Comment by molyss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by molyss | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

As a non lawyer, what really gets me annoyed is the fact that lawyers never seemed to be punished for bringing totally frivolous claims. Rarely do the plaintiffs, but I don't think the lawyers ever do. I think that would push said lawyers to make sure they have the full info before they actually take a case to court, and in tern reduce the number of frivolous litigation and the cost on the public system.

I have personally been sued frivolously. After 6 months of stress during which the plaintiff decided to fire a lawyer and started to harass my attorney and expect them to spend time explaining the law (time for which I eventually was billed), we decided to settle. The plaintiff was supposed to pay me $6000, but decided to reduce that amount to roughly half. I just didn't have any energy to go to small claims court arguing that she still owed me the rest of it.

Had their initial lawyer been on the hook for a frivolous lawsuit, the whole thing would probably have never happened. Rather than getting all of the info, they were more than happy to only get one side of the story (truncated email threads, not preparing them to answer to a discovery packet and so on) and to get their money, only to find a way to bailed once they realized it was not going to be worth it.

Another thing that I found absurd is the fact that "reasonable attorney fee" doesn't seem to cover more than half the reasonable fees. My lawyer suggested filing motions to compel and/or motions for sanctions, but also warned me that it would cost me more than what the judge would award me for the fees. And of course, nothing for my time...

Not a lawyer, but is there a way to try to institute more stringent legal ethics at the bar level? It seems unethical for an individual lawyer to bring spurious lawsuits as a matter of practice.

If my elderly grandfather goes to a doctor and says “here’s $100k please chop of my leg because I want to” the doctor won’t do that. If they did they may lose their license.

Seems like similar issues would exist for a company saying “here’s $1M please file lawsuits to block a company’s funding rounds.”

While it’s legally allowed, it seems like professional ethics should prevent it.

Of course it’s really hard to show what’s spurious.

> Not a lawyer, but is there a way to try to institute more stringent legal ethics at the bar level?

Sure, the same way you get the teachers union to help fire bad teachers or the police union to punish bad apple officers.

Which is to say: not gonna happen.

The bar associations around the country almost always focus on financial improprieties - think comingling or mishandling client money, all the way to straight up swindling. The most reliable way to get disbarred isn't being an incompetent lawyer but to simply screw with your firm's finances. That's because financial misdealings are at least more or less objective and can be recorded and traced. There really isn't a good way to measure a lawyer's actual competency, considering that some of the best lawyers I know lose most of their cases and get the most bar complaints - because they are county public defenders in a system that is massively tilted against them. In fact I would hesitate to judge the frivolity of any particular case without all of the facts and evidence being presented, by nature of the work, and ultimately the courts, not the bar association, are the more responsive gatekeeper here, with the power to act as such if necessary (https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_11). The reason they don't do it more is because courts tend to recognize that lawyers ultimately aren't independent actors but rather driven by their client's interests, which they ethically must zealously represent.

Onus is really on the clients bringing the suit. Anti-SLAPP laws have at least been somewhat effective on an individual level in states that enacted them, so laws can disincentivize client intentions in some cases at least. I have no idea what would actually work in the case at hand though.

Agreed. Malicious/unethical lawyers who maintain scrupulous finances are a disease with no known cure.

For lawyers the incentives are even worse, every time a unethical lawyer sends out frivolous claims someone has to pay a "good" lawyer to defend against them.

Perhaps the Bar could set it up so that if a lawsuit is determined frivolous then the Bad pays the defending attorney’s fee.

I’m trying to think of an incentive to counteract the viscious cycle of frivolous lawsuits providing benefits for “good” lawyers. I think it’s hard to fix a problem if the problem makes money for the good guys.

So optimally good lawyers wouldn’t make money but wouldn’t want to avoid defending people against these suits. Maybe the Bar can have all firms contribute time from their best performers to serve and not bill, but I can expect that frivolous lawsuits aren’t apparent until after the suit is complete.

As a non-lawyer, one of the first things I realized after starting my first business years ago was that I really wished I'd gone to law school.

The inability to defend yourself without deep pockets is terrifying.

It may not help actually. Some jurisdictions don't allow you to represent yourself if you are a business. If someone files a claim in a jurisdiction you aren't licenced to operate, you would need to hire a lawyer anyway. (This happened to me)

That is depressing, but somehow makes me feel better about not going to law school.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com