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The Lawyer Myth: A Defense of the American Legal Profession
“When you mentioned to family or friends that you were considering becoming a lawyer, you probably faced skepticism, if not serious criticism… You are undoubtedly asking yourself if three or four years of a rigorous and costly legal education is really worth the candle. For you … we add these final comments. We hope that they will reassure you, as well as your friends and family, that it is possible, as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. proclaimed, ‘to live greatly in the law.’” — from The Lawyer Myth
Lawyers and the legal profession have become scapegoats for many of the problems of our age. In The Lawyer A Defense of the American Legal Profession , Rennard Strickland and Frank T. Read look behind current antilawyer media images to explore the historical role of lawyers as a balancing force in times of social, economic, and political change. One source of this disjunction of perception and reality, they find, is that American society has lost touch with the need for the lawyer’s skill and has come to blame unrelated social problems on the legal profession. This highly personal and impassioned book is their defense of lawyers and the rule of law in the United States.
The Lawyer Myth confronts the hypocrisy of critics from both the right and the left who attempt to exploit popular misperceptions about lawyers and judges to further their own social and political agendas. By revealing the facts and reasoning behind the decisions in such cases as the infamous McDonald’s coffee spill, the authors provide a clear explanation of the operation of the law while addressing misconceptions about the number of lawsuits, runaway jury verdicts, and legal “technicalities” that turn criminals out on the street.
Acknowledging that no system is perfect, the authors propose a slate of reforms for the bar, the judiciary, and law schools that will enable today’s lawyers—and tomorrow’s—to live up to the noble potential of their profession. Whether one thinks of lawyers as keepers of the springs of democracy, foot soldiers of the Constitution, architects and carpenters of commerce, umpires and field levelers, healers of the body politic, or simply bridge builders, The Lawyer Myth reminds us that lawyers are essential to American democracy.
Lawyers and the legal profession have become scapegoats for many of the problems of our age. In The Lawyer A Defense of the American Legal Profession , Rennard Strickland and Frank T. Read look behind current antilawyer media images to explore the historical role of lawyers as a balancing force in times of social, economic, and political change. One source of this disjunction of perception and reality, they find, is that American society has lost touch with the need for the lawyer’s skill and has come to blame unrelated social problems on the legal profession. This highly personal and impassioned book is their defense of lawyers and the rule of law in the United States.
The Lawyer Myth confronts the hypocrisy of critics from both the right and the left who attempt to exploit popular misperceptions about lawyers and judges to further their own social and political agendas. By revealing the facts and reasoning behind the decisions in such cases as the infamous McDonald’s coffee spill, the authors provide a clear explanation of the operation of the law while addressing misconceptions about the number of lawsuits, runaway jury verdicts, and legal “technicalities” that turn criminals out on the street.
Acknowledging that no system is perfect, the authors propose a slate of reforms for the bar, the judiciary, and law schools that will enable today’s lawyers—and tomorrow’s—to live up to the noble potential of their profession. Whether one thinks of lawyers as keepers of the springs of democracy, foot soldiers of the Constitution, architects and carpenters of commerce, umpires and field levelers, healers of the body politic, or simply bridge builders, The Lawyer Myth reminds us that lawyers are essential to American democracy.
- GenresLaw
168 pages, Hardcover
First published March 11, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 22, 2021
This book was published in 2008, and likely written before asset-backed mortgage securities had become a matter of common knowledge. Later that year, the Great Recession would officially hit, and numerous industries were decimated--including the legal sector. Many large firms freezed hiring, and incoming first-year associates were furloughed, putting some of the best and brightest future attorneys into a holding pattern for a year. The industry would not recover for another 5 years--and it still, to an extent, is not what it was before.
I mention this because this book is clearly of its time. Of course, lip service is paid to the more "eternal" elements of legal practice (i.e. invoking Oliver Wendell Holmes, or more recently, the McDonald's "hot coffee case"), but Strickland (and Read) are mostly focused on the legal landscape of the 1990's and early 2000's. They feared that many younger people were not as interested in becoming lawyers as in generations previous, because lawyers were scumbags, ambulance-chasers, liars, parasites, and manipulators whose primary value derived from their ability to hinder and delay. The book essentially makes an argument that lawyers are valuable to society and do not deserve this bad rap.
As noted in the review below, this book is O.K., it is pretty good, it is readable--but it is biased. And the book at the very least needs an update to address recent changes in the profession (e-discovery, I believe, is mentioned, but perhaps not that it has become the primary revenue engine for firms--to say nothing of the hyper-saturation of the profession). These authors had a vested interest, as professors and former deans, in luring future attorneys into the profession. It is difficult to write a book about the law with total equanimity (legal writing, also, relies on persuasive argument). One may either praise the profession, or decry it. Plenty of people started decrying it for other reasons after 2008. And though there is slight mention of the enormous cost of the education and resultant debt load, it is an afterthought.
There are many stupid things about the legal profession that I have learned in the past 8 years, and while some of them are new, most of them are not. This primarily relates to working in a smaller firm environment, and the difficulties of providing affordable legal services, while also earning a living wage. There is much talk of the $160,000 salary (or $140,000, or whatever it was in 2007) for the first-year big firm associate, but there is little talk of the $40,000 salary for the "average" small firm, entry-level associate (sans benefits). There is little, if anything, about the day-to-day frustrations of the "blue collar" lawyer, going to court every day on small matters, perhaps because they didn't have much experience to draw on, or because it made the profession seem less attractive. The book might as well have been published by the ABA.
In 2021, it would be much better to go into nursing, or coding, or numerous other industries where there is actually a shortage of workers. I would not recommend anyone go to law school, unless they score above 170 on the LSAT and have been accepted into a "Top 15" school, or if they have wanted to go to law school their entire life, and have a clearly defined area they want to go into, and if they have a ready-made client pool, or if their parents are attorneys and they are part of an expected succession plan.
Therefore, this book may be interesting to a great number of people, but it is dated, and it is biased, and I would not trust it. That said, law school is not a terrible decision for everyone, and if one wants to fantasize about earning a $1 billion fee for the Tobacco Master Settlement, it might inspire greater ambitions.
https://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/200...
I mention this because this book is clearly of its time. Of course, lip service is paid to the more "eternal" elements of legal practice (i.e. invoking Oliver Wendell Holmes, or more recently, the McDonald's "hot coffee case"), but Strickland (and Read) are mostly focused on the legal landscape of the 1990's and early 2000's. They feared that many younger people were not as interested in becoming lawyers as in generations previous, because lawyers were scumbags, ambulance-chasers, liars, parasites, and manipulators whose primary value derived from their ability to hinder and delay. The book essentially makes an argument that lawyers are valuable to society and do not deserve this bad rap.
As noted in the review below, this book is O.K., it is pretty good, it is readable--but it is biased. And the book at the very least needs an update to address recent changes in the profession (e-discovery, I believe, is mentioned, but perhaps not that it has become the primary revenue engine for firms--to say nothing of the hyper-saturation of the profession). These authors had a vested interest, as professors and former deans, in luring future attorneys into the profession. It is difficult to write a book about the law with total equanimity (legal writing, also, relies on persuasive argument). One may either praise the profession, or decry it. Plenty of people started decrying it for other reasons after 2008. And though there is slight mention of the enormous cost of the education and resultant debt load, it is an afterthought.
There are many stupid things about the legal profession that I have learned in the past 8 years, and while some of them are new, most of them are not. This primarily relates to working in a smaller firm environment, and the difficulties of providing affordable legal services, while also earning a living wage. There is much talk of the $160,000 salary (or $140,000, or whatever it was in 2007) for the first-year big firm associate, but there is little talk of the $40,000 salary for the "average" small firm, entry-level associate (sans benefits). There is little, if anything, about the day-to-day frustrations of the "blue collar" lawyer, going to court every day on small matters, perhaps because they didn't have much experience to draw on, or because it made the profession seem less attractive. The book might as well have been published by the ABA.
In 2021, it would be much better to go into nursing, or coding, or numerous other industries where there is actually a shortage of workers. I would not recommend anyone go to law school, unless they score above 170 on the LSAT and have been accepted into a "Top 15" school, or if they have wanted to go to law school their entire life, and have a clearly defined area they want to go into, and if they have a ready-made client pool, or if their parents are attorneys and they are part of an expected succession plan.
Therefore, this book may be interesting to a great number of people, but it is dated, and it is biased, and I would not trust it. That said, law school is not a terrible decision for everyone, and if one wants to fantasize about earning a $1 billion fee for the Tobacco Master Settlement, it might inspire greater ambitions.
https://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/200...
November 30, 2008
This book is PR class in 80 pages.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews