Who is Proud to be a Lawyer?

My mind cannot open the cannister
Wrapped in chains dragging,
Fears and worries nagging,
Who's got me gagging?
A barrister.

What is a Lawyer? Wikipedia says a lawyer is a person learned in the law. Learned in how to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political and social authority, and deliver justice. Law is a kind of philosophy, and the practice of law is a discipline that that should not be too dissimilar to a priest.

According to me, the ideal lawyer (and judge too) is trained in understanding fairness, good arguments, and justice. They are the trusted bridge for normal people, who are more flawed and may make mistakes in judgement, to seek answers and bring them from a wrong path to a right path. They are a kind of elite, who produce nothing of substance but are more than worth keeping around because they are so wise and can keep our society running straight.

What is a real lawyer? In my experience, real lawyers are not elite, they are the entitled. They must feel that they are wise and important because they live amongst the clouds. The high floors of many buildings are occupied by lawyers, and their salaries are as high as their office. Ok, so they make a lot of money, but perhaps that is the price that society should pay to have such wisdom available. What do they provide?

Here is a list of my dealings with lawyers over the past few years during which time I've bought and sold several houses, sued a company, and witnessed a shareholder's agreement. I'll cover the specific stories in other posts, but each one shows that laywers basically provide very limited value for very high prices, lawyers try to PREVENT access to justice by making things too complicated for the average person to understand or accomplish without the use of a lawyer, or they just demonstrate basic corruption and contempt for what I would consider normal standards of decency like telling the truth.

Data from The Going Rate:

Average hourly rate for a lawyer is $231/hr. According to Statscan, the average wage of all workers in Canada >25 years old is $24. So the AVERAGE lawyer bills out 10X!!!!! more per hour than the AVERAGE citizen. Citizens pay lawyers in after-tax dollars, so the average citizen must work about 13 hours to pay for one hour of legal advice. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!

A real estate purchase costs about $1300 in legal fees. For what? The lawyer does nothing but witness signatures and file a paper with the city. This is very easily something that a private citizen can do on their own; there is no great wisdom required. The average citizen works for a week and a half to earn this amount of money. Do you not think that perhaps the citizen should just take a day off work to fill and deliver the forms? Unfortunately lawyers are entrenched in the process, required and only avoidable by the most adventurous people.

A small 2-day civil trial, where someone is trying to get justice over a perceived wrong, costs $29,000! The trial takes 2 days, but it costs almost one year worth of take home pay for the average Canadian. Nobody can access the wisdom of the elite lawyer at those rates.

I find this repulsive. It would be slightly less repulsive if lawyers actually were very ethical, knew their profession well, and were competent. Unfortunately, I find that lawyers make many of the same mistakes I could make on my own. They are additionally very arrogant and abuse the law as much as possible, even to point of being dishonest. These are lawyers at all levels, from the country bumpkin to a $300/hr highrise lawyer.

A friend of mine, who is taking lawyer education, is finding the professional organization -- the bar -- to be a disgusting bunch of megalomaniacs intent on toying with the future of lawyers by putting them through a highly subjective test that they pass or fail not by logical arguments but by the whims of the tyrant ejudicators.

Example Question (not real, just an easy to understand analogue): "You were walking on the sidewalk and the police give you a speeding ticket for going over 50 km/hr. How do you argue your innocence?"

My friend might say "Because 1) I was walking, not in a vehicle so I can't get a vehicle infraction 2) I cannot physically walk more than 7h/hr, 3) I was on the sidewalk and your radar was aimed at the road, therefore it wasn't me you measured". They might mark that as incorrect and tell him that he should have only used the 2nd argument by itself because the addition of other arguments weakened his case: Therefore ZERO! You fail the bar exam, and your future as a lawyer is in jeopardy. What a bunch of crazies! The example is literally the type of thing that happens (according to my friend)!

The legal profession and the justice system is out of control. There must be a revolt of some kind to get justice managed by people who really have justice as a goal, not by corrupt, ego-maniacal, profiteers. Hard to take the risk to start something like that because I'm sure, as soon as someone starts to criticize lawyers, they're likely to get sued.