How many lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb?

What’s the difference between a cactus and a courtroom full of lawyers? A cactus has the pricks on the outside. What's the difference between lawyers and clowns? Clowns don't charge by the hour.

No profession attracts as much scorn as the legal profession, except perhaps the medical profession. More on that later. I often wonder why lawyers have such a poor reputation.

I suspect that there are many reasons for this. I can think of two, perhaps three. Bad lawyers and bad clients. Then, there is the misconception of what the law is and what it can achieve.

Let’s start with the question - What is law? Simply described, the law is a set of rules, enforced by authority to temper executive power on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to ensure a modicum of civility amongst the citizenry. Law prescribes a minimum standard of behaviour. Law asks us to be no better than that which the rule prescribes. For instance, the law quiets that we simply refrain from negligent behaviour. It does not ask us to be careful. Avoiding negligence entails doing no more than the bare minimum.

Being careful requires something different, something more than the bare minimum. Avoiding negligence is morally neutral behaviour. It is neither good nor bad. Being careful, on the other hand, implies a wish to achieve a moral good.

What about bad lawyers? Bad lawyers can be divided into two subcategories - incompetent lawyers and unethical lawyers. There is perhaps a third subcategory, more dangerous than the others, and that is the incompetent, unethical lawyer.

Bad lawyers are easily identified by the tone of their correspondence. Often, they do not reply to correspondence. When they do, their letters are long and rambling, replete with prolix, histrionic language. Florid phrases pepper their papers: their clients are often “shocked and dismayed”, they complain that a witness’s evidence “smacks of deceit”, settlement proposals are “regrettably declined”. “Be that as it may”, they are often at “risk of stating the obvious”.

Finally, the clients. The category of bad clients can be divided into those who use the law as a blunt tool to achieve undesirable ends, and then those that fail, through carelessness, to keep their legal affairs in good order.

Bad clients ask for “thumb suck quotes”. When they need a contract drawn up, they ask for a “one pager”. Clients with something to hide ask for your views regarding permutations of “hypothetical” fact complexes. Bad clients blame their lawyers for being unable to extract them from problems of their own making. Remember, a lawyer is only as good as his client’s case.

As for the medical profession, there is an apocryphal story about a meeting between an American medical association and a state bar association. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the effect of medical malpractice litigation on the practice of medicine. The meeting was heated. Charges and counter charges were exchanged. The rhetoric of the participants escalated. After the doctors had accused lawyers of slowing the progress of medical science, a lawyer stood up and shouted: “Medical science! You’re witch doctors, not scientists. When lawyers were writing the Constitution, you so-called medical scientists were putting leeches on George Washington’s backside.”

The question is then, does law have moral potential? I suspect that it does. I like to think that the law can be used to achieve moral ends. Once I have time to articulate my argument, I’ll post it here.