Reply #6: Back in the late '70s and early '80s [View All]

[Blue_In_AK]

I worked with one of Alaska's top criminal defense lawyers who taught me this valuable lesson -- that if the constitutional rights of the most terrible criminal aren't defended and protected, then the rights of all of us are in jeopardy. He also was of the opinion that periodically, like every five years or so, the assistant district attorneys and assistant public defenders should trade offices so that their outlooks didn't become too fixed or jaded -- which is exactly what he did, as he went on to work as an assistant district attorney after the time I worked for him and eventually became a Superior Court judge. Sadly, he passed away in the late '80s. I'm sure he's turning in his grave these days seeing how our system of justice has become so perverted under BushCo.

And as for the civil, I've worked both sides of that fence, too. The idea of "frivolous lawsuits" is vastly overblown, at least in my experience. The plaintiff's lawyers that I worked for wouldn't even take cases that didn't have merit, and the insurance defense lawyers would usually try to settle as long as the monetary request was reasonable. I've seen them settle for significant amounts of money rather than risk the juries ... who are notoriously a roll of the dice.

Lawyers just really get a bum rap, I think.