Anarchy in the legal system

You've got a system in which they encourage dishonesty because it will supposedly bring you the truth. You spend a tremendous amount to obtain justice in even the simplest cases.

Let's face it, folks. Many of us believe that "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." By being too noisy and ambitious, our legal system has greedily claimed more power than it can manage. Consider

1. Absence of any form of political authority.
2. Political disorder and confusion.
3. Absence of any cohering principle, as a common standard or purpose.

By that definition, we now have a situation of anarchy in our legal system. Sure, the courts struggle mightily over every last comma and citation in their grappling's with the law's specific rules. They reach highly precise conclusions and defend them with exhaustive logic. But when you ask bigger questions - what does it all mean? where is it going? - you discover that nobody has any answers. No one's in charge.

Many judges and lawyers like it this way. They even think they're defending our system of government. But I have my doubts. I'd say they're defending chaos. What they love about our legal system is so far removed from the sensible, fair government we were promised in our high school civics classes that I can only call them anarchists. It would be different if we had enough time and money to pursue all the issues that seem important to them. But that would take infinite supplies of those two unfortunately rare commodities.

Those who designed the legal system like the fact that, in the ways that matter to them, it is so orderly and logical. But their priorities are not ours. They may make it perfect according to their needs, but by going too far in the directions that matter to them, they don't go far enough in the directions that matter to the rest of us. All too frequently, they leave us worse off than we were to begin with.

For 200 years, our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution have been the envy of the world. Unfortunately, the ways in which our legal system has developed the concepts contained in those documents have not always worked out in the direction of liberty and justice for all. When the Iron Curtain fell, Eastern Europeans sang the praises of those old documents, but, unlike their eagerness for Hollywood movies and American technology, the masses noticeably did not cry and scream until they were given, say, a Czechoslovak equivalent of the American jurisprudential bureaucracy.

It is important that we straighten out these matters, even though it might be possible for the legal system to continue to muddle through by ignoring them. American business has power around the globe. American law firms are taking prominent positions in other countries. And American law schools are training record numbers of foreign students in American views of law.414

All over the world, people are looking to us for guidance in concepts of liberty and democracy. We should make sure we're proud of what we're handing out to them, so that we can live up to their hopes, as we did in the old days.

The Law for Me Now

I regret that space has not permitted a more detailed response to this objection: that I have found it very easy to criticize the process of legal education, but that I would find it much harder to outline, in detail, how I would change it. Still, some readers will agree that the process is so silly that any moron, including me, could improve it, and others may be content with the thought that, if you always had to know exactly how things would turn out before you ever instituted any changes in anything, an awful lot of improvements in this world would be postponed indefinitely.

Like other ex-lawyers, I have mixed feelings. Clearly, the experiences described in this book were largely available to me only as a lawyer. I learned, I had fun, I met interesting people, and I obtained training that does come in handy in some places, even though I have had to unlearn a lot of it for other purposes. I don't mind the low-intensity regret that things might have been better for me if I'd made a different choice. The main thing was not to perpetuate a bad situation, once I perceived it to be such, by trying to hang on when it was time to go.

So I went - sort of. I still do some legal work, but this book probably tells you that my big ambition - one I ignored during all those years in law school and practice - is to do more good for the people who need or deserve it.

I didn't write this book to offer a general review of the legal system, nor to publish my memoirs. I have tried, rather, to give you a gut-level feeling for how it can all work out in practice. Your experience cannot help being very different from mine, if only because you'll now be much keener to avoid unnecessary mistakes. It really is possible to go wrong in this profession, and it's a huge waste that so many young attorneys actually do go wrong.

I hope this book forces you to understand the questions that have mattered to me, and to arrive at good reasons why you won't repeat my errors. If you come away from this thoughtfully, with either a decision not to go to law school or a strong determination to outdo me as you become a lawyer - to take the bar and beat me, as it were - then it will have accomplished its purpose.