People keep talking about having "your lawyer" do something as if everyone just walks around with a personal pet lawyer and I never understood it. Are you suggesting that you should hire a law firm at $1000/hour to mildly annoy some website..?
When I was younger, I didn't use to have one and tried to cheapen out by reading contracts carefully without checking with a lawyer. One of those contracts was a rev share in exchange for free work I did (plus some work I paid other contractors to do), I didn't notice that there was an easy way to get out of the contract by the company. Once the company was successful thanks to the work I initially did, they used that to cut me out. If I had used a lawyer back then, I'd still be earning 150k a year from that contract...
So, yeah having a relationship with a lawyer in the same way you have a favorite dentist is worth it. Having the reflex of using a lawyer when possible potentially can save a lot of money down the road. And using a lawyer at first for less impactful work is sometimes a good way to find out if the lawyer is any good.
I'd actually suggest any consultant/contractor to have a lawyer, work with him to review every contract and budget a small percentage of your income on this every year.
> costs me 375 usd an hour
> budget a small percentage of your income on this every year
What you are saying is that for those with enough disposable income to throw 375 per hour at minor annoyances, going straight to that nuclear option is often preferable to settling for a cheaper secondary or backup option. This is the "simply buy Twitter if the way it's run annoys you so much" of legal advice.
This doesn't apply to 99.999% of people on this planet. It is "worth it" in the sense that $800 / oz gold plated caviar is better food than McDonalds. If the median American decided to "find out if [your] lawyer is any good" by hiring them for a 1 hour task, they have already spent more than 1% of their yearly income. In a single hour.
The advice I wrote applies in the context of consultants/contractors on HN which I'm pretty sure tends to earn quite a bit more than the median income.
For other needs, people who can't afford lawyers and need help use family, acquaintances, church members, etc. who are lawyers, either free or at a sliding scale. They also sometimes subscribe to prepaid legal plans which do add up to a few hundred dollars, but over the course of a year.
Big cases (like the sudden need for a defense attorney) are funded by passing the hat (or GoFundMe et al, these days.) There are also public defenders.
The truly destitute don't even have that, of course, but other needs are pressing. Aid and social safety net programs do offer charity legal services where they can, but reach and benefit is limited.
On the other hand, I guess we'd all probably be better off if we'd have a lawyer look over things like our employment contracts, renting contracts, etc (I just sign the dang things though).
Unless you have never spent $300 on something, i'm absolutely sure you've spent $300 on something that median family would call a waste too.
But I can't figure out what your point is. Its a waste to call out these sites? Lawyers are too expensive? The lower classes don't make enough? Don't give advice if it doesn't apply to %100 of people?
That said, at a big firm, lawyers often don't have that flexibility.
Something like this you can easily do yourself and imo wouldn't be worth the money, however getting a law firm involved in small tasks is a good way to test them with something simple to see if they're any good, and build up a working relationship with one incase you need them for something more serious or time sensitive later on. It's generally a good life skill to get comfortable working with lawyers because at some point all of us will end up in a situation where we need one, and that's really not the point at which you want to deal with that learning curve.
Now whether or not the example at hand counts as run-of-the-mill, I don't really know.
"Obviously we don't mean having a lawyer on retainer. That'd be unreasonable. We're talking about the lawyer with whom you maintain a working relationship should you need one. You know, kind of like your accountant!"
Either have the courage to directly reply to the people you are talking about or keep it to yourself.
to make you an example I am in the netherlands, few weeks ago I went out with some friends, a dutch guy was complaining about an issue and about having to pay a lawyer, and a polish immigrant here had to tell him that he could give a go to https://www.juridischloket.nl/contact/ , like some people live and grow up in a system and they don't even know what they're surrounded by
IANAL, but it appears that the type of case I'd have to bring against a company that was inappropriately handling my personal information would require over $400 just to file the papers for the lawsuit. And the fact that I can't easily determine if that's the type of legal action I'd need to bring demonstrates the opacity if the legal system that further prevents access by an individual without spending even more money on a lawyer for the help needed to make that determination.
There are ways I could get inexpensive legal advice, but that's where disposable time comes in. I have too much income to get free legal aid for the lawsuit itself, and honestly there are people with much more serious legal problems that need those limited resources. Unless you can catch the attention of a class action lawyer that sees potential for massive $$ damages it is very difficult for the average person to take advantage of the legal system to protect their rights.
Same is true for most others. Things in life really rarely go to court or rarely is there any bespoke contracts.
"My dentist" also isn't my personal pet, but it's the dentist I go to. Neither am I my dentist's pet for being "their customer". I'm sure you also know some professionals that you trust and have some sort of relationship with.
>Are you suggesting that you should hire a law firm at $1000/hour to mildly annoy some website..?
Not really. But there's usually people who do it for the good cause and later take it to court, often backed by nonprofits. Also that cost is insane, it should absolutely top out at 300 euro/hour. Some specialized lawyers charge a flat amount to send such standard requests.
So, none. I've never even met one I think. And I don't think that's quite rare?
Would it be less confusing to say "talk to _a_ lawyer"? This just seems like a bunch of people arguing for the sake of arguing. It has nothing to do with the original point.
No, because in my culture it happens to be rather common for people to have one fixed dentist. Moreover, tranlated we also effectively it 'your dentist'.
Would it be less confusing to say "talk to _a_ lawyer"?
For me personally yes, because it does not have the same connotation i.e. doesn't imply something common. Which leads me to think this might be a combination of cultural/language thing. As in: when I read 'your lawyer' I translate this mentally then think about occurrences where I heard that phrase in my language. Doesn't ring a bell, so I start thinking about what I did hear or think I would hear another person say when talking about something like this. And 'a lawyer' would be that.
This just seems like a bunch of people arguing for the sake of arguing.
It's not, at least not from my part. See previous paragraph: this is HN, I come here because stuff like that gets discussed here freely and going off-topic is also not exactly a problem.
I think those groups just happen to be massively over-represented on HN.
Nowadays only the very rich can claim to have a "family lawyer".
If we were very wealthy, perhaps we'd have a legal matter for him every month instead of every year or two, but that's plenty of time to build up a relationship. Similar to having a family doctor.
Let me explain: they don't walk around with a personal lawyer. Just as if I buy a chocolate bar it doesn't mean I walk around with a personal sweet shop. You've just radically misunderstood how everything in the world works.
Nothing here should have provoked you enough to get that combative.
It's an amusing point they made. Not to mention, we're all roleplaying anyways. It's just not that serious.
And none of us including the thread OP is actually ever going to do this, much less involve "their lawyer" over a networked <form>. It's like when we roleplay that we're going to call our government representative and inconvenience some intern with some stern words: it's just a fun circlejerk. None of us are actually going to do it.
So it doesn't make sense to get emotionally involved to the point of asserting that someone misunderstands how everything in the world works.
Also aeons ago in tv-adverts: "Advocard ist Anwalts Liebling!" meaning with this card you are the lawyers favourite.
So basically, yes, with appropriate insurance you can have that done for you :-)
Something like: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...