opinion on lawyers?

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NC for obvious reasons! Recently overheard a small group, two adults and a teen, totally ripping into lawyers...not nice stuff and very general as in obsessed with cash, right wing, greedy, psychos even! I don’t want to give wider context as could be outing, but I didn’t know these people. I was then thinking about it and realised I’ve rarely heard anyone speak positively about the profession unless they’ve specifically been helped and it worked out well for them.

What’s the general view of lawyers would you say?

The ones I know are lovely. Everyone likes to slag off lawyers until they need one.

The friends of mine who have become lawyers are generally the very diligent, focused and smart ones, but yes I'm sure also ambitious financially. The ones who were most purely motivated by money went into banking!

I could never be a lawyer because I am not detail oriented in the slightest and couldn't hack the long hours required (at least at city firms).

I am closely related to 3 lawyers so rather biased... all upstanding men.

They are there to be advocates not judges.

I'm a lawyer and surrounded by them.

I swear on all that matters, every single lawyer I've met for longer than 5 mins I can promise are genuine people who don't want to rinse clients for all their money, quite the opposite. Keep secrets so well. Consider their advice extremely carefully and do their very best. That's the old school lawyers and the noobs.

There's a famous quote from Shakespeare which is often used to show the disdain people hold lawyers in - "where to begin? Well, kill all the lawyers" or something like that. It wasn't because people hate lawyers, it's because a corrupt government knew the lawyers were the only threat to their dictatorship.

Like the lawyers (activist lawyers, as Patel called them, the cheeky fuck) who dared to fight for due process before sending a plane load of alleged offenders to their homelands.

In our legal press it is full of lawyers concerned about civil Liberty and their client's positions. We are all officers of the court, we don't lie, we don't milk the system, we are genuinely in it to make differences and do our best for our clients. Most of us, we are of course as cohort still only human 😆

'Lawyers' is also a large term and can mean Judges to teenagers ticking boxes.

For me, I now specialise is property and when I hear estate agents say "it was going well until it got in the hands of the solicitors" I'd think fuck you - people rarely spend as much money as they do when buying a house. Give me more than 5 fucking minutes to ensure there's not a fucking footpath running through the garden - they get thousands £££ and we get £500
Or so and they have zero, I repeat ZERO risk. No one is coming to them when they sell the house in 10 years because a harassed solicitor taking 15 calls a day and 49 emails a day from agents asking for updates didn't have enough time to to check the legal title
Of the house, and missed something.

You get what you pay for and allowing non-qualified people to undertake such work was a huge step back but it is what it is.

Lawyers have driven all changes for good in statute and regulations from year dot.

Let people hate us, but they'll grow and cringe at their ignorance when young - as we all have done at some point 😝

All the lawyers I know (a lot) are great people bar one guy

The one exception is a bit of a scumball criminal defence lawyer, I did some work experience with him when I was 16 as he's a friend of my Stepfather and he put his hand on my knee in the back of the car on the way home from a dinner out while his wife was next to him and my parents in the front 🤢

They're a fucking lifesaver if your need one.
Can also be genuinely caring and supportive if you're in a difficult position not of your own making.

Like any profession there are good and bad. Lawyers are people with the same flaws as anyone.

There are a huge number of lawyers and like any group will contain good and bad people.

The ones I've known - this includes friends from uni who were law students then, through to family lawyers working in child protection areas, to a corporate lawyer a relative married, to my own and exes divorce lawyers and then more family lawyers when ex made malicious ss reports about me, to a criminal lawyer a relative had when falsely accused of assault by a former "friend" and I was supposedly a witness...

All bar 2 were good, decent and professional people who worked damn hard for their clients and didn't as far as I could tell (not being an expert) seek to fleece their clients or in any way act unethically

The 2 I disliked were

My 1st divorce lawyer who was slow, lazy and eventually incompetent. I gave her chance after chance but eventually just went to another firm and lawyer.

My exes last lawyer - he'd gone through a few!

Long drawn out contact issues due to his being an arse. The previous lawyers he'd had dropped him! Which I believe is bloody hard to do but he acted well out of order with them including pinning one up against the wall outside the court when a hearing didn't go his way, he was lucky the lawyer didn't have him arrested!

This last lawyer timed in with my 2nd so we both had new lawyers at the same time. Relatively small town so the lawyers all knew each other and mine when she saw who ex now had just smiled. Apparently this lawyer of his had a temper of her own and was barely clinging on to her own professional credentials. Certainly wasn't regarded with respect within the local legal circles.

It was very interesting watching her and ex interact prior to the hearing and during breaks, as they were losing the head with each other and not quietly! To the point bailiffs came over and told them to calm it down.

This became even more clear as true to me when in court. She kept interrupting the judge, to the point the judge basically had to tell her to calm the hell down! She couldn't control ex (admittedly difficult for anyone but she struggled more than most) and she literally flounced at the end of the hearing slamming the door behind her! Shocking!

But I gather that's pretty rare behaviour and personality for lawyers especially family lawyers.

All the rest I've dealt with were quiet, calm, professional people who spoke in a very considered and measured way, even when I met them socially.

I think people forget that lawyers are as a group responsible for us having laws! Laws which protect and support us and ensure we have the rights we do and to a degree keep govts in line.

I was far older than I should have been when I "clicked" that the reason a lot of politicians studied law or indeed were qualified lawyers because that's how government works - by using laws to set out and control how a country is run.

I've studied it to A-level myself and was vaguely interested in pursuing as a career at that stage but life got in the way to a point, though of course if I'd really wanted to I'd have been more determined.

I also have a relative that's a forensic accountant, same side of the family as the corporate lawyer and they have some interesting debates as of course they're mostly on opposing sides of the type of cases/clients they deal with!

It's all very good natured but they rib each other about their differing viewpoints inc nicknames, corporate lawyer is "plump puss" (ie fat cat) accountant is "goody two shoes party pooper"

But they do actually get along very well (they have the same taste in music and are both huge fans of a particular band).

I like lawyers they've mostly served me well.

DH is a solicitor. Whilst financially ambitious he is also Ning, caring, generous and a lovely person.
We know several lawyers - solicitors, barristers, etc. Almost all are lovely people.

Like in every progression you get some lawyers who aren't as nice, no different to any other job though.

Well I've been sleeping with one for more than thirty years and I still think he's ok. As are many of the people he has introduced me to during that time.

Well 20 years ago when I was genuinely made redundant from one, they tripled the amount of redundancy pay I as entitled to and now I’ve just started back working with him again.
He & his family paid for our holidays away when we had a newborn, I helped raise his children....he is almost family.

The second lawyer I know in a strictly professional capacity but would take my call tonight and I know he’d be very conversational and want to know what’s wrong. He won a case for me many years ago and as a thankyou I sent his wife a bouquet too - took up a lot more time than he anticipated.

I’ve moved house 7 times over 30 years & changed my Will a lot so have plenty of experience.....nothing but nice things to say about them.

You get good lawyers and bad ones. I’ve met some of the best, and indeed some of the worst, to the extent that I’m amazed they continue to practice law.

The thing is, most clients wouldn’t notice if their lawyer was crap. They’d only notice if they didn’t return calls or emails, or if they do something spectacularly stupid that’s impossible not to notice (rare). Clients don’t know if the advice they are being given is poor, or if they’re being presented with a lazy case strategy, or if their lawyer lacks the talent and confidence to get them a decent result. They just accept what their lawyer says to them, because clients don’t tend to have the necessary legal knowledge to challenge the advice that they’re given.

I think it tends to be the personal injury ambulance chasing types that give lawyers a bad name!

There are good and bad lawyers, but I think a lot of people's dislike for them comes from the fact that they can be both very expensive and also seem very petty in their billing. Send you an email, that is 15 minutes of fee, call you on the phone, half an hour of fee etc. Compared to almost any other business it seems hugely petty in the way they bill you for absolutely everything in minutiae, rather than just giving you a cost and cracking on with it.

I’m married to one and I can honestly say he is, in his personal and professional life, the most decent man I know. To the point of his moral compass being utterly infuriating at times.

The ones I know (almost all corporate, in the City) are pleasant, normal people. Politically they tend towards economically and socially liberal centrism. They are generally pretty bright but no brighter than others in our social group. I wouldn’t say they are greedy, but they expect to be paid well for their expertise and, on the whole, like to have nice things.

I would say its very different being married to a lawyer than working for or with one....