Government By Lawyers, For Lawyers
As far as I'm concerned, the Government owes me a tax refund. It's not because I overpaid my taxes this year. It's because for the second time in my life, I've been forced to hand over money for something that wasn't my fault at all. In the process, I've learned my lesson. I should have been a lawyer.
My most recent mistake was that of owning a car in San Francisco. One sunny afternoon in February, I drove up from Palo Alto for a business meeting, parked, and returned to my space an hour later thinking that I had lost my mind. The problem was not that my own car was missing. It was that every car on the street was missing.
With the nearest informative sign lodged in the middle of a tree, what I hadn't known was that from 3:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M., my parking spot and the others alongside it became a full-fledged traffic lane. What I had seen when I consulted the nearby signpost was a second sign telling me not to park between 2:00 A.M. and 6:00 A.M. The first was above it, right behind a dense cluster of leaves and branches. At 3:08 P.M. I left my car, deposited several dollars in quarters in the digital, time-aware, restriction-aware parking meter -- which happily accepted my money -- and went on my way.
My debut into the world of automobile towing was brutal and swift. I learned that the City of San Francisco had granted a monopoly to one company, AutoReturn, Inc., for car storage, allowing that company to set the supposed market rate for its services. My car was impounded for less than twenty minutes, and I spent about ten of those minutes running across the city to retrieve it. Effectively, the company's non-negotiable rate was $720 per hour. Not surprisingly, two other unlucky people trying to retrieve their cars couldn't afford the fee -- and they had yet to accrue the additional charge for leaving the car impounded overnight. One of them asked me for assistance, probably because I was a Caucasian male wearing a polo shirt and speaking with the aggressive tone that you might usually expect from a lawyer.
I wish I had been a lawyer on that day, because generally speaking, it's a good thing to be in the United States of America. Much like towing companies, your hourly rates are unregulated. $720 per hour is actually a realistic rate for a partner at a respectable law firm. The attorney charging it may or may not actually know something, but it doesn't matter -- the time spent figuring that out is billable. Consequently, people know not to mess around with lawyers, which is why that day I did my best to give the impression that I was one (though I never claimed to be, of course).
Unfortunately for me, impressions weren't enough. After driving home, as a mere citizen I protested my $60 ticket and $240 towing fee with two separate divisions of the Municipal Transportation Agency, the City Attorney of San Francisco, and finally an assistant to the Mayor. My claims were repeatedly denied. I was informed that my photographs had been taken from "too high an angle," and that according to the MTA, I had actually parked somewhere other than the spot I referenced in my protest. I went back to take new photographs showing the exact same problem from a lower angle, and then noticed that the police officer had written the wrong address on my ticket, suggesting that I had parked on the opposite side of the nearest intersection. A perception of governmental infallibility turned the ticketing officer's problem into my problem.
Not soon after, a lawyer I know received a speeding ticket. He actually had been speeding, and in a school zone at that. Nonetheless, he was able to point out a minor technicality in traffic law that exempts school zones surrounded by fences from lower speed limits. A photograph of the fence in question (from a high angle, as he is quite tall) along with a day's worth of work writing a strongly worded letter ("That's $5,000 in billable hours!" he told me) was all that he needed to get the ticket dismissed.
If I were a lawyer, I'd sue the City of San Francisco. I'd sue anyone necessary in order to get what is rightfully mine back. Yet the fact remains that I'm not a lawyer, and even though I'm capable of thinking, acting, and writing like one -- I could still file a lawsuit, after all -- our society favors a select group of people who by and large abuse their power to keep themselves within, but effectively above, the law. For unless you devote your life to the intricate art of working the legal system, the costs of even coming into contact with it are prohibitive. The filing fees alone in my case would probably be more than combined the value of my ticket and towing fees, let alone the cost of a lawyer's time.
This issue was best illustrated to me when I inadvertently amassed many thousands of dollars worth of criminal defense legal fees only a few years ago. My supposed crime was finding a problem in a federal computer system through legitimate means, and then telling the agency in question about the glitch. I was summoned to Washington, D.C., advised by lawyers that I needed a lawyer, and eventually interrogated by a government lawyer. As I provided the six federal agents and U.S. Attorney with expert computer security advice, my lawyer sitting silent beside me the entire time, I calculated my own hourly rate. It amounted to something around negative $2,500 per hour. My lawyer sent me her bill shortly thereafter. In return for assisting taxpayers, I had the honor of paying a lawyer.
I don't have a problem paying for professional services. Starting with babysitting, I have charged friends, family members and clients for services since I was eleven years old. I do have a problem paying for lawyers because they have rarely provided me the services promised, or any legal services at all. Aside from silent but expensive lawyers, I've had double-billing lawyers, lawyers who charged me to make $90,000 errors, lawyers who have acted on my behalf without my permission, lawyers who billed me for the phrase "I don't know," and lawyers who have refused to pay my bills even after I paid theirs. The aggregate efforts of all of the lawyers I have hired have yielded more dishonest behavior than the issues I was hoping to address with their help.
The notion that the law should be more accessible to a certain class of citizen seems to directly contradict the crucial idea that "all men are created equal." So watch out: if I ever perfect my lawyer act (because at this point I'd never actually want to be one), I'm coming for you, City of San Francisco and AutoReturn, Inc. As for the actual lawyers? Don't worry. You're next.
Aaron Greenspan is the author of the forthcoming Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era.
Follow Aaron Greenspan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thinkcomp
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You went to a whore house and didn't find true love!!!!
I am decent and honest lawyer.. Until now I worked for a top American law firm..rate
Good luck to you Alex. I too know what it's like to be a non-conformist in my profession
All joking aside, I wish all lawyers were like you. Good luck making your ends meet.
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Alex,
I also hope that one day it does pay to be honest and trustworthy. In the meantime, good luck with everything.
Aaron
The Republicans have passed all kinds of laws to help Lawyers make money.
You would be surprized by how many.
"USA is a nation of laws", remember??
So LAWYERS CAN GET RICH and you can be f*cked over. Enjoy the "nanny state for the rich" while you live the American NIGHTMARE.
I said it in an earlier post: this is what happens when you have a million lawyers and need to keep them occupied.
It's George Bush's fault.
The bush mentality and style ofleadership and the gop have made it much easier to be a lying corrupt anything in this country. Is that over the top? I don't think so. The world of civility and the attempt of being good...lef
Imagine that your car is stolen, and recovered and taken to an impound lot where to recover your car you have to pay hundreds of dollars a day in storage fees.
In my Mother-in-law's case she was even informed of where the thieves had left her car but wasn't allowed to retrieve it until the impound guys and picked the car up and held it for ransom . First somebody steals your car and then the city, working in concert with the towing company, steals some of your money. Not a very happy system.
I obviously chose the wrong area of practice.
It helps to be able to sound like a lawyer, sometimes. A couple of years ago a lawyer tried to bill me $450.00 for sending me a letter saying that he did not want to do the work I had asked him to do. Yes, he wanted to bill me for telling me he would not work for me. I managed to sound enough like a lawyer myself in my reply to make him drop the effort, as too much trouble.
They rely on your own fear to make you pay them for such non-work. If you are not fearful, but calm and threatening in a logical and legal way, they will often back down.
It's best to approach them at the end of the day, when they are replete with the blood of their victims and somewhat lethargic.
Good post, even though it is a bit rambling. You're right, it is a conspiracy. Hello, look at the proliferation of lawyers infesting all levels of govt'. Legislators making laws favoring lawyers or at least giving them more work aka "billable hours" ( HIPPA etc, etc. etc). Litigation is a dance where "opposing" attys. work together to make sure that each one gets their piece of the action. The poor schmuck stuck in the middle is taken for a ride. The current political campaign is a classic example of lawyerly spin and obfuscation. Shakespeare was right "First Kill All the Lawyers"
Shakespeare was not the only voice in antiquity to voice these sentiments
A lawyer in a position to make law is an automatic conflict of interest. So why do American voters
keep electing them to office?
By eecting a Lawyer they think they become his cleint and he will protect their rights.
Being a lawyer or being a politican they must choose. Can't be both.
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Chas53,
"Conspiracy" is a pretty strong word, and I don't think it applies here. The incentives for people to work are simply aligned poorly, and it's to the detriment of most of the country, unfortunately. There are far too many people involved for it to be a carefully-
Aaron
San Francisco Parking and Transportation is a criminal enterprise, as far as I have seen. Not sure a lawyer would have helped. But good point nonetheless. The problem is that lawmakers feel that their job is solely to make laws--rather than remove make, replace, and remove them.
Here in SF, they are trying to pass a law to make it more difficult for people to refund bottles and cans for money. The reasoning is that there are people going around to curbside recycling bins and collecting cans for their own gain before the city collects them. Big deal, you say? They are waking people in the middle of the night. Supposedly. It doesn't help their argument that I have street sweeping trucks going down my street at 3am every night sounding like a frightened Tyrannosaurus Rex, and they'll get you of $60 ticket if you land in their way. These people just like to make rules, and the lawyers benefit from them.
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