You don't always have a constitutional right to that given service. There's a constitutional requirement for the government to provide quality legal representation to indigents.
And Strickland made the problems more prevalent A city doesn't have to provide Johnnie Cochran. They have to provide a body
When you say retesting, do you mean taking the bar every 10 years? I think going a route like doctors where you take boards for specific areas of law and needing to keep up with that is a better route.
Yeah, I'd be fine with that. I was really just suggesting a doctor model. I think law school interviews should be required, too.
Yeah I'm studying for the UBE now This is gonna make more lawyers, this test seems easier. The MPT is 80/400 points, it's pretty easy. you get that and do alright on the other two and you'll pass
I think I get what you're saying. Tell me if I have it right... The ruling added that the defendant having a bad attorney wasn't enough, they also had to prove it would have changed their case. So now the county can higher lesser defense attorneys for peanuts and still have their convictions stand. Now instead of going to trial with a poor attorney, defendants just plea. Do I have that right?
I don't have the answer to this but I do have an anecdote with respect to continued competence. I once had an opposing counsel (old man I'm certain) who also represented this person on a bankruptcy matter. I spoke with him a bunch of times about our particular case. We became quite familiar with one another or so I thought. Spoke to him on a different matter 2 months after the resolution to our first matter and he had absolutely no recollection of me. None. It was like the first time we were speaking.
No. For fucks sake, PDs aren't shitty lawyers. I'm going to burn all your shoes into a plastic goo if you keep thinking this. It's more an issue of resources. They don't have to provide the resources like experts, investigators, etc. And that's where you can really do work in court. Without that a case is harder to win. Louisiana underfunded their PDs so much that the offices were infested with vermin and they had to turn away clients. They can't even fund their lawyers of course they can't get an expert. The pay thing is another issue as to why PDs aren't overflowing with applications. Plus representing mostly guilty people sucks to most. But you can become a good private attorney in the criminal sector by getting experience. And there's two ways. Be a DA or a PD. I didn't want to prosecute people who look like me
That makes sense then. I've never understood why we don't have the equivalent of medical boards. At least in my area we have a lot of criminal defense attorneys who take on family law cases and it just gets tiresome as they handle the family law cases the same way they handle criminal cases. All this does is piss off judges.
Yeah idk why I didn't take a more expansive criminal law/procedure/evidence/professional responsibility based test. That's what really matters for me. I'm not dealing with articles of incorporation
It's like when some small town jack of all trades files a trucking or construction case. Welcome to thunderdome.
Fewer lawyers would mean higher quality cases and more selectivity for plaintiffs' lawyers and higher rates for everybody else. It would also generally mean better representation for the public.
I made this mistake once. I have a therapist who is great for referrals, but I let her bully me into taking a civil case I was ill equipped to handle once the insurance company got involved. It was just another beast to go into that arena. But it taught me to have a bit more compassion when dealing with the criminal attorneys I mentioned earlier.
Ahh, gotcha. Let me try this again. Scotus ruling = counties have to do less to have a conviction stand = less funding for their PD's = more plea deals? And my shoes man? You fucking savage.
Pretty much. Trash my job, I trash your kicks though. Nothing I hate more in the modern legal system tbh
Looking quickly, Texas and Florida seem to. I remember if roughly from studying for the MPRE. That said looking around I found one attorney in Massachusetts advertising as such, and if she's board certified I'm going to guess it's because she took an oral exam. I've gone against her and her truly god awful advice nearly got her client arrested for parental kidnapping.
haha my bad man. I've just always assumed PDs were ass bc they got paid so much less. I never thought about it being a resources issue. And thanks for the discussion. I learned something today.
Well duh. Seriously though, states need to start making their bar exams much, much harder. Last July we had a passage rate of nearly 90%. I was meeting with a colleague who grades for the BBE and he let me look at some of tests. If 9/10 of of those were passing I understand why malpractice insurance is so much higher here
Does seem a little too simple for people who are already established attorneys to be in favor of vastly reducing law schools/graduates and making entry into the market much more difficult than what they previously encountered, even if does have some good reasoning behind it. Oh, now there are too many lawyers?? That's definitely never been a thing before
I think there would be many more if that meant that it would cut the fat. The ones who disagreed probably ought not be lawyers anyway.
No, the ones who will disagree are probably competent attorneys who paid their dues and dont want to have retake a test they've already passed and then supplanted with years of experience
so you want to study for the bar exam again while you're working a full case load, in the hope that a bunch of people will lose their jobs. and the result of this is that your boss might be able to bill you out at a higher rate? jesus christ.
I think there are much more subtle ways to improve the ability of new lawyers and thus improve the ppl in the PDs office (although it is generally an understaffing issue, which would be exacerbated by eliminating lawyers)
No, that's not the point at all. The point is that the bar exam determines minimal competence, and it does a poor job of doing so. There are far more lawyers than there need to be. Shitty lawyers are difficult to deal with, make the profession look bad, and generally hurt those they represent. I only brought up rates as a retort to your comment that it would somehow make us do more work that you don't make money on. There's a difference between competent and proficient. We should aim to have proficient lawyers. And "paying their dues" should not matter. There are plenty of old, shitty lawyers. Years of experience doesn't mean a whole lot when those are years of being shitty.
I'm not talking about the PD's office. I'm addressing the student loan situation. Two different conversations.
There are also a ton of experienced lawyers who are more than capable and those people wont and shouldnt have to retake some test they already passed. News flash, not everyone is great at what they do and ppl lose skill as they get older. Don't need to input the nuclear codes or stop new lawyers from attending school. There are much simpler solutions.
Your "solution" to loans would cut down the availability of lawyers, decimating areas where they are understaffed like PD and immigration
If you want to make bar exams harder, cool. Im all for it. Ill pass it either way. That may cut down applicants, increase education and school quality, etc.. But don't eradicate current lawyers. That's moronic. Enact slow change, not immediate change
There are already too many lawyers. I know a guy that got offered a job at a law firm making 35k a year and billing 2k+ hours out of law school with a straight face. I know a guy that worked for a bankruptcy mill that made barely more than that.
The pass rate in WA didnt change much when it went to the UBE. Although, I agree the test was pretty easy. Also, with the quality and quantity of law school applicants dropping off we have seen and will continue to see a drop in bar passage rate. You know, capitalism and all that stuff.
This isn't a new problem. The solution isn't to remove current lawyers. That'd shock the system far too severely
I'm not for booting current lawyers, FYI, but making it harder to get into law school and to get licensed should be a goal. That and smaller classes and fewer law schools. That would make the quality of lawyer better for the public and for colleagues.
Also, for ppl that say there are too many attorneys, guess what? You are one of them and benefited from the system in place. So to cut shit off because itd benefit you while having detrimental affects on various other areas is short-sighted.
No it's really not at all. It's actually trying to look out for the best interest of the profession in the long term. Too many lawyers helps literally nobody.
If you want to grandfather people in, that's fine. I was just answering that I'd be okay with not being grandfathered in for the greater good.
Dont have as much as an issue with that You have to be weary about the numbers necessary to supply the system with the ppl they need, but im all for making things harder and trimming the fat before graduation