I was speaking with a friend of mine (who will remain nameless) who is currently in the middle of his divorce says William D King. He told me that he has been working on getting the financial part sorted out between him and his soon-to-be ex-wife, but it’s taken some time to get things moving forward. His attorney had not submitted anything yet for him (and my friend said he sent him several emails asking what was going on), even though he had promised something would happen several weeks earlier.
As you can imagine, this wasn’t making any of us feel very confident about how things were progressing. However, after finally talking with her on the phone, she revealed that they are now moving forward…but the reason why it took so long was because she had quit her job as a paralegal to start a craft business. In other words, his attorney has been moonlighting as an extremely crappy crafter all this time and neglecting my friend’s case!
And if that wasn’t bad enough, she actually got the divorce decree signed and notarized (which he could’ve done) and never submitted it to any of the courts! She is no longer his attorney because we both know you can’t trust someone who lies I guess what I’m getting at here is that there are some people out there who really suck at being attorneys; but unlike other professions such as doctors (where you can get sued for malpractice), lawyers don’t necessarily have the same consequences for fucking up.
There are no real consequences in lawyering:
- There is a very important difference between law and medicine: If you screw up as a doctor, the patient dies and the family sues. You get your license pull and you go to jail if there’s evidence of negligence or malpractice. If you screw up as an attorney, you just move on to another job – probably getting a pay more at that new job than your last one.
- Your client does not die; they just lose their case or spend less time in prison than they otherwise would have with a different lawyer. It’s pretty much impossible to un-ring that bell when it comes to lawyering; particularly criminal defense lawyering where all cases are guarantees a re-trial if the client is guilty and you screw up their case explains William D King. (This problem does not apply to civil cases where either party can accept a verdict as final). So, again…there are some people out there who aren’t very good at lawyering; and more often than not they don’t even realize it themselves.
- For instance, two weeks ago I got a call from another friend (who shall also remain nameless) who was freaking out because his divorce attorney just blew up his life by revealing to his soon-to-be ex that he was gay – thus giving her all the ammo she needs to take him seriously for child custody! And just days later, we were both stun when we learn that this guy’s first attorney just drop him as a client because he miss his first schedule court appearance – which cost him his job and house! He finds out that his lawyer had got fire only after the fact.
Conclusion:
Our conclusion was that this first attorney should have been honest with our friend about what a flake she was, instead of waiting for her to quit or get fire before telling him there was another problem says William D King.
In spite of these examples, there are still a lot of lawyers who do a good job and will fight for you. A few days ago I was contact by a guy who had been in and out of drug treatment for over five years. And was finally looking to get his life back on track and begin the job search. He had been struggling with addiction for a long time, but was finally making progress and in a great treatment program. A few weeks ago, however, he was arrest during a drug buy and charge with serious felonies. Which meant that he was going to have a hard time getting a job anytime soon even if he could kick his addiction.