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by londons_explore 2236 days ago
If all the lawyers in the world lost 10 IQ points, which were redistributed to the non-lawyers, who would lose out?

I argue that law is an adversarial profession - what matters is if you are smarter than the lawyer in the other side of the courtroom. If everyone was less good, outcomes would be much the same, and we as a society could redistribute those smart people to engineering problems where those IQ points will make the difference between inventing something useful or not.
1 comments
otterley 2236 days ago
As an attorney who has seen what actually happens in the courtroom, I can tell you that the smartest lawyer does not always win the case, and that judges will often go out of their way to help lawyers who look like they’re tangled up. Being on the right side of the law often helps more.
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esyir 2236 days ago
That doesn't quite answer his question though, the issue here is that quality of lawyer can be counterproductive towards finding the "correct" decision.

It's an effect on the outcome that's orthogonal to the actual facts of the case itself. Unless the guy with a public defender has as much of a chance as the guy with a legal team with a million dollar budget. I'm a little doubtful that that's the case right now.

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otterley 2236 days ago
Objective correctness is impossible to reach in a legal setting because it requires the fact finder to have unfettered access to all the facts, and for the law to be so strict that it cannot possibly be subject to interpretation. In the absence of these things, the adversarial system is the best system we know to approach the correct answer. Consequently, there is some error that we have to accept if we can't think of a better approach.

I'm not sure that the trials of either a wealthy defendant with deep pockets or an indigent defendant with a public defender significantly affect whether the finder of fact can obtain objective Truth with a capital T. The outcomes may indeed be different, but I also think it's orthogonal to the truth as well. They're more the result of the amount of resources you're willing or able to throw at a problem to make it go away.

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