An interesting perspective on a real problem. 25 years ago my mother advised me not to do law because lawyers were the most unhappy people she knew. I doubt the unhappiness is confined to young lawyers, but as they are often more mobile and active they are more likely to do something about it.

I think the main cause is the huge gulf between the high ideals that the profession aspires to and the actual reality of how it is frequently practised. With the possible exception of the military in times of war, no other profession comes close to the law in this dichotomy of standards, and this is bound to make its practitioners unhappy when they cannot reconcile the gap.

Legality has very little to do with justice or ethics.The legal system is about twisting reality to suit your version of events.

No wonder many young lawyers have become disillusioned.

The general public are rightly cynical about lawyers and the litigation mentality they have created.They have appealed to the most base of human emotions and have made our society all the poorer in the last ten years.

It is indeed a waste of human intelligence to create a system that feeds off itself in a frenzy of self destruction.

I would side with the view that the fundamental wrongness of what a lot of lawyers do for a living must be a contributing factor.

How can you go to work each day knowing that by advising your client regarding the law and following instructions you are helping to destroy innocent lives? How do we get ethics back into the practice of law?

Where is a lawyer acting within the law and following instructions ethically different to someone working at a Nazi death camp if their actions are harming innocents because the law allows their client to do so?

I agree that the role of the lawyer is not to be the judge but somewhere the idea of right and wrong appears to have been lost by many. Not the way to make happy people.

When you are one the receiving end of the abuse of law being told that the lawyer was "just following instructions" does not cut it.

It's time for a massive rethink of the role lawyers play in our society and the harm they are doing to the nature of our society.

James's my opinion may be addressing the very foundation of the legal system that supposed to practice the hollowed grounds of Law (which has evolved to what it is through the efforts of the best minds in the past) but does not and this thought to be a sacrilege particularly when it is used as a tool of manipulation and control by those in power.

The legal system (meaning the physical locations where anyone who wants 'law' to 'help' them deal with their irresolvable problem) is fully owned by the Crown and all lawyers are "Crown Agents" trained in this systems processes to give effect to above transaction (using legal speak).

So you have a situation where owners of the tool called Law having their own agents to act for those seeking its services ( meaning to represent disputing parties by breaking their problem into legal parts which forms the equation law uses in such matters to give a result) with almost no regulation and daily monitoring of this process by a civil body to ensure proper process and common mark of jusitce consistently followed and this where the whole systems weakness and by all evidence falls - it relies on the person acting as the judge to be a high moral and ethical being while sitting on the high chair BUT we are all humans and with our failures and this apple of corrupting this hallowed process with its vested powers to force change for self gain too tempting any person or group and in particular those who hold its control.

Hence you have justice becoming injustice and law to lawlessness and the civil population rely on it less and fight it more causing a increasing breakdown in community stability (maintaining it is the purpose of law Not controlling it). The family court is the prime example of this brown smear on the venerable use of law.

So the crown agents are increasingly depressed going to face a civilian population that is viewing the legal process more as a tool of control... I can understand that.

Sam

Those very people charged with redistribution of happiness, are confronted with their own deficiency.

Irony, sweet irony.

Friends,
It is sad to realise what is happening in the thoughts of the keepers of justice. We need balanced and fulfilled people administering the law otherwise we as a society are just as unhappy and unfulfilled. Could I ask what relaxing, satisfying and stimulating activities do they indulge in outside and other than their law practise?

R0bert,

Your equation of a lawyer advising clients that YOU believe to be unworthy of legal representation with a Nazi murderer in a death camp is illogical, reprehensible and shows that you know nothing about the legal system or the practice of law. You provide no information at all to back up your baldfaced assertion regarding the "fundamental wrongness of what a lot of lawyers do for a living". I wonder if you really know anything about what lawyers actually do or whether you glean your knowledge about legal practice from "Law and Order" or perhaps "Erin Brokovich". In fact what "most" lawyers do for a living is not "destroy innocent lives" but help plebs like you draft their wills, buy their homes, get compensation when they are injured at work and procure divorces.

Perhaps you are referring to corporate lawyers that defend unpopular clients such as James Hardie or the tobacco companies or to criminal lawyers that defend murderers and rapists. In that case, everyone is entitled to legal representation, that is a fundamental element of our legal system and of justice. Lawyers do not determine the law and may not agree with it but their professional duty is to advise clients in accrdance with it. The power to make and ammend laws lies with our State and Federal governments so if you disagree with any particular laws I'd encourage you to get involved in the democratic process and lobby for change...but I suspect that your comment is just a generic, garden variety slur at people who are probably more sucessful and hardworking than you are

Lubs try family lawyers. And my knowledge is first hand. Major damage done to my son and myself via a process that is so twisted as to not deserve any respect. I don't have a chance of detailing my concerns with this process but the stunts and misrepresentation I have seen so far are those of someone who takes no ethical responsibility for their actions and appears to have no concern for the harm done.

It is real peoples lives which are destroyed (or severly damaged) when lawyers follow instructions (and give advice on what those instructions might be) regardless of the blatent ethical wrongness of what they are doing. This is not an abstract intellectual exercise, it is about real people being hurt every day.

It is about lawyers advising clients to use tactics which are not only unethical but which increase the level of conflict during a family breakup with a consequential increase in the harm to the children caught in the middle and the other party.

It is also about the kind of lawyers in the personal injury field who use billboards saying "Small injury, big dollars" or words to that effect to advertise for business.

Our society is making wonderful strides for improvement in some area's, in others we appear to be on a rapid slide downhill and it appears to be lawyers in the vanguard of that slide.

R0bert,

If the process is twisted, the problem lies with the laws as they stand, that is something lawyers have no control over. They must work within the parameters of the law and it is up to governments to change and enact it. Representing their client to the best of their ability IS the "ethical" duty that lawyers are under. Furthermore lawyers act on the instructions of the client, they explain the legal options available but in the end the client (not their lawyer) decides what steps they want to take so any issues you have in regard to "stunts and misrepresentation" in a family law matter should really be issues with the other party in that matter and not that party's lawyer.

Unfortunately family law proceedings can get ugly and hurtful, especially when children are involved but that is what happends when people's relationships break down. Blame in that situation should be attributed to the parties in the dispute not the lawyers that are, in the end, nothing but neuteral advisors.

You keep using the term unethical like it is an objective term on which everyone will agree. In a dispute such as this you will find that people frequently cannot agree on what is "ethical" and unfortunately in our legal system (which is not perfect, like any other legal system) "legal and "ethical" are not always the same thing. Again that is not the fault of lawyers. Consider this, if lawyers did not advise their clients that a particular course of action was legally available to them because that lawyer personally was morally opposed to it, that lawyer would be guilty of negligence and malpractice and would run the risk of being struck off

Re personal injury lawyers- first of all it is no longer legal for them to advertise in the way you have described due to tort reform legislation, secondly they are providing a service, for many people that service is valuable as they win compensation that allows them to maintain some quality of life despite their injury.

Lubs, we clearly have different views of the responsibility of someone "acting under instruction". Whilst I agree that the primary responsibility lies with the person giving the instruction I do not hold that the other party is absolved of responsibility for their actions.

I agree that ethics are not clear cut items. It remains the best term I can find to describe behaviour that has some sense of fairness and honesty about it. In my own case one section of the law about property settlements (a failure to register a private agreement) was used to add to the pressure on me to give in on a residency claim. There were also misleading claims made in court by the solicitor. It boiled down to we will do you on property unless you give in on the residency.

I remain of the view that solicitors have a role to play in the way legal issues are fought. In family breakdown's they are generally working with people with little experience in the field who take their advice seriously. I don't have all the answers but am convinced that the approach taken by my former wifes solicitor added a lot of pain and harm to the process.

How long have solicitors been unable to advertise like that? I have seen a billboard with words to that effect in recent months (I'll have another look next time I'm in the area and see if it's still there).

All these posters to the Forum have misunderstood the McConvill/Edney article.

They are basically writing about the practice of commercial law in mid-to-top tier firms and referring to burn-out rates in the Magic Circle, etc.

To discuss the practice of criminal and family law, as the previous posts have, is to miss the point. Perceptions about the legal system gleaned from Law & Order or from your particular run-in with the family law system, frankly, give you no insight into the reality of day-to-day, commercial practice.

While they might hold the strongest grip over the public imagination, criminal and family law are in fact peripheral areas for most law graduates, and most of us never have anything to do with either.

An intresting twist on the theme of Lawyer ethics is to collect suggestions for what to do to my ex's Lawyers. Should we use pliers, anvil, red-hot tongs, etc etc? your ideas please. As is perhaps too common in Family Law, I do not see our child any more. I have observed how increasingly negative my ex became once involved with a fancy family law firm. It seems that the angrier she got, the more money they could take from her, and she ended up angry enough to file a totally false case at who-knows-what cost. Now I've played my part in upsetting her, I'm not trying to exonerate blame, but much of her present distress would not exist if she was able to talk with me at a cafe or other neutral place, perhaps with one friend each present to do what barristers did for $800+ per day in a court lobby.

Now I suspect that it would take a strong willed, almost saintly person to resist the blackness of exposure to angry divorcees and still emerge from the experience with an optimistic and helpful attitude. Therefore family lawyers who do divorces all of the time are very nearly ineviatably going to go through a phase in life where they have crystallized into a black mood with rotten expectations to pass on to their clients. Maybe some family lawyers shake that off and go back to trying to resolve conflicts, but I'd bet that with the dollars rolling in at each sneaky suggestion (how about we do this just in case the other side are bad .. hand-rubbing and fangful cackle to the sound of crypt organ music) there will be a number of black laywers who just aim to stirr up aggro and profit from endless litigation. So should it be open heart surgery for them, with red hot tongs on an anvil, or can anyone think of a better way of removing the problem?