There's a LOT more involved in law than nasty lawsuits.
Lawsuits usually have a winner and a loser . . . which means somebody is going to be REALLY unhappy about their encounter with the legal "system" and won't be shy about telling people about it. Nor do I blame them, sometimes people do get hammered. When people are in divorce court, the time for reasonable discussion is long over.
Disclosure - I've been married to a lawyer for 25 years, and I'm still alive. (No, my theme song is not "They're coming to take me away, ha ha".) She's good to me, I get 10% off the first $500 of my legal bills every year.
She was a Public Defender way back when. Everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law (even though it seems if you have a lot of money, your protection will be somewhat more equal), and that's what Public Defenders do, they defend people who don't have any money.
One case involved a guy who got sent up the river for ten years for allegedly exposing himself to his girlfriend's 13 year old daughter. On review, it turned out the girlfriend and the daughter concocted the story to "get even" with him for breaking up with the girlfriend.
Now here's a guy, somewhat handicapped, a little developmentally slow, ethnic minority, and now he also has a criminal record (for no valid reason). Who in the world would hire this guy when he finally gets out? Final result, he got sprung, the record was expunged, and the girlfriend and the daughter are now enjoying the hospitality of the state for fraud. He's got an honest job and is supporting himself.
After a few years of that, she went into child protection. Daddy's in the slammer (again), mommy failed her drug test (again), the kids are filthy, bug-bitten and malnourished. I am going to tell you right now, you cannot even begin to imagine the twisted, sick s**t some people deliberately put their own kids through, and you know what, you don't even want to begin to imagine it.
I did some back-office work for her, filing, etc., and after a while I asked her to stop taking these cases, it was just too distressing and depressing. Eventually she did.
She's now semi-retired, and is the magistrate for the city. She reviews code violations and tries to work them out instead of just slapping them with fines. 99% of the time, that works, everyone goes away if not happy, at least not unhappy.
She also does some occasional minor work such as powers of attorney, fixes errors on deeds, does minor revisions on wills, stuff like "Your divorce isn't final, sign it here and go file it.", things like that.
Her bill is usually $50 or $100, more often she doesn't even charge at all. This is a small town, these are neighbors, and we help each other out. You'd be amazed at the number of people who have small, unresolved legal issues which don't bother them right now, but if they aren't fixed, they will be a BIG problem later.
Besides, she can't be an ambulance chaser, her Subaru just isn't fast enough.
Best Regards,
Mike/Florida
