Myths & Realities

• Lawyers are a fraternity or professionals who are, at all times, able to look after their own best interests, with the help of knowledge of a technical and abstract kind.They some how thrive on an elaborate and laborious system of professional courtesies and ritualistic procedures.
• Successful lawyers wield more power than most people. They make more money than most people.They are usually targets of enormous resentment since they get called in after ordinary reason has failed, and when people are already angry, disillusioned, and ready for a fight.
• People are funny. They gripe about lawyers, they make snide jokes about lawyers, yet secretly they wish they could be more like lawyers. They wish they could be more effective in argument, more coolheaded and dispassionate in the midst of confrontations. They wish they could remain suavely logical even when angry, and they wish they had the knack of using the logic like a fist, a sledgehammer, or a scalpel. In short, people wish they could win more arguments, prevail in more conflicts and enjoy the confidence of knowing they can stand up for their point of view.
• Professional courtesy among lawyers is a system whereby lawyers make life easier for themselves and each other, generally at the expense of their clients.
• One of the main things that drive businessmen crazy about lawyers is that lawyers will generally do everything to prevent you from talking directly to their clients.
• Businessmen accentuate the positive, lawyers are left to wrestle with the negative, and all parties struggle towards a situation somewhere in between.
• The successful outcome of a negotiation or a legal fight most often depends not just on the independent savvy of the businessperson and the lawyer involved, but on how well they function together.
• When you pass matters on to an attorney, you are not just delegating authority, you are surrendering it.
• The longer the case goes on the less it is worth, except to your lawyer.
• The notion that free advise is worth nothing does not suggest that expensive advice is necessarily worth a lot.
• Everything is negotiable - though this is one of the things that lawyers would just as soon not have clients realize.
• The value of expert opinion - legal or otherwise - lies not in following it blindly and absolutely but simply in having it available as data.
• Once you know how much it costs to end up in Court, you realize what a bargain it can be to pay someone to keep you out of Court.
• In the face of a Court battle, both sides become almost instantly convinced that they are not right, but righteousness and flexibility vanishes.
• Many an expensive and bitter lawsuit comes about not because of substantial issues, but simply because two people with some power have gotten mad at each other!