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MoneyandtheLaw 7 - 13 Jul 2012 - Main.RohanGrey
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="Main.RohanGrey" |
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In case it is not obvious by now, I have a very strong interest in the legal underpinnings of our monetary system. I find it to be of fundamental relevance to almost every discussion we have in law school, since the default assumption (in certain Torts classes more than others, perhaps) tends to assume the neutrality of money itself, or at the very best make very vague assertions about how it functions. These implicit assumptions are then used to justify the exclusion of certain avenues of enquiry, to present contingent phenomena as axiomatic laws of nature, and to obfuscate issues from their true bases. | | | Hi Jennifer, | |
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< | You should probably factor into account the various additional nominal and real costs of hiring new people beyond the cost of salary itself, and also remember there is no reason to expect law firms to risk their prestige value of exclusive hiring out of concern for unemployed law graduates, but I get your point. In fact, we could extend it further - around the world millions of laborers work harder than ever while millions of others sit around and do nothing because humanity as a whole apparently "can't afford" to find some way for them to contribute productively. Why couldn't we just double the minimum wage and allow twice as many unskilled workers to get paid to work half as much? Private employers will probably cry fowl and allege that such improvements in labor standards are prohibitive to their existing business model, but hey - Capital has been grumbling about labor regulation since we stopped them from employing 12 year olds in sweat shops (and before). Even if they're right, society could always just employ them itself. | >
> | You should probably factor into account the various additional nominal and real costs of hiring new people beyond the cost of salary itself, and also remember there is no reason to expect law firms to risk their prestige value of exclusive hiring out of concern for unemployed law graduates, but I get your point. In fact, we could extend it further - around the world millions of laborers work harder than ever while millions of others sit around and do nothing because humanity as a whole apparently "can't afford" to find some way for them to contribute productively. Why couldn't we just double the minimum wage and allow twice as many unskilled workers to get paid to work half as much? Private employers will probably cry foul and allege that such improvements in labor standards are prohibitive to their existing business model, but hey - Capital has been grumbling about labor regulation since we stopped them from employing 12 year olds in sweat shops (and before). Even if they're right, society could always just employ them itself. | | | To go back to lawyers and your question of implementation, while I doubt you'd make much headway convincing for-profit private companies to adopt such a practice, it's less fanciful in the public and non-profit sectors - you could conceivably establish a network of non-profit teaching law firms (comprised of a mosaic of local, state, national, industry-specific firms) that paid a basic salary to any law graduate willing to provide legal assistance to the community as necessary. As Jared pointed out in another thread, a similar model is already starting to emerge from some law schools. |
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