The book makes you hate lawyers. And pity them. Numerous snapshots of lawyers flit by: egotistical, insensitive, insecure, angry, troubled, and unhappy. There's a debate between three attorneys over whose paycheck is bigger. There's a lawyer who decides a conversation consists of two things: his opinion, and everyone listening to it-- rebuking anyone who tries to chime in with a contribution. There's the federal judge who regrets dedicating her life to achieve a position that has so little power; as she puts it:

"Real power doesn't exist in the courts...You have discretion in this job, but you'd be surprised how little. It's taken me an embarrassingly long time to realize that there's a big difference between having a bit of discretion and having real power."

Most importantly, there's the recurring notion that lawyers are unhappy because they are routinely made to do things that they do not want to do. That practicing a career that treats moral compromise as a necessary part of one's day takes a high toll. It is this ever-accumulating internal disgust which leads lawyers to focus on external signs of success--big apartments, nice suits, large paychecks, etc.

Still, even if lawyers trade a bit of morality for money, isn't it a personal issue? In the grand scheme of things, how much damage can a lawyer really do? The best example given is one whose real-world ramifications could not have been appreciated in 1997. The lawyer in question is meant to be seen as one of the "good ones": introspective, critical, and telling the story of how his under-educated, street-smart, union steward uncle had a better moral compass and greater sensitivity to the systematic wrongs perpetrated by the law than the majority of lawyers. What stands out in retrospect, however, is a half-paragraph where the lawyer is discussing his current practice. What does he do?

"I've been doing some mortgage securitization...I'm not sure I know what it is...You make mortgages into securities. There are all these new finance techniques. Lawyer creations. A mortgage securitization is when a bank purchases mortgage portfolios, then places them in trusts, or in newly created corporations. You use the trusts or the new corporations to issue new securities...the debt payments to the mortgage holders are paid with the cash flow from the mortgage portfolios. The client...gets the difference between the payments it receives from the individual mortgages and the coupon it pays on the...securities. Me, I think--well, everything depends on the money coming in on the mortgages. The economy starts to drop--if the mortgages aren't paid, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But that...ain't my problem. When it happens, we'll do what we did when all the junk from the eighties went bad--we'll just shift over into bankruptcy."

Page 157.

-- RonMazor - 13 Feb 2010

Separately, I've begun to watch The Deep End. It's a new show. Hulu's got it covered.

In watching, I've realized something mildly troubling--it is pleasurable to watch unhappy lawyers. Chalk it up to schadenfreude, I guess.

One thing the show had in its pilot, and which it stepped away from, was forcing the new lawyers to make morally ambiguous choices and sublimate themselves to partners' demands. I guess the writers figured it wouldn't be fun for people to watch a constant parade of lawyers making ugly choices.

Additionally, it seems to take some liberties on the realism front. Example: A court certifies a class in a product liabilities case. The case continues. In Civ Pro, we spoke a bit about how class certification is often the trigger for settlement, because no company wants to risk losing.

One aspect of the show struck home, though. It is the same thing that NPR finds hard to believe:

"For another, the young lawyers aren't given much -- other than hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt -- to wrap their intensity around. They seem to be at this prestigious firm simply because it's a prestigious firm; they seem to be lawyers just because."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/01/abcs_the_deep_end_because_tele.html