PeteM wrote:Sounds like it's just (or mostly) you.
Lots of forums expect a minimum level of understanding the field to participate -- and may not appreciate "stupid" questions. True enough, the 'net isn't always polite -- especially if someone enters with an attitude.
I didn't enter with an attitude or ask a stupid question. Even if I had, it doesn't make off-the-wall rudeness a good thing.
People are getting really clannish on this thread. I try to avoid that. I don't think you can say anything worse about lawyers than the things I said.
My experience of engineers is in stark contrast to yours. They tend to be genuinely curious, willing to help in their communities, great and trustworthy friends, with long-lasting family relationships. Could be because I don't start with thinking they're "generally borderline sociopaths."
Well, sorry about that. I was a wee bit over the top with that. I had just come from a forum where a bunch of incredibly rude nerds, including a moderator, were insulting me for no reason. I gave them almost nothing to work with. I didn't respond in kind. They kept it up anyway, even after I left. And it was far from the first time something like that had happened to me (or been witnessed by me) with regard to technical people. I didn't get a physics degree and a math minor without learning a little bit about the left-brain community.
I went there thinking, "I know how these people act on forums, but if I'm careful to be as inoffensive and brief as possible, maybe they will be civil and I can get a quick answer to a simple question." When they confirmed my worst expectations, I was really put out. You know how it feels when someone has been an ass over and over, and you give them one more chance, and they blow it.
Lawyers are among the least trusted occupations.
Trust and manners are different things.
If people don't trust lawyers, it shows how poorly they understand us. They have no idea what we do, but they think they could do our jobs. They can't understand why we earn a good wage, but they feel entitled to resent us for it anyway. When we win or lose, they don't understand why. They have to blame someone other than themselves. They think it was deceit or voodoo or something. And if you try to explain, most people will get emotional so you can't get past the first sentence.
Sometimes a litigant or defendant should just say, "Hmm...maybe I should have paid my child support instead of getting drunk every day. Maybe I shouldn't have stolen from my partner. Maybe I shouldn't have beaten my wife in the front yard." But it's easier to say a sleazy lawyer took advantage of you with mystical legal sorcery.
I saw a defendant get sentenced for murder, and his dad immediately threatened to kill a detective, in the courtroom! Talk about dishonest. He couldn't blame his son for blowing his wife's head off and going out for a beer (and leaving the bloody corpse where it sat in the trailer), so he found a scapegoat. At least it was an armed cop instead of the prosecutor.
Lawyers are not particularly dishonest. They are very honest compared to the people they work with, because you have to be fairly honest in order to avoid becoming an outcast. Also, you can be suspended or disbarred for lying. It happens every day, as you will see if you go to a bar association website and look at the disciplinary actions.
If you spend or "borrow" one cent of a client's money when it's in your care, you can pretty much count on disbarment.
When lawyers are dishonest, it's usually rationalization, not outright lying. They take cases they know are worthless, and they convince themselves they're great. Sometimes they convince themselves their creepy clients are good people who need to be vindicated. They try not to think about the credibility of their witnesses.
CLIENTS are dishonest. They lie like crazy, all day, every day. They lie to their opponents. They lie to the cops. They lie to judges. Then they lie to their lawyers. And lots of them don't pay their bills. That's why lawyers like retainers. If clients were honest, retainers would be considered unethical.
Really, you can't imagine what it's like until you've been there. In a civil case, you have NO idea what the facts are until your client is deposed or you depose the people on the other side, because your client will tell you absolutely anything in order to win. I had a client lie to me about the way the defendant treated him, and then the other side deposed him, and he told the truth! Utterly destroyed his case, after months of work. I went home and wrote a letter telling him we were done. He was furious. I'm sure he still tells people about the slimy lawyer who ruined his great case.
Cops are pretty bad, too. So are witnesses. Expert witnesses may not lie, but they definitely warp the truth. My evidence professor called them Witnesses Having Other Reasonable Explanations, or "WHORES." Unlike most law professors, he was a real attorney, so he knew.
Perjury prosecutions are extremely uncommon compared to perjuries. Witnesses perjure themselves every day, in every courtroom in America. If they were all prosecuted, the streets would be empty.
Calling jurors stupid and engineers sociopaths probably doesn't add to that trust.
One word: "Simpson."
As I pointed out earlier, jurors are the brilliant people who hand down the giant tort awards everyone blames lawyers for. Jurors turn rapists and murderers loose. Jurors give innocent people life in prison. They are a wonder to behold. Jurors are the reason judges have the power to set verdicts aside when they go against the evidence.
My dad defended 11 murder defendants and only lost one case. The defendant was black, and he killed a black man in self-defense. After the verdict was read, my dad heard one juror say to another, "Got rid of two at once."
Many lawyers like to BS about the wisdom of jurors. I have no faith in them. I think it's better to take a loss than to trust a jury.
In contrast, engineers are among the more trusted occupations -- you're not in the mainstream on this
I didn't bring up trust.
I guess this would be a bad time to bring up the Tacoma Narrows bridge.
Every hard-fried egg began life sunny-side up.