I wouldn’t deny I found your comments frustrating and a little irritating – in a way in which I don’t when similar comments are made in Jetblast where I expect no better. I don’t feel the need to protect my profession and, when I think it’s deserved, openly concede criticism. However, I occasionally feel the need to correct inaccurate assumptions/assertions and your previous post was such an occasion.
Re rocket science -
”Your private work will be under pressure from more lawyers who have lost public work which will drive down rates.”
That assumes the work which is currently currently publicly-funded would disappear. I think it would reduce, but not significantly.
People who genuinely can’t afford to pay for their legal representation would suffer, but IMHO lawyers currently doing publicly–funded criminal work would largely be doing the same work but at higher fees - which would more than off-set some reduction in volume.
A very high proportion of people who currently receive free (publicly funded) representation could, and would, find the means to pay if they had no alternative. I don’t mean people who are genuinely poor, but those who seem to have no difficulty whatsoever finding money to pay for non-essential things.
Many solicitors have now stopped doing publicly-funded criminal work because it’s so badly paid. I’ve seen nothing to suggest that’s led to lower fees for private work. Until fairly recently, the Bar’s disciplinary code didn’t permit barristers doing criminal work to refuse publicly-funded cases. That rule has now been lifted because the level of fees has become so bad, but it’s too early to assess what difference (if any) it will make.
Compensation culture?
I agree with you. It would be wrong to lay all the blame for that at the door of the legal profession, but the sort of ambulance-chasing lawyers and ‘claims firms’ you mention are regarded with the same disdain inside the profession as outside.
”I still assert that my particular piloting profession rates higher than a lawyer.”
Fine - although I’m not sure what you mean by ‘higher’.
When I cast doubt upon the quality of your reasoning, I didn’t only have your assertions about lawyers in mind.
“I value myself above lawyers and accountants but on a par with Docs and engineers as we, all do jobs, which benefit others.”
So lawyers and accountants don’t?
”After all if there were no lawyers and accountants would the world stop - no (in fact would we notice). Without Docs, you may die and without pilots to fly the workers and engineers to get the oil out you would be living in a cold house and have to walk to work.”
Taking that argument to its logical conclusion, there’s an enormous array of jobs (even in the oil industry) which are essential to get the raw material from source to the consumer. Do you believe they should all be paid the same because they are all essential cogs in the wheel?
In the aviation industry, should cabin attendants (who have a flight safety role in the event of an emergency as well as their more obvious role), aircraft cleaners and baggage handlers be paid the same as pilots?
Paying people according to their perceived contribution to the well-being of society is a wonderful theory but difficult, if not impossible, to apply in practice.
That said, grave-diggers, refuse collectors and sewerage workers would enthusiastically agree with you - and, of course, the bus drivers who take them to work, and the mechanics who keep the buses on the road, and then there's the .................... where do you stop?
Represent you at public rates if you ever need me?
But you won’t need me. As you said, lawyers don’t do a job which benefits others.
The world wouldn’t stop if there were no lawyers?
True – but
your world might if you found yourself in a position where you needed a lawyer and didn’t have one.
