| HN Mirror

Ah, I wish that was the case.

I've had multiple high priced lawyers with years of experience in the area give me completely, factually wrong information about THEIR PRIMARY PRACTICE AREA over the years. It still blows my mind.

In one case, I was stupid enough to believe them even though I knew it didn't quite sound right and it cost me an immense amount of money and a huge amount of stress in the resulting litigation.

And I know they were completely factually wrong because I had double checked with them what they said, they confirmed it (reiterated it actually) - and then it was very much not correct, as confirmed by the following court case which I had to settle, because I had been operating under a factually wrong view of the law. Not even 'eh, could go either way', but 90% of the lawyers I interviewed for the follow-up litigation literally said 'Well, that's dumb. Why did you do that? Of course you're going to get sued. Did you write it down you were doing that? Well, you're in deep trouble. Sorry, my calendar is booked solid, can't help you.'

More recently, while interviewing civil litigation attorneys, I had one who was referred to me with excellent references. Easily 20 years of practice too, I forget the exact number I pulled from the Bar.

I had done quite a bit of research on the area. Specifically I had tracking down and read the complete civil procedure that defined the applicable statue of limitations, and did some cursory research on the case law around it. I also pulled the applicable penal codes, case law, and civil damage claims - in this case Conversion, Grand Theft, Subornation of Perjury, Perjury, and a few others - and had figured out the likely elements of the crimes that were applicable, which I could prove and how easily, which ones were iffy, etc.

When I laid out the evidence and the case, he tried to convince me that I was outside the statute of limitations (even though it had only been 6 months since the event had first occurred, and was still ongoing), and that the court would throw it out and I'd be liable under anti-SLAPP - even though I could prove the party involved had committed perjury and filed a false police report, and there was no plausible claim it was a matter of public interest.

The case law is quite clear that perjury is not a protected type of speech, and matters of public interest are also clearly defined enough that this wouldn't apply at all. So the anti-SLAPP statute couldn't apply.

I would have to prove perjury, but I literally had solid, fully contextual video evidence that showed that what was claimed in the other parties court filing (initial AND follow-up) was not and could not have happened, AND it showed that the opposite had happened - they were the party at fault, and they had to have known it, or were clearly mentally incompetent.

This video was from cameras the other party had requested be installed, AND knew recorded these things/area, AND that they knew I had access to and had their permission to access/download from.

When I asked him why he thought it was outside the statute of limitations since the applicable statute of limitations for civil claims in that state cut off at 1, 2, or 3 years for civil claims (and this was likely a 3 year case due to violations of the penal code), he literally sputtered out 'you knew that?' before making a rapid 'I wish you luck sir', and hanging up on me.

Bullshitters abound, and Lawyers are better than most at Bullshitting as it's a large part of the job. Same as sales folks. Most lawyers customers are in dire straights, overwhelmed and overloaded, and in trouble and changed life circumstances that they don't understand for reasons they have difficulty processing/understanding, let alone breaking down or describing in a coherent way.

If they run across someone who looks good, says what they want to hear, and has the trappings (books, the office, the tie, whatever), 99% of these customers can't or won't be able to do critical thinking on what is being said, let alone cross reference it with something concrete or do their own research.

They also don't have the time or are in life circumstances in most cases to interview enough attorneys and learn the relevant sections of law to do basic bullshit checks either.

There is a reason the Bar and licensing/testing exists - without it, it would be an even bigger disaster and shark chum feed. It's also been my experience that about 80% (or more) of licensed practicing attorneys are happy to bullshit you with happy go lucky stories about how they'll get x thing done, or you totally have a case, or you can totally do this thing and it'll be fine, when, while not impossible, that's just not really a good idea for you. And will happily turn the crank on billable hours producing things that look really cool and impressive if you don't know what's going on, but are often riddled with factual errors, missing useful procedural elements, or not providing evidence in a way that is going to make the case clear and easy to judge. At least that gets them paid in the resulting disaster or while it churns on with no end in sight anyway.

You also can end up with 'this is impossible', or 'that is not how it works', when actually, it could be done, it's just outside of their area of expertise (and they don't want to admit they don't know).

To the original point, it is rare to have someone give completely, clearly factually incorrect information about their specialty, but it does happen. If you interview 10 lawyers, you'll find at least one, probably two in my experience who will do so.

If I had written records of the wrong advice in my situation (instead of phone calls), I would have filed a complaint with the Bar, but lawyers are unfortunately ALSO pretty good at covering their asses, and the Bar is pretty good at looking like it's going after folks without really changing anything. So not worth trying frankly.

Caveat emptor.