Some allowance to pay defendant’s legal fees, at least up to a percentage of the cost to the plaintiff’s legal counsel (time spent?) would be appropriate, or a barring from plaintiff counsel taking a percentage of judgment in lieu of fees paid by the plaintiff, would help prevent frivolous suits.

In addition, it’s not at all appropriate for the civil system to be used to prosecute cases that the state has no interest in prosecuting. In particular, with regards to copyright infringement, if it’s indeed illegal, then a lawbreaker should receive a criminal penalty first and foremost. For illegal activity, a civil penalty apart from a criminal one is inappropriate in any context.

The RIAA should take its case first to a PA for criminal prosecution before it starts sending out all those nasty letters. The inadequacy of our criminal prosecutors to handle this kind of load (to enforce the law) is no excuse to passing the burden for deterrence off to large companies who are “materially harmed” any more than it is my job, as a public citizen, to try a civil suit against someone who breaks into my house.

I blame lawyers who become judges and think that overseeing a system designed to keep lawyers employed at the expense of everyone else in the courtroom (taxpayers included). I blame lawyers for what they call “ethics”.

I blame lawyers who think that is is morally OK to use tricks and technicalities to free dangerous people. I blame lawyers who help terrorists pro-bono, who go after our soldiers for making the wrong calls in the heat of battle, for suing to make America socialist (ACLU and it’s ilk).

The legal profession has become a parasitic class. The law should be accessable to the common man, but is no longer. We do not have a Justice system, we have a legal system where the skills, connections and or balls of the lawyer matter more than the facts. Oh yeah, throw in the personal leanings of the judge.

And those poor RIAA defendants, being extorted by a bunch of manipulative lawyers. Except for the the defendants who actually stole music, they deserved everything they got. But only those folks. The lawyers should know the difference.

Lawyers are a reflection of society and the clients who hire them. Next you’ll blame the greedy Zionist bankers for causing your interest-only ARM mortgage to be foreclosed on.

All the money on the table attracts sleazebag lawyers. Get rid of the rent control, move out of the city if you cannot afford it.

I have a friend in a divorce. He got hit with a fraudulent restraining order. Her lawyer offered to drop it if he negotiated away visitation.

He received numerous threats of “if you don’t do this, then the judge may end up ordering that”-when you use the perception of the injustice of the court to coerce someone into taking a loss, isn’t that extortion?

How about when a lawyer says “Give my client $2 Million (minus my $600,000 fee)or we will sue you for serving her hot coffee”, isn’t that extortion? I bet it feels like it, and lawyers are great at suing people because they made someone “feel” a certain way. Lawyers argue every day that if someone feels offended, threatened or discriminated against, that the other person must therefore be offensive, threatening or discriminatory. So if someone feels extorted, then the lawyer in question must be an extortionist.

They are taking advantage of their knowledge of the law – and my lack of knowledge – to their advantage. Only when the attorney themselves, and not just their clients, are held responsible for their actions will the temptation to abuse their position be eliminated.

The only good alternative seems to be B movie actors.

None of those are offered very often though.

Just people who write gibberish, so we have to pay them money, exactly because simple moral issues have been wrapped in a mouse’s paradise of tangled ribbons of thought itself.

Granted, the damages are limited to just a few thousand bucks, and the pressures on tenants in the city are enormous, but it’s a weapon to fight back with (albeit a slender one). In the buildings our landlord owns in Little Italy, if he can force a tenant out, he can gut the apartment and put it on the market at any rent he chooses, and he’s going for a 300% increase. That’s three hundred percent. So an eviction can net him an additional $36,000/year.

But we do what we can. Lawyers here generally cost around $300 per hour. The legal aid people, though better than nothing, will sling you through the system and give you bad advice just to be able to “rack the case” and keep moving. They don’t care about how fair the settlement is, really; they aim to keep people from being evicted, and some of the more egregious rent-gouging.

But they’ll also tell you to throw the landlord a bone when he’s not even entitled to it under the law. Happened to me. And when I called them on it after the fact, they got angry and tried to convince me that I was wrong: essentially arguing the landlord’s case. In spite of the clear wording of the applicable regulation under the Rent Stabilization Code. Unbelievable.

Their excuse was that “things aren’t usually settled that way in Housing Court.” My reply, “well, they ought to be, because this is the law. And it’s completely unambiguous.”

So they won’t represent me going forward: I’ve been pitched back into the ocean. And my case is typical; many friends have faced the same harassment. Lawyers trump up charges against tenants, and the tenants have to go to court to disprove the charges, over and over again. The game is to exhaust you and grind you down. It’s brutal. And they use all the bullying and intimidating tactics they can, especially in court.

You have the right to hire an attorney. This letter does not require that you communicate with our office. Should we not hear from you or your appointed attorney, you will receive a summons to court.

Or whatever and by whatever I mean anything that would help the “victim” seek legal aid, paid or otherwise.

Hey Rebbe:

Guess who makes the laws that govern who gets to be an attorney? How’s that for a racket? AND lawyers also make the laws as to what accounts as an accredited law school. I suppose we could sue our legal system as a trust, but where we get a lawyer?

Where did Lincoln go to law school? Everyone knows. Shame shame.

Oh well. From time to time I need a lawyer. Then they’re OK in my book.

Sorry, but the picture of a bunch of lawyers trying to decide to what extent they can “ethically” threaten and intimidate their fellow citizens rubs me the wrong way.

Sorry, but the picture of a bunch of lawyers trying to decide to what extent they can “ethically” threaten and intimidate their fellow citizens rubs me the wrong way.

You have no idea how much regular folks enjoy seeing lawyers like this one or the tool who sued that dry cleaner for millions get smacked down. Those of us who are not members of the bar are getting rather tired of the legal system being treated as a club, in both senses of the word. Lawyers use their privileged position as members of the club of lawyers to club non-lawyers into submission.

Judges resent defendants who argue pro se. They’ll reject the same deal they’ll agree to if the defendant is represented by a member of the club.

Unfortunately, the average guy or gal is SOL. You hire an attorney, who then negotiates with the prosecutor or judge. Since the attorney wants to maintain a good working relationship with the for the sake of future cases, he or she does not argue or negotiate as vigorously as they could. After all, if you alienate the prosecutor it could affect future income. If you alienate the judge, you won’t get court appointments to represent.

Lawyers control the criminal justice system, the tort system and they control most of legislatures. Many regard non lawyers with derision, or at least those non lawyers who try to horn in on their little club.

There should be a 50% Federal surtax on attorney’s fees. If the tobacco companies have to cover the costs society bears from their products, I say lawyers should follow the precedent set by their colleagues in the tobacco litigation. So many things including medicine are much more expensive because of litigation and the threat thereof. Let’s start making lawyers pay for their costs to society. Taxing personal injury and other tort fees would generate about $40 billion a year, which could buy a bunch of folks some decent medical coverage.

On the contrary, the laws are so complex and cover virtually the entire spectrum of human existence so that non-lawyers have no idea what legal claims may exist. The assumption that there is a legal basis for a legal threat cannot be dismissed by a layman without resort to a lawyer. This in and of itself creates a financial burden. Therefore the threat by a lawyer is as much a threat, although of a different nature, as having a member of the mafia tell you that he is concerned about your health and that of your family.

For that very reason, these kinds of threats should be dealt with by the bar and punished severely because they are by their nature extortionate.

Here, in California, for example, there used to be quite a cottage industry of two-bit shysters using California Business and Professions Code Section 17200 et seq., the so-called Unfair Competition Law, to extrort settlements out of small businesses. One big problem was that the statute authorized plaintiffs who had never suffered any personal loss or injury to sue on behalf of the “general public.” Indeed, it allowed recovery upon a mere determination that the challenged conduct was “unfair” or “likely to deceive a reasonable consumer,” without any proof of actual injury to anyone. Another was that such plaintiffs were not required to meet other traditional class action requirements. The pleading requirements and standards of proof set out in the statute also were very lax.

The solution was not to ban lawyers from sending out demand letters. The solution was to amend the underlying law. A few years ago, Proposition 64 amended the UCL to require the plaintiff to show he suffered an actual injury as a result of alleged unfair competition. Because Proposition 64 cross-references California’s class action statute, all representative actions under the UCL must meet all regular class action requirements. All of which went a long way towards solving the problem.

Put another way, the problem may not be that we are overlawyered, but simply that we are overlawed. See Philip K. Howard’s The Collapse of the Common Good: How America’s Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our Freedom or Walter Olson’s The Rule of Lawyers. If you want to get rid of demand letters, prune the tree of law.