Fred Heutte comments:

Tim May and Phil Karn's comments remind me of my friend Mark the Lawyer who lives in SF. I visit him on occasion when I'm in the Bay Area and notice that he has the proper perspective on things. When I was there a week ago he had a copy of the Nolo Press newspaper (including a hefty selection of their vast catalogue of lawyer jokes). And his refrigerator magnet reads: "Lawyer: person retained to protect client from others of profession."

We need lawyers, but do we need *so many*?! I was born and grew up in Washington, DC. The DC Bar has over *50,000* lawyers! Even in our nation's capital that seems excessive.

I don't really think of lawyers as the problem, per se, nor do I think there are too many GIVEN WHAT THE LAW HAS BECOME. Seems to me folks have gotten what they asked for. The asked for more regulation, they got it. The asked to be protected from the contracts they signed (that is, to find ways to get out of contracts they no longer liked), they got it. They asked for easier divorce, they got it. They asked to be able to sue for nearly anything bad that happens to them, they got it. All of these things increase the business of lawyers, as business is no longer done on a handshake, property has to be divided up with the easier divorces, and so on. If you think about it, the reason for the surge in lawyers is clear. What, if anything, can be done? Here are several suggestions: 1. Return the sanctity of the contract. If parties sign a contract, then unless there is provable fraud, the contract is valid. No wiggling out claiming "diminished capacity" (if you're diminished, hire someone to handle your affairs), claims of "not understanding," or claims that the contract itself was coercion, racist, unfair, whatever. 2. Eliminate public funding of court proceedings. Eliminate things like the "Legal Aid Society" that subsidize court proceeding against landlords and property owners (as but one example). 3. Loser pays all court costs, and perhaps damages for bringing the suit, if the suit was clearly unfounded. (A murky area, I'll grant you, but other countries have tried it and it cuts down on frivolous "I'll sue!" types of suits.) 4. In divorce cases, adopt a system in advance of the wedding clearly stating the terms and conditions under which property, kids, etc., are to be doled out. Oh, and by Point #1, the sanctity of Pre-Nuptial Agreements is ironclad...no wiggling out by hiring lawyers. 5. Ultimately, privatize the court system. Bruce Benson, in "The Enterprise of Law," describes how this might work. (I won't debate it here in this group.) Obligatory Link to Cypherpunk Ideas: Many of these reforms are likely in cyberspace, where contracts will be contracts....with money placed in escrow with anonymous escrow services and only fairly simple adjudication and arbitration of the "facts," not the "intents." (Read Vinge's "True Names" for one vision of crypto anarchy and then try to imagine how the lawyers will ply their trade in such an environment.) -Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.