Why I Could Never Be a Lawyer

Tim May timcmay at got.net
Wed May 21 17:36:51 PDT 2003


Or, rather, why I would likely do poorly in law school, and even if I 
managed to pass, would likely hate the kinds of b.s. little trials that 
99% of lawyers have to work on to earn a living.

In writing that last mini-rant about the Second Amendment and the 
"incorporation doctrine" and why the courts have not made it clear that 
states may not violate the Second any more than they may violate the 
First or the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, etc., I realized something expressed 
by this analogy:

memorizing baroque law:understanding principles of systems :: 
memorizing baroque Unix and security protocols:understanding physics 
and math.

In English, the talent for being able to memorize a lot of often 
confusing and contradictory law is related to the talent for being 
interested in basic economic or system principles in the same way that 
the talent for understanding arcane Unix and security protocols is 
related to the talent for understanding math or physics.

I confess, I'm not a "Unix geek." I skip most messages which talk about 
SSL, DNS, and the intricacies of Linux or BSD or the like. More and 
more "security" and crypto seems to be about this kind of stuff.

It reminds me a lot of the law, where one just has to absorb thousands 
of cases and bits of "lore" about precedents and statutes. I would bog 
down, I expect, in not being able to simultaneously grok the Bill of 
Rights AND the aforementioned "incorporation doctrine" mess.

Also, unlike many in the law business (at least as I see them being 
interviewed on video and in print), I don't see any "majesty" in the 
law. What I see instead is a massive deviation from the "kernel" of a 
largely self-running machine based on core (kernel) principles of "you 
leave me alone and I'll leave you alone" kinds of Schelling points.

The law has become a baroque collection of "buttinsky" exceptions and 
mix-ins and overrides. (A mess of "before" and "after" methods, in Lisp 
terms.)

Now I don't mean to insult any of those here who can write learnedly 
about the Unix-flavored hacks and about all nine layers of TCP/IP (or 
is TCP/IP just one of the layers of some other byzantine cake? I never 
bothered to learn the equivalent of "King Philip Could Only Find Good 
Strawberries"--Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.

The world needs all kinds. And right now, security and crypto seems to 
be mostly about knowing lots and lots of pieces of cruft.

I surmise that the same skills--including the ability to absorb 
seemingly unrelated and even contradictory bits of stuff--useful for 
programmers are useful for lawyers. Which may be why several current or 
former Cypherpunks have become lawyers or are in law school.

Gaak! And GAK!

Two sayings appeal to me more:

"Never memorize anything you can look up."  --Einstein.

"Think deeply about simple things."  --motto of Ross Summer School, 
quoted often by physicist and mathematician John Baez.


--Tim May
"Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid.  But 
stupidity is the only universal crime;  the sentence is death, there is 
no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without 
pity." --Robert A. Heinlein





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