Until now, we’ve ignored a small left-wing think-tank’s admitted attempt to create a Bizarro-world version of Overlawyered. The writers are a recent college graduate and a recent law-school graduate who don’t appear to have actually read anything reformers write in support of reform. (For example, one post links to Overlawyered when defending the infamous McDonald’s coffee lawsuit, but fails to address any of Overlawyered’s arguments for why the McDonald’s coffee case is meritless, and simply repeats ATLA propaganda that Overlawyered refuted.) The blog has consisted mostly of thoughtless regurgitation of trial-lawyer talking points; when original analysis is attempted, it rises to the level of self-parody, such as an analysis of Leonard v. Nationwide (see POL Sep. 7 and links therein) that ignores the language of the insurance policy, the relevant Mississippi precedent, the existing discussion in the blogosphere, and any semblance of public policy rationalization in lieu of a Wikipedia definition to argue that the decision (and the defendant) are racist because some African-American plaintiffs might lose as a result.
Another such post is Justinian Lane’s “The Myth of the Frivolous Lawsuit.” The standard trial-lawyer talking point on such issues is to redefine “frivolous lawsuit” to consist of an exceedingly narrow subset of what it is laypeople are talking about when using the term “frivolous lawsuits,” note that the legal system has some mechanisms to address this narrow subset of cases, and then conclude that there’s no problem and thus no need for reform. (Or, as per John Edwards, announce Potemkin legislation to tackle this artificially constrained set of “frivolous lawsuits” that does nothing to actually address the problems of the tort system.) But Lane, perhaps because of his unfamiliarity with the legal system, bites off more than he can chew and inadvertently proves the reformers’ point.