Extracts from 'The Terrible Truth About Lawyers'
by Mark H. McCormack
Once you get past the mumbo jumbo, the overwhelming majority of what lawyers do is basically high-level research and make-work paper-shuffling that takes too damn long and costs too damn much for what you get.
Justice is just one factor in a lawsuit and often not the most compelling.
You can't expect an attorney to look at a case he could probably win and see a battle not worth fighting.
People who have sacrificed large amounts of time and money to get a professional credential - doctors, lawyers, MBAs - come away ferociously determined to get their investment back with interest - from the system and from you.
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbours to compromise wherever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses and waste of time. As a peacemaker, the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will be business enough.
Abraham Lincoln
The law firm is basically a store. The knowledge of legal principles and procedures is essentially a high-ticket produce that only lawyers can dispense.
Lawyers for their own profit and convenience tend to be hush-hush about how they actually operate.
Professional Courtesy is a system whereby lawyers make life easier for themselves and for each other, generally at the expense of their client.
Lawyers are professionals at the art of confrontation - clients on the other hand tend to be amateurs.
It is always to the clients' advantage to show sophistication be asking the pertinent questions. Showing awareness up front is a great deterrent to being taken advantage of later on.
Lawyers, like vaudevillians, play as much to each other as to the audience.
No client should overlook the role played by operating expenses in determining what his legal costs will be.
If you insist on doing business in an expensive neighbourhood, you're going to end up paying your lawyer's exorbitant rent.
The lawyer bills virtually without accountability and does so in a climate where there is no standard for judging whether his price is fair.
He will charge you pretty much whatever he wants for whatever level of service he feels like providing.
Lawyer Selection:
Hire the person who can do the job - and accept that the person who can do the job isn't necessarily the person you want to be best friends with.
The right lawyer for one job may not be the right lawyer for every job.
Lawyers enjoy a new challenge and welcome the opportunity to expand their professional repertoire. If you don't force them to go on the record with an accounting of their experience, chances are they'll keep mum on the subject of their inexperience.
Don't shell out good money for the privilege of being a guinea pig. Don't put yourself on the line so that the next person can have the benefit of an experienced attorney.
If you're hiring a gun, get one that will shoot.
Remember, when you're the client, you're the boss, even if it sometimes doesn't feel that way. Your lawyer should be accountable to you in whatever reasonable form you are comfortable with.
Conventional wisdom says that if you're paying someone good money for supposedly expert advice, you should follow the advice or fire the expert.
But the value of expert opinion - legal or otherwise - lies not in following it blindly but simply in having it available as data.
The legal profession takes the quite explicit stand that fees should be candidly discussed at the beginning of a relationship - however no one says the attorney has to be the one to initiate the discussion.
If you ever want to see a lawyer squirm, ask him the following simple question. "In what percentage of legal actions is justice ultimately done?"
There is nothing likelier that excessive optimism to pull you into a runaway suit that never ends.
A big part of what clients ask their lawyers to do is to seek out glitches and loopholes - to use the letter of the law to subvert the spirit of the law.
While the scales of justice, in theory, start off level, much of what passes for legal expertise consists of cleverness in tipping them - by whatever means. When there's money on the table, most people lose their gusto for a fair fight.
Fess and expenses in lawsuits always go up when the stakes get higher but they hardly ever come down when the stakes are lower.
The legal process is an elaborate game in which stalling tactics figure prominently, and in which since time is money, the side with the bigger war chest has a definite edge - irrespective of the merits of the case.
Simple common sense tells us that if someone needs to try out five different arguments, he is probably grasping at straws - if an argument has merit you need only one.
Part of the reason for the law's delay is that lawyers are allowed to concoct a different story for every stage of a battle.
All ingenious tactics of some lawyers use the law to defeat the law.
The longer a case goes on, the less it is worth, except to the lawyers.
Once you open the lid on conflicts and complications, those conflicts and complications generally multiply.
Delegating authority to another executive is one thing - delegating authority to a lawyer is another.
Everytime a business person tells a lawyer " I'm too busy, you handle it" he's asking for a lawsuit.
When you pass matters on to an attorney, you are not just delegating authority, you are surrendering it.
In the face of a court battle, both sides become almost instantly convinced that they are not just right, but righteous and flexibility vanishes.
The notion that free advice is worth nothing does not suggest that expensive advice is necessarily worth a lot. It depends on who's giving the advice, not on the amount of money being shelled out for the privilege of receiving it.
What allows skilled lawyers - and can allow all of us - to function well under great duress is the ability to strike a balance between commitment and detachment.
The balance between commitment and detachment is what allows for the quality we call poise.
A lawyer who has achieved true poise will never want for clients.
"May you be involved in a lawsuit in which you are right."
Old Gypsy Curse