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Comment by Demonsult | Hacker News Reader

I was pulled into a tough legal case and my lawyer explained that engineers have the hardest time working with law because they expect things to be logical. It's really a squishy mess full of ambiguities that are resolved with sophistry and head games.

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> engineers have the hardest time working with law because they expect things to be logical

This sounds like something a lawyer would say to a client who wants to think that. Law and coding have remarkable parallels.

To some extent, but in my experience developers struggle to understand that ultimately, the law is interpreted by humans, instead of a strict rule based system. I understand this frustration, to be clear, but this distinction is obvious.

> in my experience developers struggle to understand that ultimately, the law is interpreted by humans, instead of a strict rule based system

True. But this isn’t because someone is more logical. Honestly, that was a great line by a lawyer who probably wanted to focus on the case and not bill hours for a philosophy of law discussion.

The parallels are pretty superficial. The process is similar to theologians arguing scripture or maybe querying a low-grade LLM.

> parallels are pretty superficial

Not really. In particular, they’re both professions filled with people who have egos the size of planets. I can just as easily see a surgeon telling a lawyer that the law is logical, being designed by man, in a way the human body is not just to get them to shut the hell up with broad questions about human anatomy during a surgical consult.

(The actual parallel is they both deal with constructed languages. High-level languages are full of hacks and quirks and high-octane stupid it, just like the law.)

The funny part is that engineers and doctors typically think they’re the smartest one in the room. To prove this, they over think and over explain their deposition responses. All this does is give a skilled interlocutor more avenues to question and develop inconsistencies. At which point ego is triggered and they become super-defensive.

Ah, the always-entertaining moment when a person who is technically-correct (the best kind?) realizes that the socially-correct interpretation carries greater weight in the minds of everyone except themselves.

Been there. Learned eventually. Sometimes still forget. :)

I won through a little bit of advice suggested by a layperson. I simply got the case moved to another room. The old judge hated us and the new judge loved us. All we had to do was decline magistrate jurisdiction. My lawyer was really reluctant for reasons I believe had to do with his standing with the court and not my case. And to think that layperson could be jailed for suggesting it.

No, they wouldn't, nor is this some kind of secret trick as you seem to be implying. This is a fairly common practice sometimes called "judge shopping" similar to "forum shopping" (where you try to get your case moved to the jurisdiction most friendly to your claim). It's not illegal, though it is (in theory) discouraged. As an example, if you're not familiar, look up the Eastern District of Texas and patent litigation.

I think they were going for „giving legal advice while not being a lawyer“, not the suggestion of judge shopping.

Nobody directly involved ever mentioned the idea and we didn't change jurisdictions. We had the right to reject a magistrate simply because they were a magistrate judge and not simply a judge. Nobody discouraged it or even tried to fight it. If law was so logical and like code, this move would not cause an instant 180 in the case.

> to think that layperson could be jailed for suggesting it

Who told you forum shopping is illegal to talk about?

Giving legal advice when not being a lawyer is illegal, it’s probably very unlikely that this already counts as legal advice though.

You were in the courtroom once, the lawyer will be in that room many, many times. He wants what is easiest for him, with some deference to you, but really mainly for him.

All this stuff is hard to navigate if you're not used to it, or haven't been involved before.

Thank god we don't have a jury of morons making medical or safety critical decisions.

Edit: Actually we do. Skilled interlocutors like that doing their thing are how we got leaded gasoline.

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