Legal profession fills in the gap where government oversight is scant

When politicians complain about lawyers ruining America or some right-wing idiot blathers about trial lawyers hurting the medical profession or so on, stories like this provide the real value lawyers bring to society--quasi-regulators.

I'll be the first to complain when some lawyer goes too far. However, the legal profession is not defined by some outlier of a lawsuit, regardless of how newsworthy it may be. Lord knows that the media reports the stupid lawsuits, but ignores the millions of stupid cases most lawyers refuse to file.

This present case highlights the legal profession's role in protecting the public.

Who else protects the public from unscrupulous sorts when government neglects its obligation to protect consumers taken in by unfair trade practices?

Lawyers stand as society's safeguard against companies and individuals that profit by externalizing costs to the public's detriment.

You'll note that those complaining about trial lawyers do so as a pretext for complaining about the true costs of doing good business. Good business factors in all the costs of doing business, not just the quickest way to make a buck.

If a business can't survive without externalizing their costs, then, economically, it loses any claim as a viable concern and more resembles organized crime--the height of extreme cost externalization.

Profitability based on cutting corners is artificial. The rest of society must absorb those costs to ensure the continued existence of extreme eternalizers.

The complexity of our economy militates against a purely caveat emptor business system. Demanding that every consumer evaluate fully every commercial decision to maintain profitability defies reason and can't possibly be an effective approach.

Arguing otherwise is tantamount to arguing for a dog-eat-dog world where only the strong survive. Fortunately, social darwinism as a social model has long been discredited as an effective policy. Besides few people want what amounts to plutocracy anyway.

Lawsuits re-balance the equities created when producers exploit informational inequities in society for profit by taxing the costs to those best able to prevent them and those best able to bear them---the producers.

China will learn the meaning of good business after our legal profession gets done with them.

Good thing too.

It was only a matter of time

I guess it was only a matter of time before legal work would be outsourced.

The legal profession in the U.S. is already hamstrung by the incentives to create more lawyers.

Law schools are profit centers and make little effort to weed people out. Why would they when they can get three years of tuition?

With competition so fierce, many lawyers find it hard to stay in the profession.

As an attorney myself, I can speak to the difficulty in generating enough revenue to live a decent lifestyle. The well-to-do attorney is a thing of the past.

Outsourcing of legal work is only another nail in the coffin of a lucrative legal career.

Probably the only area of expertise that cannot be outsourced is litigation. Why?
Courts will always need a warm body to be present to argue motions and conduct trials.