Saturday, June 12, 2010

Legal Hubris

I followed a link talking about the hubris of would-be lawyers. Sounds like they're perfectly suited to be lawyers, if hubris is one of the qualifications. I'd be more likely to say that lawyers are full of crap, but hubris is a good enough word for educated folks.

Then I followed another link to an article about some kid killing time by going to law school.
But why would you make a major career decision on the basis of “kill[ing] time”? For the rest of his life, he’ll be typecast as a lawyer,
Good question. Why anyone would want to be a lawyer, which is just barely better than a labor union leader, according to some polls? I'll answer that question. It's pretty easy from what I've seen. Just about any idiot can become a lawyer if he or she is willing to put up with the bullshit, and has enough hubris.

Then this guy really pisses me off.
I mean, it’s pretty easy to kill a man, and I’m sure being lethal has benefits in lots of areas of life. But you wouldn’t sign up for U.S. Army training without having at least a basic understanding of what soldiers do and what challenges soldiers are likely to face. Boot camp isn’t something you do to “kill time.”
Oh, you think it's easy? Sounds just like a god-damned lawyer. Worthless sonofabitch! When did you serve? You have no clue why someone would join the Army. Many thousands of young men and women have joined when they couldn't see any other way out of a bad situation, either home, or job, or personal. Yet they served. Honorably.

The profession of arms is a profession of honor, and I won't be besmirched by being compared to an ambulance-chasing, drunk defending lawyer. My profession revolves around concepts like duty, and honor, and service.

There are some things that no honorable person would defend, and I've seen nothing that some lawyers won't defend.

Hubris, indeed.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dont hold back now....

Old NFO said...

I'd have to agree Paw- One of my junior pilots got out after his 7 years of active duty, and is now a big time Maritime Lawyer in NYC. We had a get together last year, and he showed up. He admitted he makes 'real' good money, but he told everybody he truly regretted not finishing his career... He said something to the effect of, "This camaraderie is something you will NEVER see in a law firm. They don't understand anything except money and winning cases." He also said we (now 26 years later) were STILL better friends than he had at the law firm where he's worked for 20 years...

Rivrdog said...

Duty, Honor, Country? Are those concepts even IN a law dictionary?

BTW, there is quite the legion of those claiming to represent BOTH factions here. Don't look now but they are ruining, er, running our war in the Stans.

A plague on them all.

J said...

One of the most interesting books I ever read was *Strangers on a Bridge* by James B. Donovan, the lawyer who defended Russian Col Rudolf Abel for spying. Donovan did his duty--he defended Abel to the best of his ability like lawyers are supposed to do.

Here's the old now declassified CIA review of the book:

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol9no3/html/v09i3a12p_0001.htm