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Schlitzkrieg Bop posted:There's lots of reasons someone would become a public defender (including putting in time for PSLF or building a resume to become one of those super expensive attorneys in private practice), and more lucrative areas in the private sector than criminal defense work, so I don't think you can just assume someone's motives totally based on that. Ahh yes, the well known public defender to lucrative big law attorney career track. Oh wait that never ever happens and almost everyone willing to take on the hellish life of a public defender does so because he or she is a goddamn saint. Public defenders are heroes and gently caress anyone who says otherwise.
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Jun 9, 2019 19:07
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Ahahahhha what the gently caress really It’s clear to me now that you don’t have the first clue what you are on about. Full time PDs are paid terrible salaries. Often much less than what is typical for a college graduate who did not attend law school. They don’t get paid per case, and they work for organizations like the Legal Aid Society that are not for profit, so there is no profit motive. They do a ton of cases not because that makes the “cash roll in”, but because there aren’t enough of them and so they have to do three, four, or even five hundred cases a year in many places. If that sounds loving miserable to you, I assure you there is a reason. Supplementing the full time PDs, many places also employ garbage lawyers who do get paid by case. These are bottom of the barrel lawyers who suck and couldn’t find any other work, but they aren’t PDs and if PD organizations were funded properly there wouldn’t be any need for such people. Also, research on PDs indicates that they are, in general, very good at their jobs. Significantly better results are typically found with full time PDs than with any other system for indigent counsel.
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Jun 9, 2019 20:31
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Hey guys look at that sweet sweet indigent defense cash roll inwikipedia posted:
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Jun 9, 2019 20:43
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The answer to the original thread title is a resounding “no,” by the way.
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Jun 9, 2019 21:58
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Neurosis posted:In Australia, NZ, the UK and some other Commonwealth nations barristers operate under a cab rank rule where they are expected to take work offered to them if in their field of expertise and at usual rates. I don't suppose any US states have something similar for trial attorneys? Sometimes dudes in really out of the way areas get appointed as defense counsel even though they’re previously only done like, divorces and the occasional slip and fall. Those guys tend to suck. But other than that no. We also don’t have the barrister/solicitor split. Any us layer can appear in court, though many rarely do.
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Jun 10, 2019 03:58
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Baudolino posted:But sometimes they help a vindictive and abusive husband gently caress over their terrified ex-wifes. So it`s impossible to say generally that divorce lawyers are good or bad. Or maybe they aren’t either good or bad because lawyers are not responsible for what their clients do.
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Jun 11, 2019 19:06
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VitalSigns posted:Ah the IBM defense: "we only facilitated the final solution" In other words, you think that only people who behave the way you want are entitled to legal representation. Yes I know you’ll dodge with “everyone deserves legal representation, but that doesn’t mean that lawyers who represent lovely people shouldn’t face social consequences.” So I’ll revise: you think that lawyers should have to face social opprobrium for representing people who don’t behave the way you want. But because not everyone in the country agrees with your standards of behavior, that’s going to make it harder for some people you probably do like to get fair legal representation. Let me put it this way: were the townspeople right to turn against Atticus Finch because he defended a black person accused of rape? Don’t respond “but that guy wasn’t guilty”, that hadn’t been established to the community’s satisfaction. Ogmius815 fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 21:06
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Dead Reckoning posted:If a rapist gets the charges gains him dismissed, because his lawyer gets the overwhelming physical evidence against him thrown out, because the police gathered the evidence in the course of an illegal, warrantless search, is this a Good thing, or a Bad thing? Does it matter whether the lawyer was a PD, Pro Bono, or paid? It’s a necessary evil to control the police and prevent illegal searches from happening in the future. In other words, it’s good, but only in the comparative sense that the alternative is that there is no real incentive for the police to take out fourth amendment rights seriously. SCOTUS jurisprudence confirms this. Note, for example, that we don’t apply changes to criminal procedure rules retroactively. If you are convicted based on evidence produced by a search that was probably legal at the time it happened, you won’t get out of prison just because the Supreme Court later made a rule under which the search would have been illegal. twodot posted:Lawyers that have the ability to pick and choose their clients are responsible for how they pick and choose clients. If a professional picks and chooses horrible monsters to pay them for their services, I will always hold them accountable for that. You can choose otherwise, but you can't ignore the lawyer is making choices here. I don’t disagree that the lawyer makes a choice. I’m saying that choice is morally neutral. That’s an official doctrine of legal ethics, by the way. Lawyers are not morally responsible for the positions they take on behalf of their clients. I understand why that seems uncomfortable (especially from the purity obsessed and extraordinarily self-righteous perspective of the current D&D majority), but we think that way for a reason. That reason is that we want people who society disapproves of to be able to obtain legal representation. Sometimes society is full of it, you see.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:19
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twodot posted:This can only be true if you also agree that poor people are fundamentally unable to get fair legal representation in the current system, in which case I don't much care about degrading the ability of rich people to get fair legal representation. No not really. Because the context of this remark is about divorce attorneys (the poster up thread said that divorce attorneys who represent abusive husbands are bad). Nobody gets a free divorce attorney just because they’re poor. You ether pay for one or you don’t get one. The quote about rich people is very telling here, by the way. It’s very clear don’t actually care about due process. You just want to hurt the people you don’t like. I understand. That’s a very common human moral failing.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:24
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VitalSigns posted:No I support a system of public defenders who are required to defend anyone they are asked to defend. But that doesn’t work outside the very narrow case of criminal defense work. Should we also have a massive system of free civil litigators? I don’t think that’s workable.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:25
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twodot posted:We all want this. Not a single person in this thread has ever argued bad people should not be able to obtain legal representation. Then you’re missing my point, which is that if we make the rule that a lawyer should face social opprobrium for representing clients that society finds to be nasty, it will be harder for all of society’s outsiders to obtain good representation.
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Jun 11, 2019 21:34
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VitalSigns posted:This is an argument for forcing lawyers to represent anyone and everyone. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not. I note, however, that it’s actually something of a leap from “no lawyer should face social condemnation because he represented a misbehaving client in an ugly case” to “no lawyer should ever have to opportunity to turn down any client”. How would you enforce that? Is there no room for specialization? Can I make Davis Polk represent me when I slip on pee pee at the megalomart? Can I make those Pacific Legal guys represent me in my pro-LGBT Title VII test case?
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Jun 11, 2019 21:47
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twodot posted:Is your imagination so limited? Lawyers have to register to do their job, you just make the registering body responsible for handing out assignments with an appeals process. Like public defenders manage to exist somehow, I'll admit ignorance to how specifically they are assigned cases, but there is clearly prior art out there. So basically every lawyer should be a public official who works for the government, like a public defender. So there are about 1.3 million lawyers in the US right now. Whether there are too many or too few is a matter of some debate (on one hand, there don’t seem to be jobs for all newly graduating lawyers, on the other hand there don’t seem to be enough lawyers to ensure everyone who needs legal representation can get it at a reasonable price). So let’s be conservative and say that the government would directly or indirectly employ ~1 million lawyers under this system. That’s already about half the size of the current federal civilian workforce. But whatever, let’s assume it would work. Fine. Done. In the absence of such a system (since it doesn’t exist today, won’t exist next year, and almost definitely won’t exist next decade either and we have to deal with reality) surely you can see the point that as things stand today, running lawyers out on a rail because they represented “bad” clients is just going to make attorneys think twice before they take on clients that society thinks are “bad”, some of whom are worthy of protection?
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Jun 11, 2019 22:20
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twodot posted:Also very much lol at "some of whom are worthy of protection". You dropped the act too early. I absolutely and completely agree that we need to do more to help people get affordable quality legal representation. My entire point is that the practice of punishing a lawyer socially because you don’t like his client will only exacerbate this problem. Look, I understand you don’t like it that people with money can sometimes make things work out better for them because they can pay good lawyers. But that’s just a problem with inequality in general. It isn’t a reason to stick it to rich people by trying to get their lawyers fired from their jobs, which will just make the whole problem worse, as I’ve explained.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:30
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twodot posted:It is worth the cost. And if rich horrible monsters find their circumstances so dire that their situation is approximately equal to a poor person, perhaps they can work to reform the system so that everyone has good representation regardless of access to wealth. It’s interesting to note the set of priorities that’s clear from this post. It’s fine to make it harder for poor and vulnerable people to obtain legal representation if we can just stick it to rich people and their lawyers a bit. I don’t agree at all and I’m sure glad you aren’t in charge of anything.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:41
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twodot posted:Calling Weinstein's lawyers dirtbags does literally no harm to anyone poor or vulnerable. Hope that helps. You’ve stopped bothering to engage with my point. I really love this discussion because it illustrates more broadly the general imperative at work in D&D right now, which is that the most important part of morality is pointing the a finger at bad people and condemning them. It doesn’t matter if the condemnation will make things better or worse for anyone, the point is just to be maximally self righteous all the time. I think it’s becoming gross and toxic.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:46
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Schubalts posted:The point is that "punish a lawyer because ~the community~ doesn't like their clients" doesn't apply only to rich people's lawyers. Ding ding ding.
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Jun 11, 2019 22:55
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Let’s say that ten minutes after the end of Philadelphia Denzel goes to his church. At the risk of buying into a dangerous stereotype, let’s say this church’s congregation doesn’t like gay people very much and isn’t very concerned about protecting the rights of people with AIDS (it is the ‘80s after all). So now Denzel’s pastor confronts him for representing that gay AIDS patient (Hanks) in his employment discrimination suit against his old law firm alleging that they fired him because he had AIDS. This thread wants a lawyer to have a moral obligation to be answerable for his client’s deeds and legal positions. Under this framework, Denzel has no good defense. If he can’t convince his pastor overnight that it’s okay to be gay and AIDS patients deserve legal protection (something that probably will take he community about three more decades to accept and WHICH HE HIMSELF IS NOT ENTIRELY CONVINCED OF AT THE END OF THE MOVIE) he will have to accept that, in the eyes of the congregation, he did a moral wrong and made the world worse with his legal advocacy by making it harder to discriminate against gay people with AIDS. Moreover, Denzel knows that and will be less likely to take the case. If there were a strong presumption that a lawyer need not answer for his client’s inckiness to the community, this isn’t a problem.
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Jun 11, 2019 23:25
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I mean if the masterstroke argument here is going to be “it doesn’t really matter what moral precepts we adopt” this entire discussion is pointless and no one making that argument should ever be allowed to make a moral argument in D&D ever again.
Ogmius815 fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Jun 11, 2019 |
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Jun 11, 2019 23:38
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twodot posted:My rule is "lawyers should be judged for the clients they pick and also people shouldn't hate on gay people" which seems to make everyone better off. Okay, but this leaves you with no good response when people start condemning lawyers who defend clients they think are icky but who you want to protect. You might say those people are wrong, but that won’t matter to the lawyers in their community, who have to live and make their reputations by the standards of their community, not twodot’s master moral codex that is always right. If, on the other hand, everyone follows he moral rule I prefer, there will be no problem. Except of course, for the problem that it’ll be harder for Twitter mobs and self righteous teenagers to get people fired. What a shame.
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Jun 11, 2019 23:45
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OwlFancier posted:I've got a great response it's gently caress the rich lol. See the problem with arguing with you is exactly that you don’t have any principles other than that you hate rich people and want to hurt them. You’re a conservative’s parody of a progressive.
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Jun 12, 2019 00:02
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twodot posted:If everyone follows my master moral codex then I'm happy and I don't really give a poo poo the bigots got brainwashed. You are correctly pointing out I can't convince everyone to do what I want, but that applies equally to you as to me. Not everyone will follow the rule you prefer. Behold! Weinstein's lawyers are dirtbags. Now given we both understand we can't convince everyone to do what we want, explain to me how me saying Weinstein's lawyers are dirtbags causes an ounce of harm to any vulnerable or poor person. So trying to make rules for ethics is pointless because not everyone will follow them. Hmm.
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Jun 12, 2019 00:08
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OwlFancier posted:You're arguing that it's immoral to attack the inequality in the justice system on the basis that it will hurt the people who are already being hurt by said inequality, and therefore we should all be nice and not challenge it, which will help them, in the face of loving reality. Which is that it does absolutely nothing to help people. Getting someone fired because you don’t like their client is not “attacking the inequality in the justice system”. As I have explained a thousand times, that kind of thinking actually tends to make the justice system less equal. I know that you are very used to justifying your vindictiveness as a crusade against injustice, but it doesn’t make sense here.
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Jun 12, 2019 00:10
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Here’s a good question: are posters like OwlFancier interested in the consistency of their reasoning? Are they interested in basing their positions on a set of more or less consistent ethical ideas? I ask because when I suggested we should consider universalizing our reasoning (a very common tool in ethical debate) I was accuse of playing Lord of the Universe who Makes the Rules. Also given some of his posting I am worried that OwlFancier specifically isn’t interested in any discussion of legal ethics and all of his positions are just a facade for his true maxim “hurt rich people”.
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Jun 12, 2019 16:04
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VitalSigns posted:That's not what universalizing our reasoning means. But one of the bedrock ideas of the legal system is that it’s inappropriate to make these kinds of value judgments before the fact. This is just as stupid as the people who say that people who “definitely” committed what they deem to be sufficiently serious crimes can be properly denied due process.
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Jun 12, 2019 16:31
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You also haven’t bothered to deal with the fact that not all communities will agree with your sense of who is a hero and who is a scumbag. That doesn’t seem to trouble you because for some weird you seem to assume the mob will always be on your side. That’s dumb and you’re dumb. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 12, 2019 16:37
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VitalSigns posted:Ok and? My point is that “he defended someone I don’t approve of” is not a legitimate reason to declare that someone is a scumbag. You say it is. I ask you not to think that way because I say that such reasoning leads to pressure on lawyers to avoid socially suspect clients, which is bad because socially suspect clients are often not bad but merely disapproved of. I further say that even when clients are actually bad, I want them to be able to obtain good representation because due process isn’t just for nice people. You will reply again “but i only want to condemn the bad people, I would never condemn a lawyer for defending someone good!” Which will again miss the point that nonetheless your legitimation of this kind of reasoning is problematic because (and this is the part I think you might be having trouble with) there is no stone tablet anywhere spelling out your particular sense of morality and one person’s hero is another’s scumbag, so in order to prevent a social environment where lawyers do not want to take on socially undesirable clients, you will have to convince the community at large that your exact sense of morality is correct in a particular situation. That is a monumentally more difficult task than simply convincing them of a principle which is already a fundamental and widely acknowledge principle of legal ethics which is that a lawyer is not morally responsible for his clients and the positions he takes on their behalf. I know that is diffuse to accept because it makes it harder to be self righteous, and being self righteous is your raisin d’etre. I’m not sympathetic.
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Jun 12, 2019 17:25
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Who is even hiring criminal defense lawyers from huge law firms? I know and have worked with a ton of young big law associates. Many are good friends. But with maybe one exception none of them would know the inside of a courtroom from their rear end in a top hat. And that one only works on patent trials.
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Jun 13, 2019 02:33
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Resolving disputes without violence: a necessary evil that wastes money.
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Jun 13, 2019 16:03
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Nevvy Z posted:Cause and effect reversed here. Draft all private defense attorneys. The funny thing is that’s basically what happens a lot of the time. Get yourself on the CJA list and watch all the judges in your district send a parade of terrible, terrible clients to your door. (Not literally of course, because almost all of them will be in jail, but you know what I mean).
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Jun 14, 2019 00:14
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