I have been wondering that in the light of all the insanity of Attorney ethics people getting as crazy as they are whether it might not be a good idea to eschew traveling with anything that identifies you as a lawyer.
You may not practice in a state that is as crazy as FL and NJ have been. But it's a disease and it's spreading. PA is still OK.
We all want to have our cards or bar cards on us even when traveling or out and about but maybe it'd be best to forgo all those identifiers more often than not.
Reason: Say for example you pink up a criminal charge or a DWI somewhere. It matters not how innocent you may - or not - be. Prosecutors can be very mean spirited. One call does it all.
But if you keep mum about your profession and don't have a bar card or calling card the only way they'll know that they can hurt you that extra measure is if you tell 'em., 'cause no one will run that kind of check for little shit.
Yah Yah you are supposed to rat yourself out and bleed in the bucket and cover yourself in sack cloth and ashes and scrape your boils with pot shards yadda yadda yadda. I say fuck 'em. If they want to know they can bloody well spend the money and effort finding out.
And I feel like a good rant sooooooooooo:
I'm of the position that I have never learned a thing from the CLEs that we are forced to take. The whole thing is a boondoggle for some people to milk us for money. I'd really like it if I could take CLEs that were designed to teach me something but alas and alack most of them are all fluff and crap, others are so deeply involved in the esoterica of a rarefied area of practice that only the experts ( who don't need to be there) understand what's going on and others ate taught by people who are only trying to get double credits and are just filling time.
I'm sure that much of it is due to the guild nature of our profession coupled with the over crowding. No one wants any more competition.
For example I'd really like to get into adoption practice. But you can't access the case law on the subject and no one wants to teach it so if you want to learn it you have to take one of two routes: (1) go work for some one doing it; or (2) do it the Roy Black way - commit malpractice until you finally suss it out.
I think that attorney ethics is (for the most part) staffed by people who are prone to err on the side of over-zealousness most of the time. Think on it. If you want to be in attorney ethics ya gotta be squeaky clean AND you have to Volunteer AND you have to be interested in playing hall monitor. That takes a certain kind of person.
You may not practice in a state that is as crazy as FL and NJ have been. But it's a disease and it's spreading. PA is still OK.
We all want to have our cards or bar cards on us even when traveling or out and about but maybe it'd be best to forgo all those identifiers more often than not.
Reason: Say for example you pink up a criminal charge or a DWI somewhere. It matters not how innocent you may - or not - be. Prosecutors can be very mean spirited. One call does it all.
But if you keep mum about your profession and don't have a bar card or calling card the only way they'll know that they can hurt you that extra measure is if you tell 'em., 'cause no one will run that kind of check for little shit.
Yah Yah you are supposed to rat yourself out and bleed in the bucket and cover yourself in sack cloth and ashes and scrape your boils with pot shards yadda yadda yadda. I say fuck 'em. If they want to know they can bloody well spend the money and effort finding out.
And I feel like a good rant sooooooooooo:
I'm of the position that I have never learned a thing from the CLEs that we are forced to take. The whole thing is a boondoggle for some people to milk us for money. I'd really like it if I could take CLEs that were designed to teach me something but alas and alack most of them are all fluff and crap, others are so deeply involved in the esoterica of a rarefied area of practice that only the experts ( who don't need to be there) understand what's going on and others ate taught by people who are only trying to get double credits and are just filling time.
I'm sure that much of it is due to the guild nature of our profession coupled with the over crowding. No one wants any more competition.
For example I'd really like to get into adoption practice. But you can't access the case law on the subject and no one wants to teach it so if you want to learn it you have to take one of two routes: (1) go work for some one doing it; or (2) do it the Roy Black way - commit malpractice until you finally suss it out.
I think that attorney ethics is (for the most part) staffed by people who are prone to err on the side of over-zealousness most of the time. Think on it. If you want to be in attorney ethics ya gotta be squeaky clean AND you have to Volunteer AND you have to be interested in playing hall monitor. That takes a certain kind of person.
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Re: attorney survival
Fri, March 28, 2008 - 2:05 PMI remember when taking the MCLE if it was a question about a questionable activity that you can do (A) ALWAYS, (B) SOMETIMES, or (C) NEVER, I went with "never" every time.
Because there's a world of difference between answering a MCLE question about being paid in coke-dusted hundreds, and when you actually are.
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Re: attorney survival
Sun, March 30, 2008 - 6:41 AM"We all want to have our cards or bar cards on us even when traveling or out and about but maybe it'd be best to forgo all those identifiers more often than not."
I lead with 'patent' before 'attorney', and everyone seems to love me for it (though the occasional disgruntled unrealistic inventor who got 'screwed' out of his invention of fire may think otherwise). Then they get the business card so they know I'm not part of the problem. As for my 'bar card', I don't think I ever got one, or if I did, I lost it a long time ago.
Funny, when I got a speeding ticket on the NJ shore and argued it in court, they treated me pretty well, almost deferentially. I guess I stood out from the other defendants, in that a) I was in a suit (in July), and b) I wasn't tagged for DUI or anything truly awful. I might've scared them a little by requesting the documentation for the calibration of the radar gun and the officer's training on same. The judge and prosecutor were very happy to make me a no-points smaller fine deal.
If you're talking about committing felonies, I guess the public assumes we should know better. Coke-dusted hundreds, indeed! (Most inventors don't pay in cash, coke-dusted or otherwise.) -
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Re: attorney survival
Mon, March 31, 2008 - 6:58 AMOddly the souhtern NJ municipalities have a better class of judge than we have in the ( wealthier) middle western counties. For example If you end up before a muni judge in Hunterdon county you can damn well be sure that the judge will invent law he needs to support his team mates (the cops and prosecutor) as he goes along and if the prosecutor is a moron the judge in summation will present the state's case for him and also fill in the facts that the state failed to elicit.
Then of course the same county has has a couple of Law Div judges ( the first appeal from muni) who have an annoying habit of inventing damming facts not found on on the record and even finding guilt as to those facts and goddamn if there aren't at least two App Div judges who will pile on with more invented facts not on the record below while dismissing all your substantive complaints about due process violations meritless and not even speak to them.
Then of course our lovely supreme court will only entertain a certification if you have a very, very, very entertaining & novel issue that they haven't seen before.
It is absolutely hysterical.
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Re: attorney survival
Mon, March 31, 2008 - 7:17 AM*************If you're talking about committing felonies, I guess the public assumes we should know better. Coke-dusted hundreds, indeed! (Most inventors don't pay in cash, coke-dusted or otherwise.)*********
In PA you can take in kind payment. So if Billy Bob the town thief is in your office and you happen to mention that you'd really like a Denon tube sound system maybe with some nice Klipsh speakers and a month later some guys hump some boxes in to your office that say "Denon" & Klipshorn" with the message that Billy bob sent it, you can expect that Billy will be along shortly. And you'll be filling out a couple of yellow pads.
In NY, NJ, and FL they took ethics to an altogether insane level. It got so bad that people simply went elsewhere to take the bar.
Mississippi's bar had a provision that they see traffic tickets as indication of lawless character. Maybe they only apply it to Yankees trying to horn in on the local guild.
The FL Bar Ethics committee has a long history of crucifying out-of-staters.
NJ over reacted to a problem with the Middlesex County bar because some lawyers were over-involved with organized crime. So they went berserk .
NY has been impossible for years.
Here in NJ we had the "appearance of impropriety" rule. It was a "say so" rule. You had to second guess your every move and word to be sure that some moron in Attorney Ethics wouldn't see some impropriety in it somehow by some vague nebulous entirely subjective standard.
FL was a nightmare to get licensed in. Took me 18 months. They force you to pay for a psych evaluation you have to go and sit for meanwhile they find some incompetent mal-practitioner who will perform a psych eval' in absentia. They investigate your entire life history even sending people to ask questions of your ex spouse ( and others) to see if they have any dirt on you.
God help you if you ever bounced a check. If you had a DWI 30 years ago you might as well forget it.
Then they torture you endlessly with demands - usually ridiculous demands - that you account for their glaringly stupid mis- interpretation of something you put in your resume some years ago that they got hold of by asking your old employers for their records.
And of course they have the gang rape interview where they shout at you and assail you with questions demands and accusations. In mine, one asshole got up leaned all the way across the table and cursed at me at the top of his lungs while spittle and phlegm rained down on me - and of course the transcript of that interview will be redacted even doctored. Mine was.
The older you are the more they have to investigate - and you foot the bill for all of it.
My optomitrist in FL was an adult with a divorce in his history and he too was from out of state. The FL Optometry Ethics people held his license up for two years while they investigated him.
It's crazy it's absolutely crazy.
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Re: attorney survival
Tue, April 1, 2008 - 9:09 PMMy paper "license" burned up in a fire in 1996.
I've never owned the card, tho' I've thought about it getting it from the Georgia authorities, every time I pass through a court's security: "Are you a lawyer?" "Yes." "Do you have a bar card?" "No." And every time I go back to the state bar's HQ for CLE in downtown Atlanta.
I "look" like a lawyer only when I go to court. The rest of the time I'm mistaken for a copy machine repair man or a bank teller or a shrink.
I prefer that people underestimate me, especially my opponents on the phone and in emails and in correspondence.
I was once stopped on the road, allegedly for speeding while driving a manual Toyota on a residential street. I do not now recall the names of the streets, but we'll call them "Jones" and "White" and "Oak." Oak runs north and south, up over hills and down over hills. Jones comes in to Oak at a right angle at the bottom of one particularly long down hill straightaway on Oak. White comes in a third of mile or a half a mile further north of Jones, also at a right angle. Oak passes under an interstate highway 20 or 30 yards from White, beyond which is a parking lot for a public park. I was driving northbound on Oak in the Tercel keeping it 2nd gear so that I wouldn't speed down that long straightaway hill. There was no cop at Jones. I put it in third, still checking my speed, keeping it under 40 in a 35 zone. I see the cop at White. I pass the cop at White. The cop at White pulls in behind me and puts on his blue lights. I pull into the parking lot at the public park. The cop asks me, "What's your hurry? You're doing 15 over the limit. I followed you from Jones." I respond: "No sir, you did not follow me from Jones. You pulled in behind me at White. And there's no way I could run this Tercel at 50 mph in third gear." "Let me see your license and insurance." I gave him my entire wallet. My wallet contained business cards, identifying me as a lawyer, my DL, my insurance card and some other typical stuff. He returned and said. "It's your lucky day. I have an emergency radio call I have to answer." It was the only time I felt it useful to identify myself as a lawyer.
If I ever have to turn in my "license" I'll file an affidavit that burned up in the fire of 1996. -
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Re: attorney survival
Wed, April 2, 2008 - 5:53 AMHere the pigs hate lawyers. If they find out you are a lawyer they get physical and call for back up.
Here the pigs expect that you are going to be all obsequious and submissive and weak.
I have met three maybe four real police officers in my life. The rest were all pigs.
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Re: attorney survival
Wed, April 2, 2008 - 3:21 PMUnless you are a prosecutor, I have yet to hear of a police officer giving an attorney a break on account of being an attorney.
I suspect there really was an emergency radio call. -
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Re: attorney survival
Wed, April 2, 2008 - 4:07 PMI have a friend who instead if entering that goofy diualog where they are trying to get you to comvict yourself by asking if you knew how fast you were going - instead - told the cop:
"Go ahead and just give me the ticket. Whatever pain that causes me will me NOTHING to what I'm going to get from HER as soon as we pull away~!!" while jerking his thumb at his wife.
The cop gave him a warning for 15 over the limit.
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