[dmix]

When I was a kid, I read comics or heard jokes where the punchline was about everyones unanimous hatred for lawyers, I was always a bit confused.

But witnessing the last few yrs in the tech industry (in addition to politics and divorce law), it's become very apparent to me why thats the case.

[noonespecial]

Here's a viewpoint that's even more scary than a bunch of villainous lawyers out to take advantage of the poor sheeple: The lawyers, the accountants, the CEO's, even judges and juries are just out working hard, trying the best they can to get along in life. None of them are particularly scummy. The rottenness is just an emergent property.

Lawyers just happen to live on the fault-lines of the tectonic plates of greed and self interest.

[nazgulnarsil]

It isn't just an emergent property. When you undermine contract law and private property rights the whole system turns to shit.

Libertarians complain loudly about things like guns and drugs, but the erosion of the backbone of an economy is a much more insidious problem.

[roguecoder]

As long as patents are part of the problem the solution is not more property rights.

[BadassFractal]

I still don't see how the lawyers are the bad guys here. The company knows that the country's laws might allow it to weaken the competition. It wants to avail itself of that option. The laywers are just the executors of that action, the messengers if you will.

They're certainly happy to make a buck from the process, but unless they're the ones to actually create the laws and keep them in place despite their ridiculousness, they are not exactly to blame.

[potatolicious]

> "they are not exactly to blame."

Oh hell naw.

If someone leaves their car unlocked sitting by the curb with the keys in the ignition, is it right to steal it? The fact that someone has (stupidly or otherwise) created a situation that is easy to take advantage of in no way excuses the person that exploits it.

The fact that we have creating a patent and copyright law situation that borders on the absurd is one thing, people actively seeking to profit from this sorry state of affairs are as guilty as they come.

[edanm]

I think the point is that it is Oracle trying to exploit the situation. Not their lawyers.

[prodigal_erik]

It's an adversarial system, though. For every legal team trying to exploit the flaws in our system, there's another trying to stop them from doing so. They aren't all bad actors.

What I can't understand is why billing rates haven't plummeted due to the glut of law school grads they keep talking about. It's not as if the bar associations have kept that many off the market.

[zdw]

The problem is money.

Large companies can use lawyers to get things like special taxation benefits ("if we build our factory here, can we get a tax break?") or to stamp out competition from smaller companies through patent lawsuits, etc.

Saying that lawyers who participate in such actions is neutral is like saying that the tobacco companies are neutral with regards to cancer caused by smoking. You can't have a system without it's facilitators.

That said, I know and work with a whole lot of very nice lawyers who, to my knowledge, aren't scummy.

[Cushman]

If the problem is money, then why go after the lawyers? Why not the accountants who finance the company? Or the HR managers who organize it? Or the contractors who will be putting that factory up, or, hell, the blue-collar guys who will eventually wind up staffing it?

They're all just hard-working folks trying to make a living. They work for the corporations because the corporations have the money they need. If someone else had the money, they'd work for them instead. The only facilitator here is capital.

[trobertson]

(Over) Simplified:

It's primarily lawyers (or at least, law school graduates) that make the laws, and they are also the ones profiting from ridiculous cases. It's up to lawyers to fix the mess that the lawyers made, that the lawyers are profiting from.

Obviously, only lawyers are happy with the situation.

As I said, this is a simplification. But it is too close to the truth for most people, and so most people dislike lawyers for "screwing things up".

[nitrogen]

They benefit from the current situation and their colleagues write the laws, so I don't imagine we'll see hordes of lawyers clamoring to change the status quo any time soon.