor services"
Customers assume you are trying to scam them with language like that. But he didn't care, he just wanted to be able to be proud of how little liability we took on. I finally had to point out that the best way to reduce our liability is to shut the company down and end our need for legal services all together.
And then there is the family law lawyers ("it's not family and it's not law" according to one) but it does line a lot of lawyer's pockets at the expense of the public, at least in the five eyes. Most other jurisdictions have opted for a saner system.
So, yes, it's jungle out there. Imagine if your doctor prescribed medicine that would make you sicker so that he could charge you more later. If you don't have good reliable connections going in you really need to be careful, shop around until you find someone who seems good and honest, and then pray.
While I am aware of the audience here, I'm not trolling. There is a remarkable similarity between the "helplessness/vulnerability", for lack of a better term, of clients using a lawyer and the helplessness/vulnerability of users in using software authored by someone else (not to mention clients who hire software developers to write software for them). In each case, the client/user is required to trust the lawyer/developer.
One key difference is an issue sometimes discussed on HN:- there's no licensing requirement for developers. Lawyers have to be licensed, and the licensing requirements include ethical obligations, violations of which can result in losing one's license. While this system in practice may have some shortcomings, software developers do not have anything equivalent. There are states in the US where lawyers are disbarred every month, but I am not aware of any software developer who has been banned by a regulatory body from writing software for use by others.
Both lawyers and developers are probably subject to negative stigmas as as a result of the "bad apples". Not all are unethical.
I am licensed attorney and a full-time software developer and I agree 100% - there are remarkable similarities.
(And there are strong parallels between big tech and biglaw, especially for junior devs/associates, but that's a bit of a tangent)
While it's true that some lawyers are unethical some of the time, it seems highly unlikely that lawyers are unethical as often as their reputation suggests. A much more likely explanation is:
1. The complexity of the law.
2. The incongruity between the law and many people's ethical codes.
3. The skill gradient that exists among lawyers, as it does in any profession.
4. The limited resources afforded to public defenders.
5. The limited success pro se litigants typically have.
A much more likely explanation are misaligned incentive structures, combined with a protective guild-like bar organization which lawyers belong to.
Once you have the slightest clue about the law, it's easy to just laugh it off. The problem is, most people don't know any better, so these tactics are incredibly effective a lot of the time.
However, you do get a truly lethal combination when you combine an asshole lawyer with a well-funded client. That's not because it's some highly intelligent, sophisticated legal team who can craft superior legal arguments. Rather, it's because they can simply brute-force their way through by outspending you.
It doesn't matter how legally "right" you are if you're not willing/able to spend the money in court to prove it. A lot of people take advantage of that, including the asshole lawyer (who, of course, profits from it).
Somewhat off-topic, but here's a mind-boggling example of a lawyer's lack of integrity:
Here's a more recent and IMO better one: https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/04/28/former-apple-lawy...
> Former Apple lawyer Gene Levoff, who oversaw the company's Insider Trading Policy as corporate secretary and senior director of corporate law, was on Thursday indicted for insider trading and faces a maximum penalty of 120 years in prison. > Ironically, Levoff was in charge of enforcing the blackout period as part of Apple's wider trading policy and would sometimes conduct illicit trades after notifying others of the restrictions.
For example, a lawyer who thought she was doing the right thing and protecting many people has caused endless problems, both legal and moral, and likely ended up protecting (by tainting the case against) the very people she sought to bring to justice.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Gobbo#Lawyer_X_scandal
OpenTable vs. Iverson, 4/20/2020, Santa Clara.
It’s been a saga of massaging the optics, very interesting to see the 3 requests evolve. #1 I was never served, #2 they bluffed and didn’t show up, #3 was utter slander and filed in a new county (SC, first 2 in SF proper over the course of a year). Head screw, it hurts to try to recall it all. It’s also extremely offensive to read. It’s put a serious mark on me, both credibility and also the private investigator(s) following me everywhere, hence being homeless and isolated. The original issue was an improper firing (where UI was granted, and it was improper compared to their own training).
Biz@harlanji.com. I have the latter 2/3 of the filings, and my response that I couldn’t file and a BAR complaint written (I wasn’t seved #1 but #2 references it).
This reasoning can be used for anything ranging from speeding to stealing to even murder.
Obviously the article was examining the intersection between "the law as written" and the ethics surrounding this issue.
Calling that "source" is a bit of a stretch, no? More like "hypothesis"
This is likely related to the adversarial nature of the courts, prosecutors vs defenders. Defenders ethically need to defend equally, basic game theory, aka Prisoner's Dilemma.
In a nutshell, English barristers must accept cases from anyone regardless of their circumstances or character otherwise “an unpopular person might not get legal representation; barristers who acted for them might be criticised for doing so”.
“Justice” is the result of the process by which trials are fair - is one way of looking at it. Contrasted with the view that once we know who the bad people are (how?) guilt is presumed and summary punishment is all they’re entitled to.
This is from the American Bar Association, it is the opposite of a blog post you would end with IANAL. Yet, we read (at the end) that even professional lawyers are "struggling" with understanding why a given accepted practice is ok given the laws and obligation. And this on no small matter: it is about hiding that the plaintiff died before the trial. And it is not clear whether it is ok or not.
I had the "chance" to discuss with lawyers specialized in intellectual property. They did not even understand their subject or the imprecision of law. Every time I try to dig into legal issues surrounding IP I end up with the impression that the difference between a lawyer and a layperson is that the lawyer just is more up to date with what was made up in court recently.
Lawyers are going to help you if you are in a case that has happened tens of times in the past but is going to be clueless in a genuinely new situation. Just as the judge will be.
Recently I read about the licensing issues around deep learning models, the definitions of fair use and derivative works. We are used to IETF standards and IEEE specs. Even RFCs are usually pretty precise in how they define things. Laws are crappy when put to that standard. They are just there to provide arguments in a mud-slinging negotiation.
...and not even that. I've been told several times by very senior lawyers to ask a senior technical person for advice on thorny software licensing issues. In one case that senior technical person pointed me to a recent decision that basically answered exactly the right question.
IME/IMO, lawyers are vastly over-estimated, vastly over-respected, and have far too much political power relative to other stations in this country. We need to reform our legal system from the bottom up so that it serves us instead of the guild.
I think the scenario in question had the complaining witness dying. Is a complaining witness same as plaintiff? I would think the plaintiff in this scenario is the state. Genuine doubt as I'm not a lawyer.
Legally speaking they are different, but to the layperson they mean the same thing (both are the ones on the opposite side of the defendant).
In exchange, here is a link to the Debian Deep Learning Team's Machine Learning policy:
I would like to find a way to make true open source deep learning models.
Debian legal newsletter [1] and lwn[2] have interesting takes on the relevance of GPL. To them, putting a trained model under the GPL implicates that you have to open your dataset too, which are the "sources". That seems somehow consensual but I still think it is debatable and could need clarification.
I also dug around the question whether a trained model can actually be copyrightable if the training code and the dataset are free. This is akin to a "compilation" operation that adds no creative input (anyway applying copyright to source code is already a bit of a hack). There is a pretty strong ground to argue that they are similar to "compilation of facts" which come with very little protection.
I am now wondering if open source can actually work for deep learning: if trained models are not copyrightable, open source licenses require strong copyright protection to be implemented. Maybe a DL model is not protected enough for that.
Finally, I am reassured by recent fair use rulings that a model will probably not be considered a derived work of its dataset and that proprietary data can legally be used to produce an unencumbered model but the legal uncertainty still exists.
If you are interested in helping me trying to figure out how to protect crucial models so that the first AGI will be beneficial to all and open sourced, I'd be very happy to have someone poke holes into my ideas.
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2009/05/msg00028.html [2] https://lwn.net/Articles/760142/
In fact, to me that sounds like exactly what you would expect in a common law system.
As a lawyer there are rules that define standards of behaviors and violation thereof can quickly terminate not just employment but the career forever. Software doesn’t have that and the entire idea is utterly foreign. As a case in point all lawyers have a general understanding of the word ethic and how it applies to their profession. I have found, as a long time software developer, that most software developers have no idea what that word means and are quick to make faulty assumptions regarding its application. In the software developers’ defense there is not a lot of reason to accurately understand a thing that has never existed in the first place.
That may be true in theory, but in practice most lawyers will protect other lawyers, and their regulatory bodies do very little to discourage bad actors.
This is mostly a function of the industry's age, and is not true of other fields of engineering. I'll be astounded if software isn't folded into Professional Engineering by mid-century.
1. Can a lawyer who suspects the opposing party of breaking an agreement engage in plain-clothes trickery to figure out if that's true? Yes.
2. Is a lawyer obligated to essentially testify [respond to a judge's inquiry] in a manner that incriminates their client based on private information? No, thought when they do respond to the inquiry they should be vague rather than affirmatively lying.
3. Do prosecutors need to drop charges if, after a plea deal is signed, information comes up that would inhibit prosecuting the case in the absence of a plea deal? No, but this feels scummy.
I don't get the it's bad implied in the article.
Let's say it's a rape, and the victim dies, what's really changed?
You can hate the idea of plea bargains, but that's a different topic.
They admit they are guilty, so proceed on.
If it means they are screwed in challenging it later or in sentencing it might matter, but it doesn't seem the case.
Otherwise, very boring examples. Nicola Gobbo was a criminal lawyer and a police informant at the same time, but hasn't been charged with anything, I feel like there would be a interesting example in there somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Gobbo
This was civil court, not small claims.
Oh well.
If there was clear and obvious evidence of the lies then you can submit a complaint to the bar (or whatever the disciplinary body is for lawyers in your state). The judge is NOT actually the one with the authority to enforce these professional obligations.
Now I'm imagining that judge getting presented with evidence the defence lawyer is lying to them, and whipping out a chunky gold chain and a diamond encrusted grill...
Seeing it in TV shows and movies, which often have officers and detectives lying about knowledge, evidence, other witness statements, all to get info, I assumed that it was fictional. In many cases, though not all, it appears to be allowed within limits in real life. See, for example, https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.adamsluka.com/amp/can-the-p....
This doesn't mean all cops are liars, and they still shouldn't commit perjury, but it's an interesting comparison to me. I guess it's a reflection of the advocate/adversary approach that is often a part of the legal process.
I watched the OJ Simpson trial when I was a kid. I was sure he was guilty. I think his lawyers thought so as well. Once they realized the LAPD had tampered with the crime scene and the evidence they used that wedge to open the door for reasonable doubt. And they absolutely hammered at it for months. By the end the jury was full of doubt.
Most public defenders don't have the resources for that kind of defense. And most assume their client is guilty. Which is why plea bargains are prevalent.
If we don't require that from the government, the entire justice system breaks down.[1] Because once the government stops being rigorous about its methods for convicting guilty people, it can trivially start convicting innocent people.
[1] Which it largely has, given the ratio of criminal convictions that get plead out, as opposed to being litigated. Plea bargains are a blight upon justice.
"This morning the Supreme Court overturned a Louisiana inmate’s death sentence because the inmate’s lawyer – hoping to save his client’s life – had told the jury that the inmate was guilty, even though the inmate had expressly objected to that strategy."
See: https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/05/opinion-analysis-court-ru...
If the defense attorney cannot concede guilt -- but knows client is guilty -- what is he supposed to do?
Instead, the job is to argue that the prosecutor is not able to prove that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and to advocate for his client's best interest, which possibly even includes the client admitting guilt in exchange for a lesser sentence.
The legal system is convoluted enough that it requires a guide and domain-specific expertise. That doesn't mean the public defender's goal is to get them off, simply to serve as that guide and offer them the ability to understand their challenges and options.
Sometimes you're guilty as shit and it's unambiguously on camera, so the defense attorney's job is not to magically get you off -- that ain't gonna happen -- but to ensure you don't get utterly fucked over by a shitty plead deal and/or that mitigating factors are taken into considerations; e.g. "normally offenders with no record who did $crime only got $sentence; why is this twice as high?"
"Guilty" people deserve defense. Especially since, as we have seen, neither the police nor the prosecutors are above lying and fabrication.
Paul Varjak: Very good. I must say, I’m amazed.
The CA Attorney General at the time said yes. A CA Appeals Court said no.
That wasn't what the AG argued; the AG argued that case shouldn't be dismissed on those grounds. The question is closer to if the prosecutor adds incriminating statements to a confession transcript, is that grounds for dismissal.
> Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Michael P. Farrell, Assistant Attorney General, R. Todd Marshall and Larenda R. Delaini, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Appellant. Richard A. Levy, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Respondent.
Source: An attorney told me.
What a great point for lose people reading the article; from the first sentence.
