Ten Convenient Beliefs For American Attorneys Today

These are beliefs that serve attorneys’ material and status interests while feeling like principled commitments.
The adversarial system produces just outcomes better than any alternative. This belief justifies the attorney’s entire role and income while framing what is essentially a contest between unequal resources as a truth-finding enterprise.
Complexity in law is an unavoidable feature of a complex society rather than a product of the profession’s guild interests. This makes attorneys indispensable while absolving them of responsibility for the complexity that generates their fees.
Procedural rights protect the innocent even when they let the guilty go free. This noble-sounding principle also happens to justify billing for every motion, continuance, and suppression hearing regardless of whether any of it serves the client’s actual interests.
Access to justice is primarily a funding problem rather than a complexity problem. This locates the solution in legal aid organizations and pro bono hours rather than in simplification that would reduce the need for attorneys altogether.
Zealous advocacy is a moral obligation that overrides the attorney’s personal discomfort with the client’s position. This converts what might otherwise feel like complicity into professional virtue.
Settlement is usually in the client’s best interest. Convenient because trials are expensive, unpredictable, and time-consuming for the attorney, while settlement generates a fee with less work.
Judicial deference to precedent ensures stability and predictability. Also ensures that the body of knowledge attorneys spent years acquiring retains its value against outsiders.
Regulations protect the public from corporate abuse. Convenient for attorneys who make careers navigating those regulations and whose expertise would be worthless if the regulations were simplified or abolished.
The billable hour fairly compensates attorneys for their time and expertise. The alternative, flat fees or outcome-based compensation, would require attorneys to bear the risk of their own inefficiency.
Unauthorized practice of law rules protect consumers from incompetent advice. They also protect attorneys from competition by accountants, paralegals, technologists, and anyone else who might deliver legal services more cheaply.