Bar Associations- protecting the public or protecting lawyers

I was reading in ABA's magazine many State Bars were going after websites like Legalzoom which provide legal "help" online at a low cost. (I must apologize for not being able to link the article. Here is an article which discusses a similar issue.)

The Bars are claiming the websites are, among other things, practicing law without a license and providing legal services which fall below the standard of care. The Bar Associations are claiming they are working in the public's interest.

Of course, many reasonable people may disagree with the Bars. These people claim that the Bars are not protecting the public, but protecting lawyers. Many people go to sites like legalzoom rather than hiring a lawyer to handle tasks like writing a will or incorporating a business.

So what do you think?

The ABA has become an unconstitutional legislative body.

Two decades ago the ABA started pressuring state legislatures to modify state laws to make them consistent with ABA's agendas.

Common Law, today, means very little and has been replaced with Statutory law.... eg, you if you do X you pay a fine Y... or do time. This is how common law has been made passe. welcome to the the new order.





[edit on 25-5-2010 by seataka]

reply to post by seataka


The ABA is not a legislative body. It is a trade association that happens to be made up of lawyers.

The ABA may influence legislation, like other trade associations influence legislation. Its level of influence, along with the level of influence other trade associations and lobbying groups have, may be harmful to the country. It does not, however, directly write legislation.

If the ABA is unconstitutional, could you please tell me what constitutional provision they are violating.

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint


There is no language in the Constitution whatsoever that prohibits people from discussing legal issues without a license. Further, there is nothing in that Constitution that empowers lawyers to demand only they and judges get to interpret law. Associations are fine, and lobbying for the protection of lawyers is fine, but lobbying to legislate against the people making their own interpretations of the law, and by law I mean that which is self evident, and not necessarily that which has been legislated, is not protected by Constitution.

If legislation has become so complex that it requires a person hire an attorney just to understand this legislation, this should be the first clue that this legislation is not law, and only pretends to be law. Lawyers have every right to form associations to protect themselves. Conversely, the people who are not lawyers, but compelled to deal with the multitudes of legislation on the books have every right to form associations and circumvent lawyers when dealing with this dubious legislation. The Constitution does not protect the licensing of lawyers, and make that licensing a de facto crime to interpret law without a license. This authority was never granted the legal profession and they would be well advised to understand that simple point of law.



[edit on 25-5-2010 by Jean Paul Zodeaux]

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


The Constitution also does not expressly prohibit states or Congress from regulating the legal profession. Regulation of the legal profession may include deciding who or who cannot practice law.

There is also the issue of websites providing legal "help" that falls below the standard of care. Even if one should be free to practice law without a license, one must provide legal advice that meets or exceeds the standard of care.

I have seen a lot of people get themselves into trouble by getting legal forms online. For example, many people fail to properly execute their online wills. They have friends or family, who are mentioned in the will, sign the will as witnesses. Their forms also do not include self proving affidavits which are highly recommended in order for the will to make it through probate.

I am not trying to say that all online legal forms are bad for everybody, but many people might be better off getting a lawyer. Online legal forms are great if you know what you need and you know what your are doing, unfortunately many people that get the forms do not know what they need and do not know what they are doing.

Originally posted by hotpinkurinalmint
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

I am not trying to say that all online legal forms are bad for everybody, but many people might be better off getting a lawyer. Online legal forms are great if you know what you need and you know what your are doing, unfortunately many people that get the forms do not know what they need and do not know what they are doing.

Perhaps when people are not getting billed 14$ for a fax, or 12$ in postage for a letter to be mailed then they will stop looking for alternatives to lawyers. (im not talking about special delivery or special services)
Some of the fees that lawyers charge for average everyday things are ridiculous.

..Ex

I read the link...the main antagonist of this movement, some guy named Pepe, said the following:

It's scary how attractive and user-friendly these websites are.

This is because the legal system isn't supposed to be user-friendly. Lawyers want you to get a second mortgage for their help. They WANT the people that are afraid of losing what they have to LEVERAGE what they have in order to save it. They are imposing their own circular logic.

People deserve cheap and trustworthy advice.

I was being harassed by a co-worker for sexual harassment after I spurned her. She never called the police, only threatened me with letters and in person.

I went to a lawyer and brought my physical evidence (letters of threats of litigation and an extortion demand). He listened to what I had to say.

He then told me "Listen, if you want to retain me, it will cost $3000".

I, thinking I was in some deep crap, said "sure, here ya go" and handed him a check for $3000.

As soon as he had the check in his possession, he told me the girl had no basis for her claims and my evidence was damning enough to prevent this from ever going to trial. He then said that I wouldn't be needing his services anymore.

$3000 down the drain, for advice I could have got free if I would have searched online.

This is what most lawyers want. Pay us for fear your life being ruined.


[edit on 5/25/10 by Tharsis]

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint


Whether the legal profession should be regulated or not is less important than the understanding of what it means to practice law. The former I am not in agreement with and see no reason why the legal profession should be regulated, it is not as if they are handling toxic waste materials, even if the multitudes of legislation on the books is rather odious and repugnant. The latter is an entirely different matter, and what I find interesting, is that you mentioned LegalsZoom in your O.P. which is post questioning the validity of sites such as this and suggesting that these sites are practicing law without a license. The problem with implicitly putting LegalZoom in that category is that it is co-founded by Robert Shapiro, a well known licensed attorney, and the site itself has this to say:

LegalZoom was developed by expert attorneys with experience at the most prestigious law firms in the country.

Robert Shapiro, is no doubt a licensed attorney, and there is no reason or evidence to believe that the site itself doesn't rely upon licensed attorneys to offer what they do at affordable prices. So, when you create a post informing people that the ABA is claiming there are websites practicing law without a license, and then the only site you mention is LegalZoom, which states in their own site quite the contrary, whom are we to believe?

Further, you bring up performing legal matter below the standard of care, failing to acknowledge that there are high priced attorneys that can be counted on to perform well below the standard of care. In a free marketplace, where licensing is not acceptable on such matters, then the issue of choice becomes more expansive and lawyers must live on their reputations alone. Those who perform below the standard of care will not get as many clients as those who perform at, or above that standard of care. Conversely, in this current licensing scheme, all too often, incompetent assistance of counsel is the norm, and little to no sanctions against this incompetence while the ABA wastes its time going after websites, and whether it was you who named LegalZoom as being a website with no licensed attorneys, or you parroting the ABA, this allegation seems to be false, and makes the ABA's standard of care seem quite wanting.

Your assertions that many people have fallen into trouble by the use of online forms such as wills speaks more to the insane legislation in all likelihood not law, that seeks to complicate the simple matter of a will. Long before there was a United States there were people making last will and testaments, and I sincerely doubt they needed to pay exorbitant prices for a licensed attorney to make these wills. My best guess is that people are running afoul today precisely because of what seataka implied, because attorneys have conspired to make simple process such as a will so complex that an attorney must be used. There is no Constitutional support for the idea that people need to hire an attorney just to fill out a simple will.

Further a probate court is a surrogate court. A substitution for the real deal, or if you will forgive me, but given your own scenario that describes people running afoul on the matter of a simple will, a kangaroo court. A court less concerned with law, and far more concerned with legislation.

My friend, a competent attorney is of no doubt, a valuable asset to have when one is confronted with the tyranny of government, but how does one ascertain competent assistance of counsel? If one is wealthy, it is easier to do so and keep that competent attorney on retainer, and indeed, if one is wealthy enough, they can pay this attorney enough to retain them exclusively. For the average working stiff, finding competent assistance of counsel is quite a different matter, and they would be well advised to know the law themselves, before shopping for an attorney to assist them.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


You are correct in that lawyers' concerns for their professional reputations can often serve as a means of policing the profession. You are also right in that there are a lot of high priced attorneys that provide poor service. You are also correct in that some legal procedures, like wills, are unnecessarily complicated and contain unnecessary formalities.

Just because the law is unnecessarily complicated or contains silly formalities, it does not excuse poor lawyering whether it is done by a web site or a high priced person in a suit with a bar license. People expect providers of legal services to help them navigate the complexities of the law. When legal service providers do not do whatever is reasonably necessary to help their clients, they are doing their clients and disservice and harming their clients.

However, people get wronged by lawyers practicing below the standard of care all the time. It does no good for these people to tell them, "do not worry if Lawyer X screwed you over because the marketplace will eventually catch up to Lawyer X." It does no good for future clients of Layer X to tell them "Lawyer X screwed someone else over last month and we know about it, but don't worry, the market will soon catch up."

In these situations, the Bar is supposed to step in and protect people from lawyers who are providing services that fall below the standard of care. When it comes to online legal service providers, it is possible that under certain circumstances the services they provide are below the standard of care.

Take the will example I gave. Any Wills & Trust attorney worth their salt would properly execute the will by having his or her secretaries act as witnesses and by having self proving affidavits. A competent attorney would also explore the option option of getting a client's assets out of the probate estate by creating trusts and/or having a client purchase life insurance. Online sites may be breaching the standard of care if they do not take these states.

Another point you bring up is that some web sites are owned by or parntered with licensed lawyers. This does not necessarily mean the licensed lawyers are the ones actually practicing law. The people that are actually providing the services could be non-lawyers acting without supervision from licensed lawyers.

[edit on 25-5-2010 by hotpinkurinalmint]

reply to post by Tharsis


What that particular lawyer did may not have been legal. Lawyers cannot charge unreasonable fees. I do not know exactly what the lawyer did to "earn" his $3000, but it is possible that he might have charged you an unreasonable fee. If you have reason to believe the fee was unreasonable, you should report him to the bar.

If he spent a few hours on your case, his fee may have been reasonable. If he spent less than an hour on your case, his fee may not have been reasonable.

Typically, a lawyer charges you a retainer fee up front. In your case the retainer was $3000. That fee is supposed to go into a trust account. As the lawyer earns his fee by providing services, he may take money from the trust account and do as he pleases with it. The lawyer must promptly return any portion of the retainer he did not earn. In your case, it is possible the lawyer did not earn the entire $3000 if he put little work into your case.

reply to post by v3_exceed


To be fair to us, we are not billing you for the letter or fax, we are billing you for the time it takes to prepare the letter or fax.

It's like when you buy an expensive bottle of wine. You are not paying for the glass container, you are paying for its contents.

[edit on 25-5-2010 by hotpinkurinalmint]

Originally posted by hotpinkurinalmint
reply to post by Tharsis

 

What that particular lawyer did may not have been legal. Lawyers cannot charge unreasonable fees. I do not know exactly what the lawyer did to "earn" his $3000, but it is possible that he might have charged you an unreasonable fee. If you have reason to believe the fee was unreasonable, you should report him to the bar.

If he spent a few hours on your case, his fee may have been reasonable. If he spent less than an hour on your case, his fee may not have been reasonable.

The saddest thing is, it went down as fast as you just read it.

The thing that took the longest was filling out the check.

I'd push it further if it would get me somewhere, but this happened 6 years ago and Oregon is NOT the place to make enemies with the legal system.

I should have contacted an online service, I was thinking.

Dang, the more I think about it, the more the wound festers.

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint

However, people get wronged by lawyers practicing below the standard of care all the time. It does no good for these people to tell them, "do not worry if Lawyer X screwed you over because the marketplace will eventually catch up to Lawyer X." It does no good for future clients of Layer X to tell them "Lawyer X screwed someone else over last month and we know about it, but don't worry, the market will soon catch up."

It is ironic indeed that the argument you use to dismiss free market principles, is that people get wronged by lawyers practicing below the standard of care all the time. You are admitting on record that under the current regulations and licensing schemes and ABA supposed oversight, that people get wronged by lawyers practicing below the standard of care all the time. So, what difference is their between the pretense of regulation today, and a free market? That difference would be better prices for those seeking attorneys, and if the reality is that people get wronged by lawyers practicing below the standard of care all the time, then I would argue that lower prices for the use of an attorney are in order.

Consider these facts: The Innocence Project argues that the system of justice is often stacked against poor defendants.

Matters only become worse when a person is represented by an ineffective, incompetent or overburdened defense lawyer. The failure of overworked lawyers to investigate, call witnesses or prepare for trial has led to the conviction of innocent people. When a defense lawyer doesn't do his or her job, the defendant suffers. Shrinking funding and access to resources for public defenders and court-appointed attorneys is only making the problem worse.

The Innocence Project continues with:

Asleep on the job A review of convictions overturned by DNA testing reveals a trail of sleeping, drunk, incompetent and overburdened defense attorneys, at the trial level and on appeal. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Innocent defendants are convicted or plead guilty in this country with less than adequate defense representation. In the some of the worst cases, lawyers have:

* slept in the courtroom during trial
* been disbarred shortly after finishing a death penalty case
* failed to investigate alibis
* failed to call or consult experts on forensic issues
* failed to show up for hearings

And finally concludes with a single case study:

The exoneration and release of Jimmy Ray Bromgard from Montana prison provides a sobering view of the effects of inadequate or incompetent counsel. Bromgard, arrested when he was 18, spent 15 years in prison for the brutal rape of an eight-year-old girl, a crime post-conviction DNA testing proved he did not commit. Bromgard's trial attorney performed no investigation, filed no pre-trial motions, gave no opening statement, did not prepare for closing arguments, failed to file an appeal, and provided no expert to refute the fraudulent testimony of the state's hair microscopy expert. Other than the forensic testimony and the tentative identification, there was no evidence against Bromgard.

Another website, called Public Defenders Stuff, features an article titled; Incompetent Lawyers Chief Reason For Overturned Death Sentences:

Attorney incompetence is the top reason cited when federal appeals judges overturn death sentences in Ohio, the state with the nation’s second-busiest execution chamber, a review of court rulings shows.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati blamed ineffective counsel 61 percent of the time, or 13 of the 21 death sentences it has overturned since 1981, the year Ohio’s new capital punishment law took effect, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

The Death Penalty Information Center provides an article written in 1996 that showed that the California Supreme Court had reversed both the conviction and death sentence in a capital murder case for the first time in two and half years, due to lawyer incompetence. Chief Justice Ronald George had this to say in the ruling he rendered:

"We conclude that defense counsel's performance before and during the guilt phase of the trial was marked by numerous deficiencies," George wrote for a unanimous court, "and that the cumulative impact of counsel's shortcomings at that phase of the proceedings was prejudicial with regard to the judgment of guilt."

The Antlantic Online offers a three part article, where part three begins with a question that asks; "How Much Justice Can You Afford?":

O doubt most judges, police officers, and prosecutors are committed to the principle that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. The single greatest threat to an innocent defendant, however, may be his or her own attorney. In Illinois, Gary Gauger was sentenced to die in 1994 for murdering his parents, after his well-paid attorneys failed to conduct a serious investigation into the prosecution's paper-thin case. Eventually Gauger was released and members of a Wisconsin motorcycle gang were indicted for the crime.

The article later states:

Asked if they would favor a judicial system in which only the prosecution could present its case, most Americans would presumably be aghast. But in many courtrooms such ex parte proceedings are, for all intents and purposes, what happens. The adversary system simply doesn't exist. Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science found that a major cause of wrongful convictions was incompetent attorneys who neglected to examine the prosecution's forensic evidence or failed to have it tested. Nancy Gist, the director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which dispenses $1.7 billion a year to state and local criminal-justice systems, has described the quality of counsel in capital cases as "mostly abysmal." One innocent man spent eleven years on Georgia's death row because his lawyer failed to have a vital piece of evidence analyzed by a laboratory. In Kentucky an investigation by the Department of Public Advocacy found that 25 percent of death-row inmates had been represented at trial by attorneys who had since been disbarred or had resigned to avoid disbarment. A 1990 study found that 13 percent of the defendants executed in Louisiana had been represented by lawyers who had been disciplined, a rate sixty-eight times as great as that for the state bar as a whole. The pervasive inadequacy of defense counsel in capital cases was a major reason that the American Bar Association's House of Delegates overwhelmingly approved a 1997 resolution calling for a moratorium on executions. "In case after case," a report accompanying the resolution stated, "decisions about who will die and who will live turn not on the nature of the offense the defendant is charged with committing, but rather on the nature of the legal representation the defendant receives."

Continuing further with:

If a hospital assigned a cosmetic surgeon to perform a heart-bypass operation, the hospital would be held accountable when the patient died. But when states make a practice of appointing cosmetic attorneys to defend indigents, they declare that justice has been served, regardless of the outcome. Astonishingly, the Supreme Court has endorsed that position, ruling that jurisdictions appointing incompetent attorneys bear virtually no responsibility for the miscarriages that occur. "The government is not responsible for, and hence not able to prevent, attorney errors," the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 in Strickland v. Washington. Who, then, is responsible? According to the Supreme Court, apparently, the defendant is responsible. Under its landmark ruling state courts have typically found no violation of the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the assistance of counsel in all criminal prosecutions, even when lawyers have been addicted to heroin or coc aine during a trial, have come to court drunk, have conducted no investigation of their clients' claims, or have been unable to cite a single relevant capital case. In one death-penalty case a lawyer presented no evidence during the penalty phase of a trial and made the following closing argument (quoted in its entirety): "You are an extremely intelligent jury. You've got that man's life in your hands. You can take it or not. That's all I have to say." The defendant was executed. In a Texas case in which the defense lawyer slept through most of his client's trial, the judge found no denial of due process. "The right to be heard," the Supreme Court ruled in 1932, in the famous Scottsboro Boys case, "would be, in many cases, of little avail if it did not comprehend the right to be heard by counsel." But the Texas court didn't think it essential that defense counsel hear the case, or even be conscious: "The Constitution doesn't say the lawyer has to be awake," the judge ruled.

So exhaustive is this report, I must continue in the next post in order to quote precisely what that article is attempting to convey, and of course, what they are conveying is the very real and deadly price people pay for having an incompetent attorney, even under the so called rigorous "Rules of Professional Conduct" put forth by the ABA.

Continued...

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint


Before continuing with more of that Atlantic Online article, allow me to quote some more of you:

In these situations, the Bar is supposed to step in and protect people from lawyers who are providing services that fall below the standard of care. When it comes to online legal service providers, it is possible that under certain circumstances the services they provide are below the standard of care.

As we have seen, and as I will continue to present evidence, we will learn that what the BAR is supposed to do, and what it actually does, are two different things all together. Let me continue now with part three of The Atlantic Online's article:

The legal profession has, after all, produced reams of ethical and professional standards to guide lawyers, but they are widely ignored and largely unenforced or unenforceable, and the justices of the Supreme Court know this better than anyone. In 1989 the American Bar Association approved "Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Counsel in Death Penalty Cases," which set rigorous standards. Invaluable though these guidelines may be in establishing goals for state and local governments, they remain purely hortatory and are rarely put into practice. The ABA's "Rules of Professional Conduct" require attorneys to communicate adequately and promptly with their clients, and forbid conflicts of interest. The ABA's "Model Rules" include a pie-in-the-sky provision that stipulates, "Every lawyer, regardless of professional prominence or professional workload, has a responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay." Yet in a country with a million lawyers more than 200 condemned prisoners await execution without counsel, and thousands of indigents accused of crimes are processed through the courts each year with only the barest semblance of counsel. Naturally, the ABA also has standards regarding ability ("A lawyer shall not handle a legal matter which he knows or should know that he is not competent to handle"), but lawyers routinely handle matters they know little or nothing about with the full complicity of the courts -- often with grave consequences to their clients and not a whimper from the state or local bar. The world would truly be a better place if all good people heeded the wisdom of the bar's sage oracles, but they don't. Justice Thurgood Marshall knew they wouldn't when he wrote in his dissent to Strickland, "To tell lawyers and the lower courts that counsel for a criminal defendant must behave ... like 'a reasonably competent attorney,' is to tell them almost nothing."

The very next paragraph states:

The predicament of an innocent defendant represented by an incompetent lawyer has been further complicated by Supreme Court rulings on what is known as "procedural default," which effectively punishes the client for his lawyer's incompetence or stupidity. In practice, procedural default sets up a classic Catch-22 situation. An indigent defendant is assigned a lawyer who fails to investigate the case properly, puts on a perfunctory defense, ignores exculpatory evidence, and collects his fee, while his client goes to prison. When the defendant, now a convicted felon, tries to have the exculpatory evidence raised on appeal, it is barred by the court, which announces that it should have been presented by counsel at the initial trial. Meanwhile, any claim against the lawyer is conveniently excused, thanks to Strickland.

And the next paragraph follows with this astonishing revelation:

In one of its most controversial procedural-default rulings the Supreme Court allowed Roger Coleman to be executed in Virginia after finding that he had no right to present in court what he claimed was evidence of innocence, because his attorney had missed a filing deadline by three days. In a ruling that seemed to give process precedence over life and liberty, the Court concluded that Coleman "must bear the risk of attorney error that results in a procedural default." Justice O'Connor wrote one of the more astounding death-penalty decisions in recent memory: "This is a case about federalism. It concerns the respect that federal courts owe the States and the States' procedural rules when reviewing the claims of state prisoners in federal habeas corpus" claims -- habeas being the procedure that allows prisoners to petition state and federal courts to determine whether a sentence violates the laws or the Constitution of the United States. A 6-3 majority of the Court appeared to be saying that state procedures were more important than Coleman's claim of innocence, and the defendant was executed. Justice Blackmun called the execution "an affront to principles of fundamental fairness," adding, "The more the Court constrains the federal courts' power to reach the constitutional claims of those sentenced to death, the more the Court undermines the very legitimacy of capital punishment itself."

And further continues with this:

Not only has the Supreme Court given its seal of approval to incompetent counsel; in some capital cases it has even sanctioned a lack of any counsel whatsoever. Coleman's execution was justified by the Court in part on the basis of another precedent-setting Virginia case, Murray v. Giarratano, in which the Court ruled that a capital defendant is not entitled to a court-appointed lawyer in a post-conviction proceeding. Citing Giarratano, the Court ruled that because Coleman had no right to counsel, he had no basis on which to make a claim of ineffective counsel. But why would the Supreme Court under any circumstances conclude that a person facing the ultimate sanction did not need an attorney -- particularly since federal law does recognize a right to counsel in post-conviction proceedings? Because, the Court reasoned, a state "may quite sensibly decide to concentrate the resources it devotes to providing attorneys for capital defendants at the trial and appellate stages of a capital proceeding." This sounds reasonable enough. But the Court's abstract rationale bears no relation to reality. Had the justices bothered to examine what resources Virginia was actually devoting to trials and appeals, they would have found that the state has one of the worst records on indigent defense anywhere in the nation, and routinely ignores the needs of the poor at both the trial and appellate stages.

These damning bits of evidence, that reveal incompetence of legal counsel, even though there is an ABA in place, even though these attorneys are licensed, seem to make your own assertions that the free market offers little comfort to a person wronged by an attorney sound silly and pointless. If licensing schemes and rigorous standards set by a lawyers own association can't prevent this incompetence, then why not have a free market where at least the cost of an attorney would be more palatable.

Given the current debate on immigration issues, it is worth going back a few years in time to 2009 when Attorney General Mukasey made the disturbing announcement that illegal immigrants did not have a right to counsel. The American Immigration Lawyers Foundation had this to say:

In a decision issued Wednesday, January 7, 2009, the Attorney General declared that henceforth, immigrants, asylum seekers, and all others in removal (deportation) proceedings do not have any right under statute or the Constitution to representation by a lawyer before they can be ordered deported. This ruling reverses many years of precedent. According to the Attorney General, because there is no legal or constitutional right to a lawyer, immigrants do not have the right to legal counsel and thus no right to complain or request a new hearing when their lawyer is incompetent or fraudulent except in highly extreme cases. In view of the Republicans' recent failure to recapture the White House, a question arises as to whether the Attorney General (who serves "at the pleasure of the President") even had the moral authority to render such a decision at this time.

There is just too little time, and too much space would be taken up to keep listing all the incidents of lawyer incompetence under the current regulated and licensed scenario that both you and the ABA seem hell bent on defending. Nothing has been accomplished to prevent incompetence, and just as you argue that little satisfaction can be found for those who've been wronged by an incompetent attorney, so to I argue that little satisfaction can be found by someone who has been executed, or spent more than a decade in prison due to lawyer incompetence just because that lawyer was disbarred, if in fact that lawyer was disbarred.

The ABA is throwing rocks at windows when they live in a very visible glass house, and they would be well advised to get their own house in order before tackling the issue of more affordable online sites that provide simple forms and procedures for affordable prices.

star for JPZ!
I was about to make a post, but you not only summed up my thoughts, but expanded on them in a way I never could have.
Thank you for relaying some reality to this topic.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Just because some lawyers get away with incompetent representation, it does not mean we should throw out all the rules that govern lawyers. People get away with rape, robbery, and murder every day. It does not mean that we should throw out all of our penal codes.

You brought up the ABA's model rules. The ABA model rules are not binding rules like statutes, but are suggestions the ABA has made to the state Bar's regarding what the rules of lawyering should be. These rules are written by professors and lawyers and may not represent the views of everybody in the ABA.

As I stated earlier, the ABA is a trade association. Not every lawyer in America is a member of the ABA, so while it is an influential group, it cannot be said to represent the entire legal community in the US.

You bring up criminal law as an area where many people are getting inadequate representation. You are correct in that public defenders are stretched thin and do not have the resources to provide adequate representation. Although these public defenders may be violating the law by providing representation that falls below the standard of care, the state bars have to look the other way in many cases or else every public defender would run the risk of getting disbarred.

It does not follow that anybody should have cart blanche to provide inadequate legal services. Just because many public defenders are stretched to thin, it does not follow that I or anybody else can go around giving substandard legal advice in areas like wills, business formations, or other civil matters.

the association protects the secret system. as officers of the court.

they dont say its for profit. and you think it is justice. also, I have a issue with BAR it stands for something that begins with British something something. because you think its American - ok, is it...? really...

Originally posted by hotpinkurinalmint
reply to post by seataka

 

The ABA is not a legislative body. It is a trade association that happens to be made up of lawyers.

The ABA may influence legislation, like other trade associations influence legislation. Its level of influence, along with the level of influence other trade associations and lobbying groups have, may be harmful to the country. It does not, however, directly write legislation.

If the ABA is unconstitutional, could you please tell me what constitutional provision they are violating.

That is the point, it is NOT a legislative body... yet the ABA has become a defacto legislative body.. because frankly... what they say goes...and becomes law.. whether by secret handshake, brown envelope with cash, or resort junkets...

Are we arguing about what your use of the phrase "directly writes' means? Are you an ABA member? I'd posit that much of the actual wording is written by the ABA..Im hoping to find some files I have about ABA legislative Initiatve to standardize UCC across 50 states from 1992 but not the us 'possession' where the corporation with the name United States Federal Reserve is registered.. Puerto Rico.

[edit on 28-5-2010 by seataka]