subject: Save The World! Get Rid Of Lawyers? [print this page] I would like to say I'm not lazy, but that would take too much energy, and it wouldn't be true. As we all know, lawyers are sticklers for the truth. I don't mind expending effort. In fact, there are some things, like rescuing my dinner from my golden retriever, that I do with enthusiasm. There are many more things I do without complaint, if not with pleasure. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating about the "without complaint" bit. Still, I think I've come up with a way to end global warming. Yes, Al Gore, I bet this never occurred to you, and I said it first!
Attorneys do a lot of unnecessary traveling. there are courts 30 miles from here that like to schedule "hearings to schedule hearings". I wish I could say this was unusual, but it isn't. I have traveled many miles just to find out that the only thing the court has scheduled is a "status hearing". If the regular judge can't be present for a hearing, he can assign the case to a "judge pro temp", i. e. a substitute judge, who has the power to make any decisions that need to be made on the case. The problem is that these judges are afraid to make decisions that are different from those the regular judge would have made. This isn't such a bad thing, but they never mention their preferences until everyone on the case has already spent the gas and time to come to court. The bottom line is that our courts, and other aspects of my profession could be a lot less wasteful.
Paper is another commodity that the legal profession wastes. Lawyers routinely ask for discovery that isn't the least bit useful to their clients just because they can. Whole forests are cut down just so some idiot in a suit can demand 5000 pages of bank records he won't read, and wouldn't understand even if he did. If you think you'll need to introduce something into evidence, you have to provide complete copies for everyone on the case before court begins. You may end up not requiring, say Aunt Sadie's 20 page letter to Uncle George, or the 50 page contract between Jack and Jill. Regardless, you still have to give everyone a copy of the whole document, and if you haven't done this in advance, and you do need to refer to something, you are going to REALLY honk off the judge. He will either stop the proceedings so opposing counsel can read the whole document in court, or send his court reporter to make copies for everyone while you wait.
Lawyers aren't the only wasters of trees and oil, and enemies to precious resources. Think of our government. If all of the state assemblies and congress were to give up unnecessary travel and paper waste, we could restore the world's rain forests to full capacity, probably in one month. Pollution would be a thing of the past, as would "CNN", "Fox News". I'm having a hard time finding a down side to this.
Here's what we can do. In this day of computers, email and real time communication, why don't we all meet in a secured chat room to do our business? We can email each other copies of any documents we want to present, and talk to each other without even leaving our offices, or living rooms for that matter. Think of the gas we'd save, both fossil fuel based and regular old hot air. Think of the trees that would survive to delight future generations. Think of the ... TJ, get back here with my pork chop!
