Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil: Guaranteed to Make the Clerk's Blood Boil

Linked off of National Review, Trial Lawyers Inc. attempts to compare trial lawyers with major growth industries:

�Trial Lawyers, Inc.� behaves like the biggest of businesses, as it generates cash from traditional profit centers (like asbestos, tobacco and insurance), explores potential growth markets (like lead paint, mold and regulated industries), and develops new products (like suits against the fast-food industry).

I'm sure it overstates its case (sites with small-cap typefaces aren't known for their discretion), and I'm sure the Curmudgeonly Clerk will get around to debunking the most excessive bits of it when he gets a moment.

Still, the site puts forward an important qui custodiet ipsos custodes argument that I often feel gets overlooked by lawyers. Certainly law is not an industry, but its training and practice encourages restraints on trade that would not be countenanced in any corporate field. Training in law grants many both power and access to power that is denied to those outside law's embrace.

Every lawyer who cheered when the Supreme Court struck at the 'appearance of corruption' in politics through campaign finance reform should pause and wonder exactly what impression their $200,000 pay packets give to the community upon whom they work their wonders? I have to suppress a little shudder whenever I hear my classmates, a blawger, or an attorney critique the idea of 'self-regulation' in industry. What a cold day in Hell it will be when lawyers themselves acquiesce to an independent regulatory committee which, for instance, sets its fees, its opportunities, and its employment options.

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Giving The Devil His Due

Comments

"If any of you see me online, outside of a library, or anywhere without a Civil Procedure book in my hand, shout at me loudly" Consider yourself shouted at...

Posted by: Alison | December 17, 2003 3:20 AM

Isn't it great to be in an industry that gets to make its own regulations?

Posted by: Richard Campbell | December 17, 2003 10:42 AM

Why isn't it an industry? I can't think why it should be less subject to external regulation than say plumbing, or being an electrician? By and large, by the way, no industry should be self regulating. I mean even the church can't make that one work. (although you could argue that they all get found out in the end)

Posted by: martin | December 17, 2003 12:58 PM

Nice site. Keep up the good work.

Posted by: asbestos news | June 4, 2004 12:22 AM