STOP LAWYERS NOW.ORG: OPINION PAPER No. 2, January, 2021
If you are like most people in America, you put trust and confidence in our judicial system. Unless, that is until you have had to spend time in a court room as a defendant or Plaintiff. Those of us that have experienced the procedures of a court room generally walk away with a sour experience. As I have said before on this site, TRUST is the glue that holds us together. More than any other profession the legal services providers have the general reputaTon of not being trusted these days. Why is that? Go spend some time in a court room as an observer and it will be clear. However, you must understand the argument being challenged and all its ramifications in order to catch the sleight of hand comments that most lawyers are guilty of. In this age, the goal of both sides of the table is to WIN and generally winning means making money in the civil court system. The Lawyer for the Plaintiff’s side wins damages caused by the Defendants side. If the Plaintiff wins then both parties (plaintiff and lawyer) are happy as the winnings are split 33% for the lawyer’s profit and the balance after Lawyer expenses (costs of litigation) go to the injured party, the Plaintiff . Most winning Plaintiffs walk away bewildered by how much the lawyer took and how liable was le` over for the Plaintiff. The injured say that something is better than nothing and without a lawyer, litigation is not possible. However, it is this outcome that the lawyers over the years feed upon. It is my opinion that the whole judicial system is out of control as it focuses more on the procedures and the manipulaTon of the procedures which gives rise to a win if the lawyer is clever enough to maneuver within the procedures in the court room. A prosecutor working for the government gets brownie points for every win which is reflected in his or her advancement in position and income. If you do not win very often then you are no longer a prosecutor. The incentive to win is large. That is the motivation for either side to creatively stretch rules and truths which can only be done if they manipulate the facts (lie). Dishonesty, more often than not, is the grease needed to move arguments to the winning side, particularly in front of a jury. For the most part, the average juror has no idea what the procedural guidelines are and tend to be bewildered by all the confusing statements expressed in legal language. As it has been menToned earlier in the site, laws are only as good as the accepted definition of the words used to describe the law or rule. Unfortunately, one of the prime games of lawyers on both sides of the table, is to try and redefine the language used in describing the law or rule. This practice and its challenge are of great fun for lawyers. I have sat with many lawyers who have excelled at wordsmithing to manipulate facts. I say that the Webster Dictionary defines what words mean and should be the gold standard without question. But as we all know it is not. The now famous trial of an ex-president’s attempt to redefine the word sex and all its ramifications actually won part of the defense by successfully convincing the jury that the words meaning is not really what you thought or have read. Over all the years of these court room shenanigans, the legal and judicial system have lost the TRUST of the American people.
One might ask: how do you catch a lying lawyer and what is the punishment for such egregious behavior? The answer: for the most part, you the citizen can’t do anything about it and if you could, most likely you could not afford the trial costs. Second to that and not unlike the AMA (American Medical Association) the ABA (American Bar Association) is a very strong club that protects its members.
Here is some background; This statement was directly from the ABA on the subject “can lawyers lie in court”. See www.AmericanBar.org: When is it ok for a lawyer to lie? The answer from their own site was described by one of their own in a wriaen statement on December 2018/Around the ABA by Ms. Hyland. It reads as follows: first line first paragraph: “Everyone knows that lawyers are not allowed to lie” so states the ABA. Move to the last paragraph of the piece where it says “The court states “there is a TRADITION here (meaning America) of lawyers either engaging in or supervising investigators to engage in a certain amount of deceit (lies) to get informaTon to identity ongoing wrongdoing that MAYBE relevant to a litigation. Hyland concluded saying that this is a generally accepted practice. With that, you can clearly deduct that in fact lawyers can lie and it has been a tradition of practice ethics for a long time. The American Bar Association says that a lawyer cannot lie (first sentence) so that makes that statement a lie in
and of itself as the last sentences states lawyer lying is a TRADITION, ( just do not get caught, it is part of the game) my comment.
Why are lawyers on both side motivated to lie? TO WIN MONEY. Here are some facts gathered from various sites about the size of the US Court System.
- More than 100 million cases are filed each year in the State Trial Courts in America.
- More than 400,000 cases are filed in the Federal Trial Courts.
- Number of lawyers in the USA in 2020 = 1.33 million
- There is roughly one lawyer for every 350 citizens of all ages in the USA
- The Legal Services Industry (lawyers) generated 256.66 billion dollars gross income in 2019.
- The average gross income generated per lawyer in 2019 = $192,977.00.
- Data source from Google search and www.StaTsta.comRegarding Prosecutors misconduct. Source: www.APMREPORTS.Org Why don’t prosecutors get disciplined? Written by Attorney Levin. A few statements from his opinion: “if it’s not possible to learn that there might be a problem about a lawyer then that lawyer can continue to represent people and do BAD things”. Also, “If that Lawyer is a prosecutor, those BAD things can include wrongfully sending people to prison and the voters maybe none the wiser”. Additionally, I found it very difficult to find government data and ABA data that discloses just how many lawyers get caught lying/deceiving in court and what the consequences are. One data link from Florida ABA where there are 108,615 lawyer members of the Florida Bar Association states there were only 42 total disbarments in 2020. The causes of the disbarments are most likely diverse and the Florida Bar does not break out the different offenses that lead to disbarment. Of those 42 disbarments, only 7 were permanent. This means the vast majority got their hand slapped and restricted from practice for a short time and then they returned to work as an unencumbered lawyer. If you do not see the problem yet, what do you think the penalty for perjury (lying in Court while under oath) for a citizen would be? Huge fines, potential jail time and a loss of professional licenses can occur to name a few. No going back to work for you.
What can we do to mitigate this serious miscarriage of justice? Lawyers make the laws and they charge citizens who they say violate them. When it comes to lawyers committing perjury, no surprise, the lawyer club is a tight nit club and they always protect each other so as not to establish a precedent. The previous data presented on the number of lawyers in Florida, for example, demonstrates that the prosecution of only 7 lawyers out of 108,615 in 2020 represents a 0.006 % conviction rate. Do you really believe that only 7 lawyers out 108,615 got prosecuted for adverse court behavior? Precedents are bad for lawyers if they are against their business interest. I will explore that subject in upcoming Opinion papers, it is another mess.
Here is what you need to do: “IF THE CANDIDATE IS A LAWYER VOTE NO” There are few to no means to check the misconduct of the lawyers, prosecutors and Judges in the court system in general. The only way to make progress in our efforts to get honest, fair play by the legal system is to legislate against them. The first piece of legislaTon necessary is to force both plaintiff lawyers, defendant lawyers, prosecutors and Judges is to take the same oath as you are asked to take upon entering a court room as a party to the claim or a witness. It is, we all know it, “I swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God” Do you know that lawyers in the court room do not have to take this oath. Their defense is that when they receive their license to practice law in a State they take that oath at that time. This is a mere inconvenience to most of them as it is no longer remembered while in practice. I believe that, at a minimum, they must be reminded of this oath every time they enter the court room and the other participants can witness their statement. Their goal: win at any cost: they make their money and go to the next case without consequences. The consequences now are the citizens do not trust the most of them. No trust no respect.
As always, we look forward to hearing your comments and related experiences.
Michael F. McMaster
