Rounding Third

"Why do people hate lawyers? Is it because we brush our teeth in a way that the rest of the world doesn't even understand?" -- Prof. Folsom
Well, I'm rounding third, heading home, almost done with my "1L" year. Meagan has been after me for a while to create some posts on our blog. Of course, I've been way too lazy to do so. I claim that I'm way to busy to do so, but it's really laziness. This blog was supposed to be somewhat of a journal-type blog, in that it was to track our experiences through Virginia Beach, and law school, and work, and friends, and church. And this blog will still do that, I've just gotten off to a late start, and my first blog is coming near the end of my first year, rather than tracking through all the experiences I've had during my first year. Now writing this blog looking back retroactively at my 1L year, really makes this easy, because my 1L year has FLOWN by. Day to day, it feels like it crawls by, and it's extremely tough, but when you take a second to look back on where you were only eight months ago, you really see the progress you've taken.
So I'm working on finishing up my first year, final exams are in one month, and I have to finish an appellate brief claiming that in West Virginia, my client's corporate veil should not have been pierced, thus holding her personally liable as a shareholder, and secondly, that an award of punitive damages was not proper under an action solely for breach of contract. One thing that I thought I had a pretty good understanding of, but I learned a lot about this first year is the degree of responsibility a lawyer has. Now obviously that seems simple, of course a lawyer has a high degree of responsibility. But law school is hard for a reason, it's not to put cottage cheese in your stomach and make you ill, but rather it's to put steel in your backbone. The whole essence of why someone hires a lawyer is because that person feels that the lawyer can represent them better in a legal setting than they could themselves. That's ultimately why the decision is made to hire oneself a lawyer. Once the lawyer is hired, the lawyer is responsible for that person's fortune, life savings, earnings, or even their life, if they're facing the death penalty. Our legal system is based on the Adversarial model. The theory there is that lawyers from both sides will fight as hard as they possibly can for their respective clients, and gain every advantage humanly possible going into trial. Now you have these two extremes, these polar opposites arguing for completely different results. Who's right? Who's telling the truth? Well all lawyers are telling the truth, they're both staring at the same set of facts, but their putting different spin on the facts and how the law, and what law, applies to those facts. The question of who to believe falls on the jury. That, in a nutshell (a very small one, like a pistachio), is what lawyers do. Now I believe that people grow to dislike lawyers because the jury may decide to believe the lawyer who's arguing the side you don't agree with. Or, the lawyers people see are the ones who have this great responsibility, and abuse it. They spin the facts too much, so they're bordering on not telling the truth. Meagan and I got into a debate the other night. We were watching a television show, it was a reality show, and one of the main characters was charged with a DUI, and the show aired portions of his trial. As I was watching the show, I put forth an argument, that Meagan did not believe I could use. If I were a practicing attorney, and actually used my argument in court, and won, and an outsider looking in only saw that portion of the trial, and didn't agree with my argument, of course they're going to form a very negative impression of the lawyers in this country. It's actually very rare that a person ever gets to see the inside of a courtroom. Either through jury selection, or they're a witness, a plaintiff, or a defendant, or a victim, those instances are relatively rare, and I sincerely doubt people make a practice of simply going to court and watching. So when a person does see the inside of a courtroom, that impression sticks with them most, if not all, of their lives. When I talk to people who've served on a jury, they remember their experiences like it was yesterday, when they might have served on the jury 15, 20 years ago. My point is, lawyers need to act with the highest degree of integrity, because while they are not public figures, they are in the spotlight. For whatever reason, they are judged as soon as someone knows they're a lawyer, their every action is scrutinized. So I suppose my point really is to take a lawyer you see with a grain of salt, and try to realize that not every lawyer you see is the "dirtbag" you just saw "lying."
Well, what started out to be a small introductory blog post turned out to be quite unreasonably long. This is not necessarily a bad thing, unless you read don't read fast (which, by the way, I've tried to take that into account by writing this slow). But this has been a good thing for me, because I need to write said appellate brief referenced above. This post has gotten my fingers warmed up, my brain stimulated, and I'm ready to go. Have an excellent Good Friday, and a wonderful Easter, salvation is free, and it's the most wonderful gift we could have ever received.