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Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 ^_^

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