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Comment by cobbzilla | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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