Even as someone who is generally pro-Palestine, if I was working at a law firm I would rescind a job offer to the person who wrote and sent around that letter.
I mean if I was hiring a roofer or something and saw that he had a pro Palestine newsletter like that, who cares. But if I’m hiring another professional whose entire job it is to not only see nuances in cases and arguments, but to recognize how best to present and argue them before a court of people who may have very different beliefs than them, and make frequent on the record statements that will be preserved until society collapses, then this gives me pretty ample reason to believe they won’t be capable of executing any of that with the level of professionalism I would want out of a coworker.
A good attorney will be able to craft a powerful argument against their own core beliefs. This guy is very clearly incapable of that. A true professional can conduct an unbiased analysis, and then determine if it’s an issue where you need to speak out or recuse yourself because of your biases.
Hollywood horseshit. If you are crafting an argument against your core beliefs you should not have taken that case, full stop. I’m not about to go argue against the Civil Rights Act because someone picked my name off of a random website. This is not something that happens in real life in any case that actually matters. If your client ends up with an unsatisfactory result your biases (that you did not adequately disclose, that you were not prepared to ignore) against your own client’s interests open things up for a mistrial and possibly even censure.
We’re not talking about taking a case from the local HOA that’s run by douchebags but they’re technically correct here. In cases with real stakes, where real shit is going down and lives are going to be effected, you are never arguing against yourself unless you are woefully incompetent and should never have been granted entry to the bar.
The third option is, of course, that you don’t give a shit about anything but getting paid but at that point you have no core beliefs so none of this applies.
You know what, fair enough. I’m not an expert at law. This is what I thought was the case, but you seem more knowledgeable than me on this, so I’ll take your word for it.
A good attorney can, but a great attorney doesn’t. Good attorneys make enough money that they can pick each and every case they want, and only take ones that advance their career or personal beliefs. My lawyer trained under Lenny Bruce, and his website right now is very similar to this letter. He runs his own firm, though, so he’s not beholden to the respectability politics of big law firms.
Edit: lmao I didn’t mean Lenny Bruce, listening to him while typing this fucked my brain up, but it’s hilarious so imma leave it.
Yup. I had a funny little blog while I was in college. I think i had twenty regular readers. It was unassociated with my name, but if you tried you could find the connections. When I went into tax and consulting, that blog disappeared into the aether. Publicly I had to be boring and professional. It’s so… What’s the word. Not me.
Even as someone who is generally pro-Palestine, if I was working at a law firm I would rescind a job offer to the person who wrote and sent around that letter.
I mean if I was hiring a roofer or something and saw that he had a pro Palestine newsletter like that, who cares. But if I’m hiring another professional whose entire job it is to not only see nuances in cases and arguments, but to recognize how best to present and argue them before a court of people who may have very different beliefs than them, and make frequent on the record statements that will be preserved until society collapses, then this gives me pretty ample reason to believe they won’t be capable of executing any of that with the level of professionalism I would want out of a coworker.
Then you will literally never hire an attorney.
A good attorney will be able to craft a powerful argument against their own core beliefs. This guy is very clearly incapable of that. A true professional can conduct an unbiased analysis, and then determine if it’s an issue where you need to speak out or recuse yourself because of your biases.
Hollywood horseshit. If you are crafting an argument against your core beliefs you should not have taken that case, full stop. I’m not about to go argue against the Civil Rights Act because someone picked my name off of a random website. This is not something that happens in real life in any case that actually matters. If your client ends up with an unsatisfactory result your biases (that you did not adequately disclose, that you were not prepared to ignore) against your own client’s interests open things up for a mistrial and possibly even censure.
We’re not talking about taking a case from the local HOA that’s run by douchebags but they’re technically correct here. In cases with real stakes, where real shit is going down and lives are going to be effected, you are never arguing against yourself unless you are woefully incompetent and should never have been granted entry to the bar.
The third option is, of course, that you don’t give a shit about anything but getting paid but at that point you have no core beliefs so none of this applies.
You know what, fair enough. I’m not an expert at law. This is what I thought was the case, but you seem more knowledgeable than me on this, so I’ll take your word for it.
A good attorney can, but a great attorney doesn’t. Good attorneys make enough money that they can pick each and every case they want, and only take ones that advance their career or personal beliefs. My lawyer trained under Lenny Bruce, and his website right now is very similar to this letter. He runs his own firm, though, so he’s not beholden to the respectability politics of big law firms.
Edit: lmao I didn’t mean Lenny Bruce, listening to him while typing this fucked my brain up, but it’s hilarious so imma leave it.
Yup. I had a funny little blog while I was in college. I think i had twenty regular readers. It was unassociated with my name, but if you tried you could find the connections. When I went into tax and consulting, that blog disappeared into the aether. Publicly I had to be boring and professional. It’s so… What’s the word. Not me.
Out of curiosity… before, or after Archive.org?
No one backed it up in there. I checked. It was a small blog.