The following discussion clip is from the Occupy Wall Street demand discussion list.
Here is the lead in post from jrykom:
Don’t let the lawyers slide in this protest. Thay are just as big a problem as Wall Street. With their $200/hr salaries and 33% take in judgement awards, they are part of the problem. They are not highly paid due to supply and demand – there are hundreds upon hundreds of firms in every city. They keep their prices artificially inflated across the board. Just from a competitive standpoint, why is that no law firms charge less than the std 1/3? Why not charge 25% or 30% to attract more business.If you are not part of the solution than you are part of the problem!
Nanook:
Very good point. This is the first time I’ve seen someone bring up the lawyers. The $200/hr number is way low. Some patent attorneys are now up to $800/hr. But I don’t think the $$$$ element is the PRIMARY concern. The big problem is the “foxes guarding the henhouse” syndrome. The legal colleges are in on this as well.
Specifically, there is a big conflict of interest. The legal colleges SHOULD HAVE a “charter’ to develop ever improving legal structures to SIMPLIFY the law in this country. The government SHOULD HAVE a “charter” to develop laws that continuously simplify the cost of law in the county. What do they do? They do exactly the opposite. In fact they “pride themselves” in complicating issues.
Do we have any simple examples of what I mean by simplification? Sure. With a stroke of a pen, California did away with most attorneys in residential real estate dealings, by creating the TITLE INSURANCE program. How did other states respond to this? Copy cat, maybe? Not a chance. They ADDED title insurance requirements without removing the attorneys.
Want another example. Here’s a new one. All of the states have something called a Universal Commercial Code. So, we should implement a 2 stage process related to that:
1. Expand the Universal Commercial Code to cover EVERY legal situation that most citizens are expected to encounter during their life. This would include simple business formations, non-disclosure agreements, simple contracts etc.
2. Starting in middle school, include classes in law which are sufficient for high school graduates to handle the legal issues covered by the Code.
So, when OWS comes back to fixing the world in phase 2, we need to address the whole legal system to DRASTICALLY simplify it and get lawyer conflict of interest out of government.
