Talk:Lawyer/Archive 3

Why LegalEagle1798's content is inappropriate

LegalEagle1798's proposed content violates all of the following Wikipedia official policies:

• Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not
• Wikipedia:No original research
• Wikipedia:Verifiability
• Wikipedia:Neutral point of view

I have repeatedly urged LegalEagle1798 to get out of the house and go to a public library and read some of the excellent scholarly critiques of the legal profession, such as Richard Abel's American Lawyers, Jerold Auerbach's Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America, Mary Ann Glendon's A Nation Under Lawyers: How The Crisis In The Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society, and Anthony Kronman's The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideas of the Legal Profession. These are verifiable, neutral sources by prominent lawyers and law professors. They are all incisive, insightful and well-researched critiques of the American legal profession's well-known structural problems, unlike LegalEagle's rambling, disorganized collection of silly anecdotes. Furthermore, as Richard Abel points out in his book on Lawyers In Society: The Civil Law World, it is actually impossible to directly compare the number of American lawyers to the number of lawyers in other countries. Relatively few countries share the American concept of the lawyer as a general-purpose advocate, counselor, conveyancer, and writer. Rather, they have a large community of jurists who share the tasks of the American lawyer, in various proportions depending upon each country.

My suspicion is that LegalEagle1798 is either too young, old, disabled, poor, or uneducated to use a public library, thus explaining his or her reliance on the low-quality sources generally available on the public Web. Most high-quality sources are available only in hard copy in libraries or in expensive private databases like LexisNexis. If so, please do not contribute to Wikipedia unless and until you are capable of providing minimally decent-quality content that complies with Wikipedia policies and guidelines. See Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines.

For an example of a well-researched article, see Roger J. Traynor. I was able to obtain almost all of the sources for this article from private research databases accessible from home through my account at the Santa Clara County Library (usually rated number 1 among library systems in its size category). Only two sources (the History of the California Supreme Court book and the History of American Law book) required a visit to a library in person.

Also see Wikipedia:How to write a great article, which I have made major contributions to. --Coolcaesar 18:30, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Typical of a lawyer to suggest only critiques written by lawyers and law professors. To call them "neutral sources," if all written by lawyers, is pretty biased itself. These writers do not have legal biases? You need criticism from outside of the system if you want to maintain a degree of neutrality.

While some of the criticisms by LegalEagle are admittedly emotional in tone, they do convey what most people are concerned about in terms of the legal system. But it's not the legal system that is entirely to blame. If there are many malicious lawsuits designed to appease plaintiff's egos and make them feel victorious, that is because there are many malicious people who are willing to engage in them. If people were willing to hear each other, step in each other's shoes, love their enemies, etc., there would of course be fewer lawsuits, and fewer lawyers - but this is primarily the fault of the people/our hostile culture, not lawyers. Of course many lawyers take advantage of it; but there are others who redirect people to dispute resoultion even if it means they don't get the case.

People have to change, but so do lawyers. They have to be trained differently: to value ethics over victory, integrety over money. That's difficult when the law profession's biggest appeal is salary. And lawyers are people like anyone else - they wish to make money, and tailor their belief systems to what is most profitable, like any business. So don't pick on lawyers, when the whole of human society is to blame.

The U.S. does have a problem with being trigger-happy to litigation, which is I think related to it's trigger-happy to use guns problem, and its trigger-happy to fight foreign wars problem (not to mention the need to get rich problem). There seems to be a lot of hostility or need for power in the U.S. - true of people anywhere, but the U.S. seems worse than other nations. Other nations have less litigation, fewer murders, fight fewer wars, and are less profit-oriented. I don't know why this is the case, but my guess is that a country that is used to getting its way by flexing its muscles teaches its citizens to do the same, and this is manifested on the streets, in the boardrooms, and in the courthouses.

If there is one area lawyers are to blame, it's the unwillingness to see that they have a problem. I'm sure there are many who do see this, but too many others love their system too much to see it - most notable in judges' comments, which echo how naive they are about the supposed virtues of the system that, in many cases, they love because it gives them so much wealth and power. The most naive comment I hear is that the system is somehow democratic, that it reflects the will of the people; when really it reflects the will of the legal establishment, and the people are powerless to change it. So lawyers need to see they have a problem. But so does everyone else. 24.64.223.203 06:45, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Uh, actually, most people who become judges are taking a huge pay cut. Usually, an experienced litigator with the qualifications to become a federal judge — top 20 law school, clerkship with a federal appeals judge, Order of the Coif, law review, moot court, 10 years of experience at AmLaw 200 firm, lots of friends in the dominant political party — could be making twice as much in private practice than what they will earn as a judge. But I have to concede that the power to order around their former colleagues is probably a big draw for at least some people. I remember talking with classmates in law school and getting the impression that I will be arguing in front of them someday.

Also, as for the alleged unwillingness to see a problem, there are actually a lot of books about what is wrong with the American legal profession that have been written by lawyers (just go search Amazon.com for the books I mentioned and notice all the cross-references offered). Also, Professor Abel has pointed out that bar associations have become much more vigorous in regulating lawyers since the 1980s because there has been so much criticism of lawyers in recent decades (especially after Watergate). But you're probably right that there are still many lawyers on both sides of the political spectrum that are still in denial about the profession's problems.

Finally, you've made some cogent points, but that still doesn't respond to the underlying issue of how LegalEagle's proposed content fails to comply with core Wikipedia policies. --Coolcaesar 09:38, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I tried (rather unsuccessfully) to remove a rather incoherent rant about lawyers that is entirely one-sided, entitled "too many lawyers". It begins by citing the number of google hits for that sub-heading -- which strikes me as being rather odd, surely irrelevant for a general (non web) article such as this? At best it should go under the public perception of lawyers, since google won't tell you much else. The rest is rather peculiar: we have numbers of lawyers per person in a selection of jurisdictions (without sources -- one wonders if England is supposed to be England and Wales or not). Then a series of negative quotes about lawyers is added -- without any attempt to put an alternative POV. Surely this is straight POV stuff and shouldn't be here? Francis Davey 21:49, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Your first post deleting my contribution indicated "some parts of it might be informative". The rules of Wikipedia state "Be respectful to others and their points of view. This means primarily: Do not simply revert changes in a dispute. When someone makes an edit you consider biased or inaccurate, improve the edit, rather than reverting it."

Do you have sources for the figures for numbers of lawyers per head? I tried to do a calculation for England and Wales, and couldn't get anything like your fitures. It would help if you said what a "lawyer" was in context, since its not clear whether you mean a member of one of the 4 legal professions in England and Wales, or someone with a law degree who does legal work (which is a much larger number). Its hard to see how some of your criticisms could apply (for example) to legislative drafters -- a job which many lawyers are employed to do, though most are not members of a legal profession. Francis Davey 08:38, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Certainly, it is beyond dispute that two of the major criticisms directed at lawyers are that there are too many of them and the costs of litigation to society. Trying to block any mention of these problems in this article by simply finding some criticism with my contribution and then just deleting the whole thing is dishonest. In the spirit of Wikipedia, something should go into the article on these points and if there are problems with the contribution, they should be corrected. It is the policy of Wikipedia to discourage the outright deletions of good faith edits.LegalEagle1798 02:19, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

The point is you quote exact figures. I assume you got them from somewhere. The question I asked above was where. Note: I didn't revert the article when you replaced what you wrote, I asked the question above. I tried to work out a number for my own jurisdiction and couldn't get near to yours. For the sake of accuracy, where did you get your numbers from? Francis Davey 07:49, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Earlier in this section, there is a well written response by user 24.64.223.203. I disagree with the post to some extent. I believe the problem with lawyers is systemic to the legal system, and this writer is throwing much of the blame on the people that are not lawyers. I see a legal system designed to prey and profit on the people's worst impulses. Nevertheless, these issues cannot be ignored if this article is to remain in the realm of reality.

Coolceaser, who to say the least has seriously broken the rule regarding being respectful to others has threatened to block me. Does he have this authority? If he does, he shouldn't. I think Coolceaser should be blocked for his lack of respect to other editors.LegalEagle1798 00:37, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I concur with you that the section should be removed. It is not cited to any reputable source, it is totally incoherent, and it does not comply with Wikipedia policy for the same reasons I stated above in January. User LegalEagle is a vandal and should be blocked indefinitely for failing to comply with Wikipedia policy and failing to act in good faith. I will attempt to remove that garbage. If that clown wishes to get into an edit war, so be it. --Coolcaesar 03:52, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I have expressed my view of LegalEagle1798's latest vandalism and bad faith behavior at User talk:LegalEagle1798. --Coolcaesar 04:07, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

As usual, LegalEagle1798 has directed his/her response to other users' behavior rather than providing a coherent explanation of how his/her suggested content is in line with Wikipedia policy.

Stick to the issues, please. As my first year Lawyering Skills instructor always liked to say, "Counsel, do you have authority for that assertion?" If you don't have citations to back up your assertions, just say so. If you can't think of an intelligent way to connect your disconnected, rambling edits into a coherent passage, say so. Then we can agree to keep LegalEagle1798's edits out of the article, since as noted, the article as written by me already contains a cogent summary of the critiques of the legal profession and citations to numerous sources (just look at the footnotes). --Coolcaesar 18:53, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Public perception of lawyers

Dear fellow editors: I have moved some material regarding public perception of lawyers down a bit in the article, and recategorized it under its own heading. Also, in my opinion, some of this stuff really needs some sourcing or backup. Without citations it looks a bit "POV-ish." As a lawyer myself I have to say that unfortunately the polls that are taken of the public probably do back up the statements in the article about the negative public perception of lawyers as a group. However, to improve the article we probably should actually add citations to some of those polls. Perhaps some of my fellow editors can locate some source material before I do. Also, see the discussions above regarding critics of lawyers, etc. Yours, Famspear 15:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I am still working on my massive rewrite (see discussion above), which at this pace will probably be done in August! Unfortunately, I'm really busy with other priorities right now. Yes, I am looking for sources on the issue of the negative public perception of lawyers. And yes, I am also looking for other sources that were not edited by Richard Abel. Plus there is the problem of how I just discovered that there is a new way of doing references inline which is much easier to maintain (but now I have to rewrite all my references to that format). --Coolcaesar 06:28, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

New version is done

I had some free time in the public library today and decided to just get the revision over with. I look forward to what everyone thinks! --Coolcaesar 23:07, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, the main article should differentiate between common law and civil law countries early on in the text. Most of the "some countries do (whatever), others do (something else)" comments found in the 'tasks' of lawyers can be scrapped then, because (as described in the end of the current article) there is a very fundamental split in the history of both types of legal systems. --Thuenor 21:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. If you read the old version [1], you will notice that the vast majority of the article deals with too many technical details about lawyer education and regulation in individual countries and not enough about what lawyers actually do in general. Furthermore, too many tasks are mentioned for a few countries but their actual nature is not explained. For example, most non-lawyers do not know what conveyancing is, even though it has historically sustained the practices of a large number of British solicitors.

The point of the new version was to explain in plain English what the hell lawyers do with their (very) expensive time, and emphasizing things common to the legal professions worldwide, while noting the variety of interesting local variations, and deemphasizing the common law/civil law split.

Few non-lawyers (the majority of Wikipedia's readers) know or care about the split or its implications for the legal professions, even though most lawyers are well aware of it. Wikipedia is supposed to be accessible to a general audience, not just technical specialists. Furthermore, putting back in a common law/civil law split into the article would not solve the problem. Over time, as various editors work on it, the article would eventually go back to being twice as complicated, with separate sections for fully describing all the things common law lawyers do, and all the things civil law jurists do. That might be more elegant from some lawyers' point of view, but such redundancy would thoroughly confuse laypersons, most of whom simply don't understand the difference between common and civil law (try explaining it to them sometime). --Coolcaesar 23:49, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Of course, another way to solve this problem is to simply limit the definition of lawyer in this article to its actual meaning in English of a general-purpose legal provider, which would mean that all the stuff about civil law lawyers would have to be transferred to Jurist. That is, the article could begin with an explanation that there is no such thing as a lawyer per se in civil law countries, which is true, and then refer people interested in those countries to the Jurist article. But that would be really offensive to civil law advocates, some of whom do consider themselves to be lawyers even if the term does not exist in their languages. Plus it would be a lot of work to reorganize both articles. --Coolcaesar 00:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Coolcaesar's proposed solution "to simply limit the definition of lawyer in this article to its actual meaning in English of a general-purpose legal provider, which would mean that all the stuff about civil law lawyers would have to be transferred to Jurist" would be too restrictive in my view. It would unfortunately result in the article only being about common law lawyers in fused profession jurisdictions (such as U.S. and the Canadian common law provinces). The scope of that definition would exclude lawyers in common law jurisdictions where there are separate barrister and solicitor professions for lawyers (such as in England and much of the Commonwealth). --Aquarius Rising 00:21, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, actually I should have been clearer about how the term "lawyer" does encompass jurisdictions with a dual split like England (that is, the word encompasses both "solicitor" and "barrister") but not civil law jurisdictions like France or Germany or Japan where is a whole zoo of many different types of jurists (ranging from advocates to notaries to scriveners to clerks to judges). But again, the point is that (1) it would be a lot of work and (2) it would be really offensive to a lot of civil law people (particularly advocates, who like to call themselves lawyers in English when they're technically advocates).

Then we would have huge edit wars with them, and we would have to keep teaching them that the word "lawyer" is not the right word in English for themselves. We already have huge edit wars in articles like Global city on a daily basis. Keep in mind that as written, the current version of the article has been very stable in contrast to the old version.

Also, after doing more reading on some online databases, I just realized that the situation in England and Wales is not as simple as just the solicitor/barrister split, because you have Legal Executives who evolved out of the separate field of solicitor clerks but can now practice law like solicitors. So it's a three-ring circus.

In contrast, American paralegals must always practice under the supervision of a licensed attorney or else they can be prosecuted for unauthorized practice of law (and they have been on many occasions). Plus, they are generally not considered to be part of the legal profession per se; rather, they are part of a "paraprofession" which is kind of "parasitic" or dependent upon the real legal profession.

So it seems to me that almost every jurisdiction (common and civil) has its own unique way of dividing tasks among different branches of the legal profession and there is no easy way to generalize. That's already the point of the article as it stands, because I wrote it with that conclusion in mind (since it was the conclusion of the massive comparative sociological study by Richard Abel which is the source for much of the current version). Therefore, I see no need for changing it. --Coolcaesar 16:18, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I ran across Lawrence Friedman's 2003 book on Legal Culture in the Age of Globalization in the public law library today and took notes. It's much more recent than Abel's works. For example, the French legal profession was completely unified in 1990-1991. I will add some cites to Friedman when I have the time. Then I can nominate this thing as a featured article! --Coolcaesar 18:22, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Images could be an issue

I understand why someone recently added an image request tag, but that might raise a lot of difficulties. Do we show photos of famous lawyers? Non-famous lawyers? Quite a hairball of an issue if you ask me. --Coolcaesar 20:27, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Found some history sources

More changes coming to the article---after thinking a lot about the criticism in the featured article nomination process, I found some history sources at the local public library last night. They're rather specific, but I think I can weave together a crude outline of the history of lawyers over the weekend. Also, I discovered that the UK was as screwed up as the civil law countries until the late 19th century, and there were at four to six different types of lawyers at certain points in UK history. The only reason the U.S. didn't follow the UK was because the colonial market wasn't big enough to support five or six different types of legal professionals, so John Adams complained in his writings about having to work in all those roles (which were ultimately absorbed into the role of the modern American attorney). Only at the end of the 19th century there was a collapse down to the solicitor/barrister distinction. So I'll have to revise the intro dramatically to reflect that.--Coolcaesar 18:25, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

If you'd like to discuss with me by email (fjmd1@yahoo.co.uk) I'd be more than happy to. I know a great deal about English legal history and have some references for the history of the legal profession here. Incidentally: (1) it might be a little POV to say it is "screwed up", there are *good* things about having split professions, at least I think so 8-); (2) in a sense we have a number of legal professions here (barrister, legal executive, licensed conveyancer, notary, scrivener, solicitor) some old, some new. Francis Davey 19:04, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the offer, but I would prefer to keep the discussion on the development of the history section on this talk page rather than moving it to a private email conversation. This is so that anyone else who knows about legal history can monitor the discussion and jump in if they have any good information to add. --Coolcaesar 23:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

OK Francis Davey 13:17, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Got the history section started

Of course, I'm still looking for books on Roman lawyers (analyzing them together as a profession, not the lives of individuals like Cicero). I already have sources on the history of English, American, and Castilian lawyers which I will add later when I have the time (today I'm too busy). Once I have the Roman stuff then everything else will be a piece of cake. --Coolcaesar 21:05, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Now that I have some info on Roman lawyers in the article, the next step is to find information on lawyers in the Dark Ages and early medieval period. I think filling that gap will be the hardest, since it's an obscure subject. I'm also still thinking of ways to restructure the whole intro part to explain how most countries including England have traditionally had a very confusing division of the legal profession and the fused or united profession is relatively recent. The biggest problem is all the citations already embedded in that section; any rewrite of the section will require adjustments to all downstream citations so they will still make sense. --Coolcaesar 23:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Two points. First, its important that the history section doesn't, by being in temporal order (which makes sense) give the impression that there is any historical continuity from old to new legal professions. Certainly, there is no evidence in England that the legal profession grew out of anything older (well most of it). Second, please be careful about being too POV, a "very confusing division of the legal profession" may be true for you, but its a POV statement. I am sure you wouldn't let it leak into the article 8-). Seriously the attorney v pleader distinction is logical and has its advantages. I accept that where several systems of law operate, having different professionals in each forum seems confusing. Francis Davey 13:47, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

define lawyer

Hiya Cool. If "lawyers I mean people who actually advocate in court on behalf of others" then you need to retitle the article to "advocate" or something. Lawyering is definitely broader than court advocates. Judges are lawyers. rewinn 05:18, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

In British English and Commonwealth English, yes, but not in American English. In American English, a judge loses his status as a lawyer when he dons the robe and assumes the bench. A lawyer is partial, zealous, and creative on behalf of his client; a judge is impartial and careful to avoid showing bias towards either side. A judge can return to his status as a lawyer by resigning his position, but while he is on the bench he cannot act as a lawyer.

The term you are looking for that refers to all law-trained persons (advocate, counselor, judge, legislator, law clerk, professor, etc.) is jurist. Also, the advantage of using the narrow American definition is that it avoids the Whiggish imposition (see Whig history) modern concepts upon older generations that did not conceptualize the profession in those terms.

Except that, the concept of "practising law" as an activity - and therefore having a name to refer to a group of people who do so, is a US invention and was not present in older England (where the bulk of your profession originates). There was no tight notion of being "a lawyer" anyone could, and indeed mostly can, give legal advice without any kind of state interference or regulation. The term "lawyer" in the form of this page is a US concept which has no real meaning in my jurisdiction. The term jurist is not used here at all - again I have no idea what it would mean, I am not sure its the right word. The reason US lawyers get confused about this is because they imagine that everywhere else is like the US: having a concept that matches a US lawyer, that's just not true. We don't. Many other places don't. I think you have your Whiggishness the wrong way around 8-). Francis Davey 19:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Concerning American lawyers: Judges are lawyers. They cannot advocate for parties while on the bench. Part-time judges can perform lawyering under appropriate conditions. rewinn 20:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)