I see how much money is wasted on IT consultants, why should it be different with lawyers? Except with IT consultants I can tell when shit is happening, with lawyers I can't.
I am also not saying that lawyers in general screw you over. But it seems very hard to find a lawyer I could trust.
I didn't invent that heart-bypass example; it was a running scam exposed on 60 Minutes a few years ago.
I've been a client to maybe five or six independent civil lawyers over the years, and they all did pretty much nothing more or less than what I asked for going in.
I had a free consultation with a corporate criminal defense lawyer recently, not realizing she was a trial lawyer, so it would really only have been appropriate to meet with her had I been charged with something -- I was just looking for advice on how to avoid committing a corporate crime in a tricky situation. Not only did she listen to my story and not bill me for anything, she gave me the most cautious advice possible under the circumstances -- the advice least likely to cause me to need her paid services.
(I've been happy with the doctors I've had over the years as well, for that matter. I once saw a dentist who seemed both incompetent and fraudulent, but I didn't go back.)
Your bypass example: yes, as it happens I have repeatedly read that bypass operations are complete nonsene, and there is actually a business of doctors referring patients to each other. Of course if they tell you you are going to die in one minute, there is no time to research the internet about the suggested treatment, which I would normally do.
With medicine I would do so - but with law, we have just learned that searching the internet is no good, because only a real lawyer should be trusted?
I have also had encounters with nice lawyers, who gave me free advice over the phone. However, it also seems common that lawyers don't want to be upfront about the costs they will incur. Also, I am in Germany, things might the different here than in the states.
Especially in corporate law. If they do a good job at drafting your contracts and defending you in court against copyright infringement suits, you'll come back, and recommend your other business-people friends to that attorney's practice.
Of course, your attorney will want to disembowel the opposing side, but that's what you want.
If you're worried about an attorney, look at their track record; unlike a lot of other professions, you can get all of it from the courthouse in the district where they practice. If you don't know where to start looking for a lawyer, call your local bar association, and ask them for a referral.
Or, if you've got very little money, look at Pre-Paid Legal Services. Yes, yes, it started as an MLM company, which looks pretty scummy, but they actually do provide a very, very useful set of services, and the total cost is less than twenty bucks a month.
It just makes me sad to see lawyers catching all the flack for the problems in our judicial system, when it's our elected officials who created the whole nightmare in the first place.
I did not even mean to knock lawyers, maybe they all mean well, but they might be used to a different kind of level for their operation.
Not that I had so much experience with lawyers so far, but so far I found it hard to find good ones. I just happen to have no connections in lawyer circles.
On the plus side, if you really do get screwed, a lot of states have funds set up to compensate you. But if you pay for some legal work that might not have been completely necessary, you're on your own.
This would be particularly important in corporate law for small businesses, where the lawyers have ongoing relationships with clients (as opposed to, say, personal injury law, where some guy hit by a truck picks an attorney out of the Yellow Pages and may never deal with the lawyer after that case is resolved).
Of course, I'm making suppositions based on my knowledge of economics. Maybe I should consult an economist.
Of course just like doctors, it cannot hurt to get second opinion, because lawyers are of course not all ethical or infallible.
I must admit that it often freaks me out to consider that other professions are just as messed up as the software world. For example, in medicine there is in all likelihood an equivalent to LISP and an equivalent to Java. Many hospitals might have invested in useless expensive machinery (Bea Weblogic, Oracle...), and now use it on their patients, even though better treatments are already available.
If not, I wonder how medicine has solved the problem that the IT world can't seem to get a grip on.
Also, anyone can just call themselves an IT consultant. You have to go through schooling and pass a test to become a lawyer. The barrier to entry is a lot higher.