#Legal Profession

[floral-ashes]

“The second major argument commonly offered against attorney civil disobedience is that it reduces the public’s respect for the legal profession. … As an initial matter, it should be noted that our society hardly seems to hold lawyers in high esteem today.”

Touché 😂

[democraticelectorateoflivonia]

Ministry of Justice

[wittyno]

So you may not have heard of this story. But two paralegals in North Carolina are suing to be given the right to help give legal advice and legal counsel to clients.

For this discussion we need two important pieces of context.

One. You need to know there’s such a thing as legal deserts. Legal deserts, like food deserts are places where there are not enough lawyers for the number of people who need them in a certain area. And much like food deserts these often happen in rural communities where there is limited access to resources including legal resources.

Two. You need to know that lawyers are the only people who can give legal advice. Anyone else giving legal advice would be committing malpractice. Yes, people who aren’t lawyers can be guilty of legal malpractice.

So these two paralegals want the right to give legal advice to the clients and help them fill out basic forms to help reduce the cost and increase the availability of proper and good legal advice.

There are people, lawyers, who think this is a bad idea, because only they can give legal advice, and how this would be a downgrade for the profession. At least, in my opinion that’s a bunch of huey because you don’t need a fancy and very fucking expensive law degree to help someone get divorced. Getting divorced depending on your situation can be relatively easy at least legally speaking. Well-trained paralegal should be able to help people so they can keep housing benefits, and or get divorced more easily and more affordably.

What lawyers don’t want to talk about is that a lot of people cannot afford their services. Now I’m not saying that lawyers are overcharging. And if you are engaging a lawyer, you should pay them on time that’s how it works money for service. But being a lawyer is pretty expensive and so you need to charge higher rates to be able to sustain yourself in your practice. but some of that strain can be alleviated. If you have paralegals that can give legal advice. In 21st century, lawyers should not be the only people giving legal advice.

And while people are always going to get their good advice from cheaper sources. Let’s make sure the cheaper sources are actually well educated and well informed on the subject.

I think overall this is a great idea. And several states have started to implement programs that give paralegals and other para-professionals more when giving legal advice.

Next up: why R/legaladvice is absolute dog shit and you shouldn’t use it.

[chinitajuris]

Lord, I really want to become a lawyer. I can’t find words of how eager I am to be part of the legal profession but if you may, please listen to my heart.

Listen to the beat of passion and perseverance.

Listen to my heartfelt desires and faith in You.

Listen to the cry of Your people that needs help.

Listen to the prayers of my family, to my mama; instead, if not for me, for them.

I have 28 days left; I manifest, Lord God, to pass the September 2023 Bar Examinations, according to Your will, and become a full-fledged lawyer this December 2023.

Amen.

[santaclaralocalnews]

More than a thousand associate lawyers at the nation’s most powerful and prestigious law firms are telling their bosses that it is time to stand up and be counted. As of the morning of March 24, 1,390 lawyers had joined an open letter to the leaders of their respective law firms, calling on them to push back against recent attacks on the legal profession by President Donald Trump’s administration. More than a third of the signers work at law firms based, or with offices, in the Bay Area. Read complete news at svvoice.com.

[youthchronical]

Trump Expands Attacks on Law Firms, Singling Out Paul, Weiss

President Trump on Friday opened a third attack against a private law firm, restricting the business activities of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison just days after a federal judge ruled such measures appeared to violate the Constitution. White House officials said the president signed an executive order to suspend security clearances held by people at the firm, pending a review of whether…

[loebleadership]

Navigating the Zero-Sum Myth In Legal Leadership - Loeb Leadership's DEI Webinar

Discover fresh insights from Loeb Leadership’s recent DEI webinar that challenge the zero-sum model in the legal profession. This engaging session explores how collaboration and inclusivity can drive growth and innovation, benefiting everyone involved. Learn practical strategies to foster a more equitable workplace and enhance team dynamics. Join us in redefining success in law through a shared vision of leadership that prioritizes collective achievement over competition. Explore the full insights now!

[jangillman]

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[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jack Ohman , Tribune Content Agency

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 4, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

May 05, 2025

In an interview aired today on NBC News’s Meet the Press, reporter Kristen Welker asked President Donald J. Trump if he agreed that every person in the United States is entitled to due process.

“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump answered.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees that “no person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Judges across the political spectrum agree that the amendment does not limit due process to citizens. In his decision in the 1993 case Reno v. Flores, conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”

In his oath of office, Trump vowed to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

When Welker pointed out that the Constitution guarantees due process, Trump suggested he could ignore it because honoring due process was too slow. “I don’t know,” he said. “It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said. “We have thousands of people that are—some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”

“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he added.

Welker tried again. “[D]on’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States?”

Trump replied: “I don’t know. I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

Conservative judge J. Michael Luttig explained to MSNBC’s Ali Velshi that far-right scholars have argued that the president does not have to follow the Supreme Court if he doesn’t agree with its decisons: he can interpret the Constitution for himself. Luttig called this “constitutional denialism.” He added that “[t]he American people deserve to know if the President does not intend to uphold the Constitution of the United States or if he intends to uphold it only when he agrees with the Supreme Court.”

Mark Berman and Jeremy Roebuck of the Washington Post reported today that federal judges are becoming increasingly impatient with the incompetence of the Department of Justice lawyers who are defending more than 200 cases against the administration in court. Judges have accused DOJ lawyers of providing inadequate answers and flimsy evidence, defying court orders, and even behaving like toddlers.

Trump has said the justice system is a “rigged system” run by “radical left lunatics,” but former federal judge John E. Jones III, whom President George W. Bush appointed to the bench, agreed that DOJ lawyers have “lost a fair measure of their credibility.”

Authoritarian governments are based on the idea that some people are better than others. This translates into the idea that some people have special insight based only upon their superiority. They don’t have to listen to experts, who just muddle the clear picture the leader can see. When reality intrudes on that vision, the problem is not the ideology of the leader, it is obstruction by political opponents.

As Trump told Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer of The Atlantic about his presidencies: “The first time, I had two things to do—run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,” he said. “And the second time, I run the country and the world.”

Trump himself illustrated this ideology again in the interview with Kristen Welker when he explained his trade war. “Look,” he said. “We were losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China. Now we’re essentially not doing business with China. Therefore, we’re saving hundreds of billions of dollars. Very simple.”

It is not, in fact, that simple.

This impulse to downplay expertise and concentrate power in a strongman shows in Trump’s tapping of Secretary of State Marco Rubio as acting national security advisor, as well as acting head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Clearly, Trump doesn’t think he needs experts in at least three of those four senior posts. Perhaps it also shows there are few experts still willing to work in a Trump White House.

The results of this disdain for expertise shows these days most immediately in the policies of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As measles continues to spread across the U.S., a spokesperson for Health and Human Services said Friday that Kennedy will turn the country’s health agencies away from promoting vaccination, which is 97% effective in preventing the disease, and toward exploring new treatments for it, including vitamins.

“It’s not that there’s been a lack of studies,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, told Teddy Rosenbluth of the New York Times. Decades of research have not discovered dramatic treatments, while vaccinations have proven safe and effective at preventing the life-threatening disease.

Rosenbluth noted that “[p]ublic health experts are baffled by Mr. Kennedy’s decision to hunt for new treatments, rather than endorse shots that have decades of safety and efficacy data.” This stance seems to contradict Kennedy’s longstanding focus on preventing disease.

Kennedy has also falsely claimed that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) contains “aborted fetus debris,” that parents should “do their own research,” and that he will institute testing for new vaccines with placebo-controlled trials, a practice medical experts warn could be unethical as subjects believe they are protected from disease when they are not.

Infectious disease expert Paul Offit told Jessica Glenza of The Guardian: “It’s his goal to even further lessen trust in vaccines and make it onerous enough for manufacturers that they will abandon it.”

At the end of March, Kennedy also vowed to study possible links between vaccines and autism, although repeated scholarly studies have shown no link. Kennedy has tapped David Geier, who does not have a medical degree and was disciplined in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license, to perform the study.

On Thursday, former New York Times global health reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. noted that both Geier and Kennedy have made significant money thanks to their anti-vax stands as they monetize alleged treatments and sue pharmaceutical companies.

In Ars Technica on April 30, microbiologist and senior health reporter Beth Mole explored another angle to understand Kennedy’s policies. She noted that Kennedy, who is neither a doctor nor a public health expert, does not believe in the foundational principle of modern medicine: germ theory.

In a 2021 book, Kennedy argued the idea that microscopic viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi cause disease serves the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare industry that grew around it by “emphasiz[ing] targeting particular germs with specific drugs rather than fortifying the immune system through healthy living, clean water, and good nutrition.” He accused those supporting this system, including Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who was a proponent of the Covid vaccine, of misleading the American public.

While Kennedy appears to believe germs exist, he also claims to believe in the older theory of disease called “miasma theory,” although as Mole points out, he misunderstands that theory—the idea that diseases are caused by poisonous vapors—and really appears to believe in another old idea: “terrain theory.” Terrain theory maintains that diseases are signs that the internal “terrain” of the body is out of whack.

This would explain Kennedy’s assertion—refuted by doctors—that the children who died of measles were malnourished. As medical blogger Kristen Panthagani, MD/PhD, explains: Kennedy’s way of thinking is “the belief that infections don't pose a risk to healthy people who have optimized their immune system.”

While underlying medical conditions certainly affect people’s health, Mole notes that “the evidence against terrain theory is obvious and all around us.” But if you think germs are less important than overall health, things like the pasteurization of milk to kill E. coli, salmonella, and Listeria bacteria—which Kennedy opposes—are unnecessary.

In 1876, German microbiologist Robert Koch discovered that the cause of anthrax was a bacterium. Germ theory challenged established practices In the U.S., where doctors in the 1860s during the Civil War believed the best demonstration of their skill was their bloody aprons and instruments, instruments they kept in a velvet-lined case.

In 1881 the doctor overseeing President James Garfield’s recovery from a gunshot wound repeatedly probed the president’s wound with dirty instruments and his fingers, prompting assassin Charles Guiteau to plead not guilty of the murder by claiming, “The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him.”

But just four years later, germ theory was so widely accepted that the U.S. Army required medical officers to inspect their posts every month and report the results to the administration, and by 1886, disease rates were dropping. By 1889, the U.S. Army had written manuals for sanitary field hospitals, and the need to combat germs was so commonplace medical officers rarely mentioned it.

And now, in 2025, the top health official in the United States, a man without degrees in either medicine or public health, appears to be rejecting germ theory and reshaping the nation’s medical system around his own dedication to a theory that was outdated well over a century ago.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[ancillarylegalcorporation]

Court Reporting: Common Misconceptions

Court reporting is often misunderstood, but it plays a vital role in the legal field. Many people assume it's simply fast typing, but court reporters must accurately capture every word and nuance of legal proceedings at lightning speed, often up to 225 words per minute. Misconceptions like “anyone can do it” or that the job is easy overlook the extensive training and expertise required. Court reporters also provide a human touch that technology can’t replicate. With demand growing, it's essential to recognize the skill and dedication this profession truly demands. Contact us to learn more about court reporting services.

[ryanwclement]

We Reap What We Sow! 3

I REMEMBER being at school when the only person who would visit about their work would be a police officer and, respectfully, we were told primarily about the rights and wrongs but not about joining the force. Thankfully, here at least, we are given a lot more information and good career advice. In conversation with DC Pascal YESTERDAY, I had the pleasure of visiting and speaking at another…

[lloydlawcollege]

Journey to Becoming a Government Lawyer

Becoming a government lawyer requires a law degree, passing the bar exam, and gaining relevant legal experience. Start with a bachelor's degree, gain experience through internships, pass the bar, and apply for government roles. Networking helps in finding opportunities and advancing your career.

[lawtoppers]

Madras High Court Ruling on Advocate Stickers; मद्रास उच्च न्यायालयाचे अधिवक्ता स्टीकर वापराबद्दल निर्णय

मद्रास उच्च न्यायालयाने वाहनांवर 'अधिवक्ता स्टीकर' च्या गैरवापराबद्दल महत्त्वपूर्ण निर्णय दिला आहे. जाणून घ्या काय आहे हा निर्णय आणि त्याचे परिणाम.

Madras High Court Ruling on Advocate Stickers Madras High Court Ruling on Advocate Stickers The Madras High Court has issued a significant ruling concerning the misuse of ‘advocate stickers’ on vehicles. The court declared that police authorities have the right to take action against lawyers who misuse these stickers to evade legal obligations or claim immunity from traffic rules and other…

[legalattorneyblog]

The final list of candidates for the 2024 NBA general elections has been published.

The Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) has published on its website the final list of candidates qualified to contest in the forthcoming 2024 Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) General Elections and the offices/positions they are vying for. Meanwhile, today, June 3, 2024, is the last day for verifying voter data. To confirm your details on the Voters’ List, kindly click the…

[youthchronical]

Trump’s Revenge on Law Firms Seen as Undermining Justice System

President Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms, legal experts and analysts say, is undermining a central tenet of the American legal system — the right to a lawyer to argue vigorously on one’s behalf. With the stroke of a pen last week, Mr. Trump sought to cripple Perkins Coie, a firm that worked with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, by stripping its lawyers of security…