Oh Brave New Law That Has Such Idiots In't!

[captainsblog]

It's a common complaint, at least in this country, that law schools and bar examiners habitually produce new lawyers who are trained in theory, and a bit of technique, but with very little in the way of practicality. Every first-year student here takes a "property" course in which they learn how fiefdoms were transferred in 1216 A.D., but I've yet to meet a graduate of one who learned how to do a modern-day real estate closing there. Civil procedure courses are all about complex rules of complex pleadings and Erie v. Tompkins but nothing about how to settle a case, which is what 90-plus percent of them are going to do short of reaching the appellate decisions still backboning our legal educational system.

Yet even law school graduates, I'd think, could be expected to keep at least one practical aspect of day-to-day law practice in mind, and hopefully because it was ingrained in them long before that education- not in law school but in Sunday School. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," as Jesus said in those words but speakers of every other religious tradition from Mohammad to Mahabharata also said in so many words.

This morning, I watched that commandment being not only broken but beaten near-senseless, by one of my profession who should know better, and it really troubled me.

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After finishing up in court, I ran some papers to a clerk's office for filing. Just ahead of me in the queue were two elderly people- husband and wife or some equivalent- who were there to file papers in connection with a name change. The line was moving slowly, which was clearly more of a problem for them than for me, especially the gentleman, who was walking with a cane and appeared to be stretched to his physical limits by this standing and waiting.

I kibbitzed a bit from right behind them in the queue, and it was also clear they had no idea what the papers were, which ones needed to be filed, or anything whatsoever about them. The clerk tried being patient in explaining that there was more to the task than just filing the papers, that the name change order required them to do certain things in order for the change to take effect. Their lawyer hadn't done a damn thing to explain any of this to them. How do I know they had one? Because one of them had scribbled, in a plainly shaky hand but in big letters, the word LAWYER and a phone number on the outside of a large envelope holding the whole stash of documents.

It was somewhere during this discussion, mostly between the two women in the transaction, that the older gentleman lost his fight with holding himself up and began doubling over in the line ahead of me. I, and the guy behind me, came up on either side to support him. The clerk suggested a bench at the other end of the office, but he looked at that moment about as ready to walk on the Genesee River as to make it to that bench, so I appropriated the chair from the passport-photo setup a few feet away from us, set it down next to him, and helped him into it. While I was doing that, the clerk was making extra- and, God love her, unlawfully free- copies of the order they'd brought in, going over what they needed to do before their task would be complete and where to go once they'd done it.  The gentleman seemed recovered enough after this to head on his way, and when the clerk apologized for making me wait, I thanked her for being far more helpful to this couple than their own lawyer had been.

I have no idea who the lawyer is; I didn't recognize the number. Could be an overworked Legal Aid type or a struggling sole practitioner. But leaving people- for that, in the end, is what most clients are- in that kind of lurch in the system? I couldn't dream of treating mine that way.

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The rant is over. Go in peace.

Comments

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

I'd like to point this post at another att'y friend of mine (she actually works for Cal-OSHA). It doesn't appear to be friendslockededed or anything but I figured it would be polite to, ya know, ask first.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Fine by me.