Departing assistant sets up email autoanswer taking revenge on lawyer boss. [Above the Law]
Posts Tagged ‘lawyers’
Claim: “lawyers are right to be unhappy”
They’re an expert but unloved New Class, contends Kenneth Anderson at Volokh.
“The year’s 10 most infamous lawyers”
One reason it’s not definitive: there are still fifteen days left. [Erin Geiger Smith, Business Insider]
Scott Rothstein and the legal profession’s image
The South Florida Daily Business Review finds a range of opinions:
“I don’t think he made us all look bad. I think he made lawyers wearing $5,000 suits and driving $500,000 cars look bad,” said David Markus, a Miami criminal defense attorney.
…Still, if there is only 1 percent of bad lawyers in a state with 85,000 attorneys, the public could be more than vulnerable, [Nova Southeastern law professor Robert] Jarvis said.
“That is 850 rogue attorneys. That is a lot of rogues,” Jarvis said.
(& welcome WSJ Law Blog readers)
“Ask Your Lawyer If He Carries Malpractice Insurance; You May be Surprised”
Physician-blogger Musings of a Dinosaur has some thoughts on the issue. More states are requiring lawyers to inform clients whether they carry liability insurance, according to the ABA Journal. Texas is one state where many lawyers are tenaciously trying to head off such a rule: “according to a February 2008 survey of attorneys conducted by the State Bar, 48 percent of the 6,160 attorneys who completed the survey do not have professional liability coverage.” [Texas Lawyer, White Coat]
Business expects more litigation next year
The sixth annual Fulbright & Jaworski survey finds company lawyers expect a rise in labor, employment and regulatory actions. [ABA Journal, Fulbright site leads to report, WSJ Law Blog, FCPA Professor]
“Criminal Defendant Escapes After Being Mistaken for Lawyer”
And you can ad lib your own punch line to that one [Lowering the Bar]
Judge Laurence Silberman interviewed
By Peter Robinson, at Uncommon Knowledge (site):
Lawyering is an essential component of democratic capitalism, but too much lawyering can be too much of a good thing. A disproportionate amount of our talent in the United States goes into law as opposed to business, which creates wealth. Lawyers redistribute the wealth, but they do not generally produce wealth.
Judge Silberman’s classic 1978 article, “Will Lawyering Strangle Democratic Capitalism?” — originally published at my old magazine Regulation, though before my time there — is available in PDF form from Cato here.
Related: “Scalia: ‘We Are Devoting Too Many of Our Best Minds to’ Lawyering” [WSJ Law Blog]
“Explaining the Unpopularity of Lawyers”
Missed this Volokh.com thread from a month ago on the subject. My explanation (summed up in a speech ten years ago) overlaps but does not exactly duplicate Orin Kerr’s; a wide variety of opinions get aired in the comments.
“Plaintiffs’ Firm Sued by Potential Client After Chair Collapse”
Lowering the Bar has the story of Robert Friedrich, who after being in a car accident took up the Palm Beach, Fla. firm of Fetterman & Associates on its offer of a free office consultation. “He left with more legal options than he had come in with, because during that consultation the chair he was sitting in collapsed and he hit his head on another piece of furniture in the firm’s conference room.” The resulting $2.2 million jury verdict was divided between the law firm and a furniture store; the law firm said the chair was defective and that the manufacturer should have been responsible.