A) You can dress to the nines without spending a fortune
B) Dressing to the nines can work against you as a lawyer or litigant
Source: I study jurors and coach trial lawyers for a living, among other things.
B) Dressing to the nines can work against you as a lawyer or litigant
Source: I study jurors and coach trial lawyers for a living, among other things.
https://abovethelaw.com/2017/05/at-lunch-with-david-boies-20...
Re: David Boies (who is a prominent Manhattan attorney):
> Part of the David Boies legend is his rejection of high fashion. He’s a millionaire many times over, and many aspects of his lifestyle reflect what I’m guessing is a nine-figure net worth — his primary residence, an 8,000-square-foot mansion on almost 10 acres; an $8 million pied-à-terre here in New York City, at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel; and a racing yacht, because you’re nobody until you have a yacht. But his wealth doesn’t go into his wardrobe. He eschews Prada and Patek Philippe in favor of navy blue suits from Sears or Lands’ End, inexpensive plastic wristwatches (worn over his sleeve), and what look like black sneakers (but are actually walking shoes by Merrell).
He did represent Al Gore before the Supreme Court, although I suppose that's ancient history now. And he was involved in the SCO vs. Linux stuff.
Maybe _everyone_ on a jury is filtered out to only take people completely disconnected from society but.... probably not.
(case in point: many people on this website are not in legal professions yet recognize the name)
as far as your point, the 1% of people here reading recognized the name. didn't know why, then googled and remembered. the jury is not here. it's '12 random people from the dmv,' and they don't recognize it, nor will they care to google it. they don't even know who steve jobs is, and won't google it on their iphone.
Value to who ?
Also, fashion isn't for strangers. I mean, I don't know anything about what is fashionable. Nearly nothing at all. So obviously stranger can't impress me with expensive clothes because I can't detect it. The situation is similar with most fashions which are signals for inside an in crowd.
It is like a developer putting "Haskell" or "Scheme" on a resume. The goal isn't to impress randoms in HR who don't know what a Haskell is and are suspicious of scheming programmers. It is to signal within a group of semi-peers who don't specifically know who you are.
Defense attorneys usually put on a show to relate to you in some way. The prosecution usually looks like undertakers and usually appeal to the institution of justice, sacred duty as a citizen, etc.
Just different flavors of bullshit.
Reforms expanded the pool, for instance in NY.
From a 1996 NY Times article:
"As of Jan. 1, all 27 former exemptions and disqualifications for jury duty in New York State have been repealed"
"...as many as one-third of Long Island's residents have been exempt from jury duty because of their white-collar professions, particularly doctors, dentists and lawyers"
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/07/nyregion/exemptions-for-j...
Also, I’m fortunate to have a job where there is no financial penalty for service, I find it interesting, and I’m not comfortable hamming up some nonsense to avoid it. I’m always surprised I’m picked because of my job (lawyers don’t like engineers on juries), and I am friends or relatives with a bunch of attorneys and policemen.
Consider a legal trial to be a giant machine executing a huge set of detailed and arcane and sometimes arbitrary instructions. Either the machine does the right thing (one side arguing there was no crime) or the wrong thing (the other side arguing there was a crime). What engineer doesn't love figuring out why the machine's behaviour is correct or incorrect?
That's not universal -- two of the most religious people I've met were some flavor of engineer; they never bother to challenge their own biases -- but in aggregate they're a riskier jury pick than a teamster or housewife or cashier.
Trial lawyers present a narrative to the jury, and thus prefer jurors who are more likely to believe the presented narrative. Your typical engineer believes themselves to be capable of discerning truth independent of expert opinion. This could be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on how the trial lawyer plans to present their narrative.
If a lawyer dresses to the nines and wins the case, the client will feel justified in paying their fees.
Even if loud, angry lawyer guy doesn't win, dragging them to court and making them pay for a lawyer -- and then slinging vitriol at them in court -- has more emotional satisfaction than a dispassionate, slow, boring, go-nowhere hearing that ends with a moderate settlement.
(note: in some places the loser pays all of the fees for the winner, so locality matters here)
A hobo who hasn't showered in a decade should be able to argue his case, be heard and receive justice. Anything less, you're using rules to enforce a social order, the legal system has no relationship with justice if this is acceptable.
Should is they keyword and maybe one day we'll reach that point. Meanwhile, looks and appearance can make a huge difference, so why take the chance?
How someone looks informs your prior probability of who they are. What they say informs your posterior probability, but you gotta take that prior into account when forming the posterior. At least, if you want 'accurate' statistics.
(Bias - variance trade-off not withstanding, nor second-order effects of doing the 'correct' thing being possibly more detrimental than the advantage given by the 'correct' thing)
Are you comfortable applying this same bayesian logic to other factors like race?
Secondly, and more importantly I think, what effects does a 'correct' bias have when it starts interacting with other people. It might be the optimal choice in isolation. But that doesn't make it a good idea game-theoretically if everyone starts doing it.
The end result can be difficult to explain though. Because it means that not taking certain useful information into account leads to better decisions.
I think that, sometimes, we argue that a systemic bias is stronger than the statistics warrant. When sometimes the argument should be that sysyemic bias, statistically warranted or not is harmful.
(Note, my original comment was me making the mistake I argue against in this post)