[PEN-L:27392] lawyers

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: lawyers

(how's my font?)

[RE: [PEN-L:27390] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: most experts agree]

I happen to think that having lawyers serve their clients -- either defendants, plaintiffs, or the state -- to the extent of their ability within the limits set by the law and ethics makes a lot of sense. Though I like to rag on lawyers for fun (after all, people rib economists all the time), as long as there are conflicts, lawyers or some sort of substitute for them will play a role.

BTW, at the recent civil (personal injury) case where I served as a juror (for two weeks), we saw three kinds of lawyers:

1. the plaintiff's lawyer, who had the Dan Quayle/deer in the headlights look. He was quite stupid, assuming among other things that his assertion of opinion was a way to convince the jury. ("The psychiatrist says that if we could treat my client's depression his symptoms would go away. I don't think so.") He asked us for $3.3 million in damages! The judge later told us that she saw the jaw of each juror drop simultaneously.

2. the workman's comp lawyer (trying to recover funds already paid to the plaintiff), who was quite competent, but was a kiss-up and patronizing. He said $330,000 was the right amount: "both the plaintiff's and the defendant's lawyers are off by a factor of 10."

3. the defense lawyer, who was a competent liar. She produced a model of the "box" that the plaintiff had run into (leading to his injury) that totally misrepresented the actual box, which was much more deadly (having a thin "blade" that could really hurt someone who ran into it). She said that she was willing to settle for $30,000.

We found the most of defendants negligent (or "negligible," as one juror said). But since all the psychological experts -- including the plaintiff's -- agreed that the plaintiff's depression was the source of the persistence of his symptoms years after the accident, we went with the $30,000. If nothing else, this was a recognition of the miracle of all the psychological experts agreeing.

JD