{"id":4611,"date":"2003-10-08T10:43:59","date_gmt":"2003-10-08T14:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2003\/10\/08\/first-thing-lets-quell-all-th"},"modified":"2011-08-05T15:00:37","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T19:00:37","slug":"first-thing-lets-quell-all-the-liars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2003\/10\/08\/first-thing-lets-quell-all-the-liars\/","title":{"rendered":"First Thing . . . Let’s Quell All the Liars"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Lawyers, Liars, Bah!<\/em>” That’s what my immigrant, blue-collar Grandpa said, when I told him thirty years ago I’d be joining my twin brother as a student at Harvard Law School. Three words, and he never brought up the subject again. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Distrust of lawyers is ancient and widespread, and based on much more than class envy or the sour grapes of a dissatisfied client. From Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia<\/a>“, to Walter Olson’s <\/span>Overlawyered.com<\/a><\/span>, and from Shakespeare<\/a> to Shark Mugs<\/a> (and t-shirts<\/a>), <\/span>lawyers have been universally disrespected, even by (and sometimes especially by) those who know them the best and need them the most. <\/span><\/p>\n

Why? Put simply, human beings find it difficult to trust or respect liars — especially the dissembler who promises protection, disguises motives or parses words. Like it or not, to the average person, lawyers seem to be in the business of lying<\/em>, their degree being a license to lie — and steal. [You’ll find some all-too-representative quotations and jokes in<\/span> Poetic Justice<\/em><\/a> (edited by Jonathan and Andrew Roth, Nolo Press, 1994) and by clicking on a few results from a “lawyer joke” Google search<\/a>.<\/span>] <\/span>The causes go far beyond the central role lawyers play in our “adversarial” legal system, although that doesn’t help (“You see, my dear, both sides present slanted stories and the judge nevertheless figures out what the truth is and renders justice.”) <\/span>
\n\"\" Before the existence of the modern media, the public learned about their local lawyers at the public market, through neighborly gossip, and eventually from newspaper accounts. There were relatively few attorneys in most communities, and the personal reputation of each lawyer could stand on its own. Now, Americans and other members of the westernized world mostly see lawyers at work on their television screens, and the picture isn’t pretty. It’s not hard to understand the public’s disrespect for the profession, when its main images are:<\/span><\/p>\n