Why lawyers are special

Saturday, April 07, 2007 by Dave Winer.

In a comment on yesterday's Lawyers essay, Dan Stoval says lawyers are "no better, no worse than any other profession." 

Of course other professions and trades have unethical and incompetent people, and of course there are lawyers who are principled and competent, and there are lawyers who are good some days and bad others. 

But -- people are scared of "outing" lawyers who misbehave because when a lawyer gets mad, he or she can destroy you. I suppose a doctor can too, but that's a little too scary to contemplate -- let's hope that doesn't actually happen. But lawyers try to destroy people as a matter of everyday business. Non-lawyers just accept it with a shoulder-shrug. 

My point is that now it's time to go through that, and use our new tools to at least let each other know which lawyers are the good ones.