As IF Times

link Lawyers Call for Drastic Change in Educating New Lawyers – NYTimes.com.

Let’s for a minute consider the assumption of the article: We need more lawyers not less.  Hmm.  As we can probably guess by now, the United States has the most lawyers per capita of all of the world’s nations according to a number of compilers found on a google search.  We can quibble over what the actual statistic is, but in general, the number comes in at around one for every 300  people.   So what?

Well, the statistic has implications when you think about how western societies have evolved, or devolved depending on your view.  This number is amusing if we compare other statistics that are routinely paraded out by the popular media in furtherance and support of a particular cause.  We often hear that the U.S. has the largest prison population per capita in the world, especially among minorities.  Does that mean that they have more criminals, or does it imply that the criminals have bad lawyers?  Maybe they just have too many laws.   Recently, we’ve heard the bleating about the correlation between gun ownership to gun related violence.  There is the accusation that one leads to the other.  In the case of the lawyer population, does that imply that more lawyers leads to more crime?  In an article written last year by the author Mark G. McLaughlin:

“…In America today you are more likely to find a lawyer than a soldier, a doctor, a police officer or a firefighter.  With an average of one lawyer per every 300 citizens, the United States has not only more lawyers per capita than any other country  but also more lawyers than any other country – including those with populations two, three or four times as great…”

From that alone, we are led to assume the following:  as a population, we are more concerned about our legal circumstances than we are with our personal safety and national security, our personal health and of our houses burning down.

If we assume that American society is at its core, evil and that lawyers are needed to protect the interests of the citizens from each other, that’s a scary thing.  This implies massive shortcomings in moral structure resulting in a society constantly in need of  legal guidance .  Are we saying that left alone, it would be a “Lord Of The Flies” society?  When we look at other advanced societies in the world such as Japan where the per capita number of lawyers is significantly lower, is there more crime there?  If however, we reject this notion of a naturally belligerent and combative  society, then it implies that the volume of lawyers are unnecessary and a drag on an otherwise benign population.  The old saying that, when all you have is hammers, everything looks like nails seems apt.

In one of the most outrageous scams of self dealing since accountants got involved with taxes, is the fact that not only are laws written by lawyers, they are so arcanely worded that you have to hire them back to figure out what they mean.  Common sense should tell you that if you require lawyers to be constantly involved in the course of day to day living,  you either  have too many laws, or the laws are so badly written that the regular folk can’t make sense of them.  It’s actually comical to have to  pay someone to tell you what the law is.  It would be as if you went to a restaurant and besides paying for the food offered by the chef, you also pay for  his advice on how to eat it.  If you ask me, lawyers’ roles should be similar to travel agents or flag people holding traffic signs at construction sites.  However, because of the evolution of confusingly written and contradicting laws, the nature of the law racket is adversarial.  Hiring a lawyer is more like hiring a poker player to gamble with your money, since in the end if you lose, the hired guy doesn’t pay;  you do.

The referenced article is somewhat correct in that the focus on legal education has to change.  But it is written from the perspective of what’s good for future lawyers and how to improve their lot in life rather than improving their role in society.   Lawyering has devolved into the tactic of parsing minutiae in pursuit of an outcome rather than through principled arguments of right and wrong. We recall back in the days of President Clinton’s travails, his infamous comment of, “that depends on what the meaning of is, is”.  This hair splitting has given rise to the cavalcade of absurd lawsuits and judgements rampant in the U.S. today.  It has also given support to an entire business known as the victim and entitlement industry.  The caricature of lawyer Jackie Chiles on the old Seinfeld TV series is probably not as far fetched as most may think.   Consequently, people are encouraged to sue over bad grades, hot coffee, spurned affections, the length of sandwiches and any possible event from which you can get some kind of financial restitution.  On the other hand, those that can afford to pay wind up shafting those that cannot.  Justice may be blind, but it’s not cheap.  There’s good reason for all the lawyer jokes.

In the 2003 black comedy film, Intolerable Cruelty, there is a scene in which George Clooney, playing crack divorce attorney Miles Massey is interviewing his client Rex:

Massey:  “So you propose that in spite of demonstrable infidelity, on your part, your unoffending wife should be tossed out on her ear?

Client Rex: “Is it possible?”

Massey:  “It’s a challenge!”

We don’t really need more people advising on how to game the system; we need people that actually do things.    Lawyers are supposed to be the lubricant that smooths the wheels of society, not the grease on which a society slips.  As long as lawyers get paid by the word and by the minute, that’s never going to happen.

link Its Apple and CalPERS vs. Greenlight in stock proposal showdown – latimes.com.

While not exactly an obvious burning social issue, the battle that is developing between a stockholder, (actually hedge fund manager) and the corporate behemoth Apple is a good example of why businesses have such a hard time in modern America.  Unless you’ve been in a coma for the past 10 years, it’s widely accepted that Apple has been the most successful of American corporations of the past decade, possibly ever, parlaying innovative thinking  and creating must-have items into unparalleled commercial success.   People fortunate enough to have owned the stock from a decade ago at around 10 dollars a share were rewarded with a meteoric price rise to just over 700 last fall.

And yet Steve Einhorn of hedge fund fame, thinks that he is a better judge of how the company should employ their growing cash asset as if he were a tech visionary.  While Einhorn uses the red herring of “returning the cash” to Apple’s shareholders, in reality, he is second guessing the very business strategy of a company that has outperformed anything in the U.S. stock market in recent memory.  It’s as if he dines in the nation’s best restaurant and then decides to tell the chef how to make a better Bearnaise sauce.  Despite the success that Apple has become through the vision of Steve Jobs, the company is obligated to now spend untold money on lawyers to defend themselves from someone who thinks they could do better.

Wielding the green eye-shades of backroom bookies measuring quarter to quarter performance,  large  institutional investors can successfully coerce public  corporations in many ways; from what suppliers they use, to where they operate, whom they hire, or even the actual core business direction.  The rise of activist investment funds such as Einhorn’s can successfully bully companies into actions that can end strategies that have long term growth potential for the sake of short term gains.   While those with Einhorn’s mentality may be lauded for their short term investment shrewdness, their ilk are responsible for much of what ails American industry.  Of course none of this happens without the everpresent threat of legal action.  The bully tactic of using lawyers to advance a particular cause has of course become high art here in the West.  While the popular discussion these days is about restricting the access of guns to the average folk, the epidemic of lawyering up has continued unabated causing immeasurably more and longer term harm to society.

The business of Wall Street has gone from providing an environment designed to seed and grow corporations to that of being a virtual casino in which the actual businesses themselves are irrelevant; they are merely statistics for comparison on the worksheets of MBA’s and bankers like cards in a poker hand.  Some may notice the similarity to the dynamic present in today’s professional sports business, notably football.  While the actual sport itself generates it’s own circle of economic influence, the ancillary and derivative businesses of wagering are thought to be as big or bigger than the legitimate monies involved with the actual sport.  So much money in fact that there are ongoing suspicions of game rigging to benefit large bettors. This has happened to the investment business.  The problem is that the derivative tail winds up wagging the underlying dog.  Eventually, it all gets corrupted and the entire enterprise is threatened with collapse.  In a casino at least, you are given the illusion that you can win.

It’s laughable to accept that Einhorn has a better feel for what Apple can do with their cash horde, since to my knowledge, he has no experience at all in running a real operating company, much less a leading edge tech giant.  Presumably, if he did, he would start a competitor.   Luckily for him, the free market provides a mechanism for venting his frustration for not getting his way.  He can sell.