Aging Capriciously

I am going to make a case here.  My claim is that there are too many lawyers running things in the United States of America.  I will present the facts and arguments.  You be the judge and jury.  If I make a good case, then I will settle for fifty million dollars. 

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury.  This may sound like an extreme case.  I know most of you will have some friends who are lawyers.  Some of you may be thinking “Well, there are good lawyers and there are bad lawyers.”  Some of you may be thinking “Well, how would we run this country without lawyers.”  Please listen to what I have to say.  Then you may render your verdict. 

I will repeat my claim.  We have too many lawyers.  They have created a litigious society that is being run by fear and not by logic or reason.  Lawyers use lawsuits to run things and the number and frivolity of these lawsuits has reached epidemic even pandemic proportions.  We have lawyers running our government.  We have lawyers running our school boards.  We have lawyers running our city, county, state, and federal governments.  Everywhere you look in business, there are lawyers prosecuting lawsuits, making claims for reparations, litigation, and countersuits.  Civil courts have begun to take over justice from legal courts.  Law has replaced justice in America.  Laws are not made of the people, by the people and for the people, but laws made of lawyers, by lawyers and for lawyers.

For the past two months we have witnessed lawyers running all over the USA with frivolous lawsuits and craftily plied arguments to usurp the will of the people.  Nay, not just to usurp the will of the people but to overthrow the government of the people of the United States of America.  Even as I write these lines, there are still pending threats to the legally elected President and Vice-President Elects of the USA.  These lawsuits and claims are made by men and women without a shred of decency, integrity, or ethics.  The only thing these lawyers care about is power and winning and money.  The destruction of American Democracy means nothing to these vultures.

Ladies and Gentlemen.  Allow me to present some statistics on lawyers in the USA.

Lawyer Statistics & Facts – 2020 –  https://goremotely.net/blog/lawyer-statistics/

• The US legal business sector has an estimated $160 billion market share.
• More than 100 million cases are filed each year in state trial courts, while roughly 400,000 cases are filed in federal trial courts.
• Only 14.4% of all US lawyers are certified members of ABA. (American Bar Association)
• Some high-profile attorneys can earn as much as $2,400 hourly ($5 million annually).
• There are more than 1.35 million lawyers in the US.
• The number of active lawyers in the United States increased 14.5% over the last decade
• In China, there is 1 lawyer for every 4,620 inhabitants.
• In the USA there is 1 lawyer for every 300 inhabitants
• The percentage of lawyers who are men and women of color (Hispanic, African American, Asian, Native American, and mixed race) grew by a mere 3% over the past decade, increasing from 11.4% in 2010 to 14.1% in 2020.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury.  Please believe me when I say that I am not the only one who thinks that we have too many lawyers in the USA.  Numerous experts can witness and provide testimony that America is one of the most litigious nations in the world.  The amount of litigation has nothing to do with justice.  Lawyers seek out and design strategies to create lawsuits strictly aimed at making money.  How many of you have been notified that you are eligible for some class action lawsuit?  Lawyers actually buy and sell such lawsuits in the hopes of extorting money from organizations that prefer not to have their reputations smeared or waste time in court challenges.  Many organizations simply settle rather than undergo a long and tedious legal process.

Ladies and Gentlemen.  Let me tell you what happens in many of these class action lawsuits.  A company is found with either a potential or tenuous wrongdoing.  Litigants who may have been remotely connected to this perceived wrongdoing are sought out who are offered a monetary reward for their participation.  They may be former customers, clients, or employees.  The case goes to court.  Millions of dollars are sought from the accused.  The lawyers may win or settle out of court.  An award is made.  Let us say that the settlement is made for 50 million dollars.  The lawyers take twenty percent of that for the claimants.  Thus, ten million dollars may be paid out to other people.  The rest of the money, the other 40 million dollars goes to the law firm. 

Ladies and Gentlemen.  I will give you a personal case that I was witness to firsthand and that I will swear to.  A number of years ago, I received three envelopes in the mail.  Upon opening each envelope, I discovered that they were all from eBay.  One had a check for .47 cents.  One had a check for .97 cents.  One had a check for .25 cents.  The postage on the last envelope did not even cover the cost of the check.  Apparently, eBay had lost a class action lawsuit for some overcharging that they were alleged to have done.  I had never, I repeat never signed any documents alleging any wrongdoing or agreeing to any lawsuits against eBay.

Curious, I went online to find out what this was all about.  As I expected, some law firm had brought the lawsuit and won in court.  eBay agreed to pay.  Thousands of people received small checks like I did based on the volume of business they had done with eBay.  The people connected to this alleged crime received pennies while the law firm copped multi-millions for their efforts on our behalf.  I would gladly have refunded my money to eBay since I still do business with them and have never had a problem with their business practices. 

“In April 2018, The New York Times chronicled an even more troubling (albeit related) consequence of TPLF: litigation funders were pushing plaintiff law firms to encourage women to undergo unnecessary surgeries in order to drive up the value of their claims.” — Third Party Litigation Funding

Ladies and Gentlemen.  Did you know that law firms buy and sell lawsuits like you go to the store to buy and sell clothes or merchandise?  (See How To Sell Your Lawsuit)  If a law firm does not think it has the resources or time to prosecute a potentially lucrative lawsuit, it will simply list such suits in a legal newspaper classified ads offering to “sell” the lawsuit to another firm that has the resources to manage the lawsuit. 

“Mighty lends money to plaintiffs in personal injury lawsuits. You collect only if they do. Plus, the head of this online electronic investment platform recommends that only personal-injury lawyers, or investors who have such lawyers helping them evaluate cases, plunk down their money at this early stage.”

Does anyone here think that this is about justice or fairness or equity?  The legal profession has become about power and money.  Do you think the lawsuits brought by Trump and his cadre of legal experts had anything to do with justice or democracy?

“President Donald Trump and his allies have filed dozens of lawsuits across the country in an attempt to contest the election results.  Most of them have been shot down or withdrawn, and no court has found even a single instance of fraud.  Of at least 57 cases to have been filed, including some not directly involving Trump but which could nonetheless affect his standing, at least 50 have been denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn.”

Ladies and Gentlemen.  Please consider that the cases on behalf of Trump were brought by men and women with legal degrees.  These are educated people many of whom went to first class legal colleges.  These are people intelligent enough to get an advanced degree and pass tests that would be impossible for the average person.   Nevertheless, the cupidity of these lawsuits in terms of the damage they have done to our country can only point to a failure of the legal profession to inculcate a sense of ethics and morality in their practitioners.  These lawyers have no interest in supporting the very democratic foundations of a country that allows them to practice their profession.

Ladies and Gentlemen.  Let us look now at the damage that this profession has done to our government.  In no country in the world are there as many lawyers in the Federal government as in the United States of America.  Look at the following statistics:

• The EPA employs 1,020 lawyers with payroll exceeding $1.1 billion
• The IRS employs over 1,400 lawyers.
• There are 10,000 lawyers who are employed by the US Department of Justice.
• In total, there are 25,060 Lawyers in the Federal government costing taxpayers $26.2 Billion per year.
• 25 of the 45 presidents of the USA have been lawyers
• In the 116^th Congress of the USA, there are a total of 192 lawyers out of a total congressional body of 537 individuals (Membership of the 116^th Congress)

Ladies and Gentlemen.  You may well ask, “Well, what harm can all these lawyers do.”  Let me tell you. Having been around lawyers in many different organizations, I can testify to the limited perspective that the legal profession often has in terms of viewing the reality that confronts the average person.  Many of these “legal” experts have never done a day of hard work in their lives.  Often the sons and daughters of privileged and wealthy parents, they go from school to school until they achieve their legal degrees and then go right into some law firm that snatches them up as soon as they graduate.  Their experience of working people and the rest of the world is narrow, limited, and biased.  Once, in their field they are motivated by money, power, and greed. 

Ladies and Gentlemen.   How can you have a government of the people, by the people and for the people when it is a government of the rich by the rich and for the rich?  A government of lawyers, political science majors and corporate people.  An interlocking network of proponents who have a self-interest that nowhere matches the nature and interests of the general public of America. 

In the current Senate, only 19 of the 100 office holders served in the US military.  There is one engineer, four farmers, one rancher, one computer programmer, one accountant, about twenty teachers and the rest are either lawyers or businesspeople.  There are no plumbers, no architects, no scientists, no physicists, no chemists, no carpenters, no brick layers in the Senate.  Three percent of the Senate are African American, Five percent are Hispanic, or Latino and three percent are Asian/Pacific Islanders. Twenty five percent of the Senate are women.  — Congressional Statistics

In the USA as a whole, the numbers are quite different from the Senate in terms of representation.  (See Census Government)

• African Americans are 13.4 percent in population versus 3 percent in the Senate
• Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders are 6.1 percent in population versus 3 percent in the Senate
• Hispanic or Latino are 18.5 percent in population versus 5 percent in the Senate
• Women are 50.8 percent in population versus 25 percent in the Senate
• Veterans are 6 percent in population versus 19 percent in the Senate

Ladies and Gentlemen.  The facts speak for themselves.  But one last fact, if you please, before I do my summation. 

• The median net worth of an American family is $52,700. The median net worth of members of Congress who filed disclosures last year is just over $1 million. — open secrets

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury.  Let me conclude.  As you can see from the evidence, there is no way that the U.S. Congress represents the American people.  The sad part is that we vote these people in time and time again.  We continue to elect the same people over and over again with the same disastrous results.  We have a so-called democracy which does not represent the American people.  But I have not even touched on perhaps what is the worst of the dangers that lawyers are doing to this country.

In a land where I live called Wisconsin, we have been involved in an ongoing dispute over the siting of what is called a CAFO, or Concentrated Animal Feed Operation.  I have been to many county government meetings and board meetings where arguments have taken place over the jurisprudence and legality of such operations.  In every meeting, there is always a lawyer sitting rather obtrusively near the board members. 

Many of the board members in the rural counties are farmers or laborers or educators who have little or no training in the laws that they are sworn to protect.  Thus, they rely heavily on the lawyers that they hire to provide advice and perceived protection from lawsuits.  This renders the board members subject to the legal opinion of the lawyer which is quite often at odds to what the public wants.  The boards are frequently fearful of a lawsuit (often offered by the lawyer as a possibility) and will forego making an informed decision based on evidence that is presented at the hearings. 

I have witnessed this happen at county government meetings over other issues besides the one noted above.  I have also seen business organizations, when I was a management consultant, that relied too heavily on the advice of a lawyer.  This advice, based as it was on the fear of a lawsuit, and not a more probable positive outcome often led to missed business opportunities.  I knew when I had an opinion that differed from the legal opinion that I was going to have an uphill battle to have any positive changes made.  Lawyers thrive on fear and angst. 

We need less lawyers.  Lawyers and lawsuits are destroying America and Democracy.  We need leaders with more diversity in education.  We need leaders with more ethnic diversity.  We need leaders with more gender diversity.  We need greater representation that reflects the demographics of America.  We need less lawyers.  We need more justice and we need more fairness. 

The Prosecution rests it’s case.