Tim
Valparaiso,#2Consumer Suggestion
Fri, February 13, 2004
Tom, if you really feel that this lawyer loused things up horribly there are a couple things you can do. You can file a complaint with your state bar association, and/or you can talk to another attorney and look into the possibility of a legal malpractice suit. If he actually did file in the wrong court, among other things, you may have such a case. I don't know the specifics of your situation, and there are two sides to every story. Not that there aren't some incompetent lawyers out there. But what it boils down to, most of the time, is that the client thinks he knows the law because he heard this or that from a friend, and when the law isn't what he thought it was, he sticks to his guns and blames the lawyer. That leads me in to my next comment. There is a very good reason why only bar admitted JD and LL.M holders are allowed to represent people in court. There are an awful lot of people out there who think that the law is simple and that they could competently perform the work of a lawyer. The truth, however, is that the law is EXTREMELY complicated and laymen, no matter how much they may think they know, are not able to give competent representation. If the law was simple it wouldn't require three years of extremely grueling work (in addition to the four years required to get a Bachelor's degree) to learn it. And performing a lawyer's work requires much more than knowledge of the law. It requires the ability to find out what the law is, how the courts have interpreted the law, why they may have interpreted it wrongly, and most importantly, the ability to effectively communicate what your research has shown you, in a language and style far different from common English. And there are no "do-overs" in the law. Let's say you let your friend represent you because he watches Law and Order every night. When you inevitably realize that your friend was ill-equipped to compete against a law-trained scholar it will be too late. You can't come back with a real lawyer and say you want to try it again. When an issue or claim is adjudged it is final, and you're stuck with the product of a layman's legal assistance. I say all of this with a great deal of perspective. I once thought I knew the law well enough to defend a friend of mine on a possession charge. My feeling was based on a couple of classes I took in undergraduate and what I thought was a clear cut understanding of fourth amendment law. Needless to say, the judge wouldn't allow it. And rightfully so. Now that I have immersed myself in the actual study of law, I realize that I would have sent my buddy up the river, because the law is never clear cut, and it takes an academically trained legal mind to understand it. Anyways, best of luck to you, and I hope your situation is resolved fairly and quickly.