[lmilcin]

I am not versed in US law (I am neither a lawyer nor from US). Generally, lawyers are not exempt from the law and can face professional responsibility (called disbarment in US).

Lying to a judge is grounds for disbarment but in general a lawyer has no obligation to verify clients' statements.

It would usually be difficult to prove what the lawyer did or did not know but, hypothetically, if you could prove that the lawyer knew that there was no trespassing then a statement to the court to the contrary can be construed to be a lie and result in consequences.

[dodobirdlord]

A lawyer could be disbarred for lying to a judge, but in practice it is extremely infrequent that lawyers are disbarred, even for relatively severe misconduct. I also personally think that the standards for what constitutes misconduct should be more broad, and should extend to cover bad faith use of the legal system for purposes other than seeking legal rulings, like harassing people or wasting their time or money. The existence of default judgements, where the defendant has to appear and present a defense or be found responsible in even the most flagrantly illegitimate of cases incentivizes lawyers to carry out filings in bad faith.

For example, lawyers in the US routinely file or threaten to file defamation suits in scenarios where the law is clear that no defamation has occurred. I feel that in such situations the most charitable interpretation is that the lawyer is an idiot, and the less charitable interpretation is that the lawyer is a criminal. When a judge considers and ultimately dismisses such a suit, two options present themselves. Either the lawyer is so incompetent as to think that the suit had legitimate grounds, in which case they should lose the ability to file such suits, or the lawyer is maliciously exploiting the legal system for the purpose of harassment, and should similarly lose the ability to file such suits. The fact that judges largely refrain from sanctioning lawyers for even the most severe misconduct results in a world where wealthy individuals are frequently able to use the legal system or the threat of the legal system to harass individuals like journalists into not discussing their activities that are of public interest.

A similar example manifests in patent law, where patent trolls can pursue expensive sham litigation with impunity, to the extent that an entire market exists based on shaking companies down by threatening legal action and offering a settlement for less than the company will have to pay in legal fees to eventually prevail against the sham accusation.

[lmilcin]

Bad faith and basically anything that is only in your mind is such a difficult thing to prove and that's why it is so problematic.

There are judges who are sensitive to it and will go out of their way to punish it. I think part of the problem is that there are many occasions to "fix" the process by getting case resolved in a state that is known to be lenient to certain kind of behavior (very popular with patent trolls).

I don't think there is going to be an easy solution that could be written in law. Rather, the solution is to publicize "bad faith" behavior and lenient treating by judges.

[dodobirdlord]

> Bad faith and basically anything that is only in your mind is such a difficult thing to prove and that's why it is so problematic.

While true, this is to a certain extent the reason why we have judges. We already rely on judges to dismiss lawsuits that are illegitimate, and since filing an illegitimate lawsuit demonstrates either incompetence or malice nothing really needs to be proved about the state of the lawyers mind.