Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

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Fun fact: NEVER defend yourself in court.

Iwas in divorce court with my ex. I was required to pay her attorney fees, as such - I could not afford my own attorney.

As I was talking to the judge, her attorney was balking, sniffling and laughing at the things I was saying.

I stopped, turned to her and said "Excuse me, you're not being very professional"

She physically recoiled, and said "what!"

The judge said "I am sorry, what did he say"

The attorney said "I don't know - he mumbled and threatened me under his breath!"

THe bailiff began to scream at me and get in my face threatening to take me to jail.

I turned back to the judge and said "No I did not! I told her she was being unprofessional for making snide comments and sounds while I was discussing my case with you. There is audio recording of everything in this room. Replay the recording."

The judge dismissed the whole event, as she knew it were shenanigans on the part of the lawyer.

The bailiff continued to glare at me.

I gave the law firm a poor review on Yelp, Sagaria Law in San Jose, ca. Yelp kept removing it as Sagaria law kept contacting them about the reviews.

I will never respect or trust a lawyer again. This is endemic in our society.

That sounds like a terrible attorney. There are lots of ambulance chasing shills that should be disbarred, but there are also many excellent highly ethical attorneys.

The problem is that those attorneys are typically reserved for the rich, so most people don't interact with them, with the exception of some truly excellent public defenders and prosecutors.

With regard to your experience, I can't imagine an attorney not respecting the decorum of a court room like that. If I were the judge, I would have issued a warning and held her in contempt if it continued.

Further, if I found out that an attorney made a false allegation of a threat in my court room, I would report them for an ethics violation for lack of candor to the tribunal instantly. There is no room for that type of nonsense in a court of law.

I'm sorry about your experience. That attorney, who does not deserve the title, is both a poor lawyer and a terrible excuse for a human being.

"The problem is that those attorneys are typically reserved for the rich, so most people don't interact with them, with the exception of some truly excellent public defenders and prosecutors."

In general, they are not reserved for anyone.

They just get tired of clients that won't pay, usually, after they told the client "it will cost 30k to do what you want, and you will lose anyway"

So they ask for larger and larger retainers, etc.

"I will never respect or trust a lawyer again. This is endemic in our society." You should totally make blanket statements based on a single experience.

Not a single experience. The most egregious. I do not have a singular happy experience with any lawyer where I felt, you know, actually represented.

If you have had the fortune of having a lawyer do you well, good for you. I have never once experienced this. I have many examples to draw from.

EDIT: well well well, you're actually a lawyer. No wonder your bias.

Many examples:

* Didn't read my filings prior to court

* Forgot our conversations, and misrepresented my statements

* charged thousands, never showed up in court

* threatening me

* accusing me of threatening them (example cited)

* charging many thousands of dollars for retainer, while never doing any hours of work aside from a 30-minute phone call

* charging me telling me they could achieve a certain outcome, then telling me that there was nothing they could do and it was out of their control.

Yeah - fuck that.

Genuine question - have you considered that the problem might be you?

Sure, there are bad lawyers like there are bad examples of anything else you care to name. It sucks that you've had a bad time of it, divorce court can't be fun.

But the fact that every interaction you've had seems negative - with your own lawyers, opposing lawyers, judges and even bailiffs (who are essentially non-legal admin/security staff) reveals a pattern. Eventually you have to ask: Is the whole world crazy, or just me?

Disclosure: I am a lawyer. I've had very difficult clients in the past. I generally get along well with clients, opposing counsel and even the opposing clients (to the extent we interact).

At least in the case where the opposing counsel was being rude, I could see that as someone that would respect another lawyer, but feels that they are superior (and therefore above) a person that is representing themselves.

Sometimes people are just serially unlucky. The population of the US alone is large enough that 1-in-a-million coincidences could be happening over 300 times a day.

Finding a good lawyer is difficult. I find the best thing to do to be to ask my friends about their lawyers ^_^

A bad lawyer is rarely bad in every single case. Going with the recommendations of friends is basically going with anecdotal evidence.

Most bar associations operate a referral service that weeds out lawyers with bad histories. You pay the bar ~$100 and they give you the contact info for the next lawyer in the queue who practices in the field you need.

At least this way you can be sure of getting a lawyer who does not have a history of screwing over any clients badly enough to get a complaint filed rather than a lawyer who did not screw over the one client who happens to be your friend.

I don't know why, but I've always had more luck asking people about lawyers than I have getting lists off of legal organisations. Perhaps because the interactions people have with lawyers are more refined than just whether they messed up the case completely or not?

That is good advice though ^_^

Funny I was actually thinking the opposite, why in the world did you ever respect or trust a lawyer!?

The same reason you'd respect or trust anyone else?

Are you trying to suggest that if I had a bad dating experience that I shouldn't write off an entire gender? Or that if I had a bad boss that I shouldn't tar all of management as useless? Or if I had a bad taxi-driver (or two or three) that I shouldn't suggests that "I will never respect or trust a taxi-driver again?"

On what basis are you suggesting that one or two anecdotes don't allow me to completely profile an entire population of millions (in the case of gender Billions) of people?

Generalizing an entire population based on a single experience just doesn't work. I did it once and I turned out to be completely wrong.

Sometimes, a single observation is enough to make generalizations. It depends on the context. For instance, dipping your toe into water before immersing yourself will give you an accurate enough idea of the temperature of the main body of water.

In this case, the wife's lawyer appeared to believe that she was in a cultural milieu where it was acceptable practice, not only to jeer and snort on the sidelines, but to lie to the judge about what the OP said.

Why did you file a Yelp Review and not a complaint with the Bar Association?

Further if the judge was ignoring you then file a complaint with chief judge.

Chances are nothing will come from a single complaint, but if a pattern emerges sanctions or even disbarment can be the result. I guarantee it will be more effective than a Yelp Review

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