Odysseus
06-30-2012, 03:55 PM
Since the lawyers who contribute millions to the Democratic Party are in favor of Obamacare (including the law school graduate who inflicted it on us), they obviously believe that not only does everybody had a right to healthcare, but that doctors have no right to expect compensation beyond what they, the government, think is fair. However, while the right to health care is debatable, the right to legal counsel is not. Everybody is supposed to have the right to representation in court, but the cost of litigation, especially attorney's fees, imposes an undue hardship on those who cannot afford to pay for this right. In addition, unlike medicine, law is adversarial. The quality of your representation is critical when compared to the quality of your opponent's. Therefore, the playing field is permanently slanted in favor of the rich. Clearly, this cannot continue. Our legal system is in crisis, and I'm going to propose a solution, which is to apply the same structures that we've imposed on health care to legal services.
How would that work? Simple: All lawyers would be compelled to join Legal Service Cooperative Resource Equivalency Working Group, or L-SCREWinG, which would provide the full gamut of legal services (thus eliminating the expensive overhead of law firms). Every lawyer would have to go through an L-SCREWinG before being assigned to a case, and no independent lawyers would be permitted. Each L-SCREWinG would be staffed with a number of paralegals and research assistants, as determined by the Legal Operations Personnel Procedures Evaluation Division, or LOPPED. Once the expensive support staff of the legal profession has been LOPPED off, costs will drop dramatically. Fees would be flattened out, so that all lawyers were equally accessible to the public, and the rotation of attorneys would be done through a lottery, so that no side in a litigation would be able to manipulate the outcome through the hiring of a better lawyer. You'd get what the system gave you, regardless of quality or specialty. In addition, there would be resource caps on litigation, so that the system couldn't be gamed by using teams of lawyers against individual litigants. Finally, all corporations, institutions or other agencies would be stripped of their legal departments, with everyone going into the L-SCREWinG, with the exception of those redundant staffers who would be LOPPED off.
The end result is equality of representation for all Americans. Of course, the legal profession would take massive cuts in compensation and would end up being worked much harder without supporting staff, but if they're willing to impose this on the medical profession, then they ought to be willing to accept it being done to them.
Aside from Wei, who may actually like this idea, I'd be curious how persons on the left react to this. Feel free to disseminate it. :evil-grin:
How would that work? Simple: All lawyers would be compelled to join Legal Service Cooperative Resource Equivalency Working Group, or L-SCREWinG, which would provide the full gamut of legal services (thus eliminating the expensive overhead of law firms). Every lawyer would have to go through an L-SCREWinG before being assigned to a case, and no independent lawyers would be permitted. Each L-SCREWinG would be staffed with a number of paralegals and research assistants, as determined by the Legal Operations Personnel Procedures Evaluation Division, or LOPPED. Once the expensive support staff of the legal profession has been LOPPED off, costs will drop dramatically. Fees would be flattened out, so that all lawyers were equally accessible to the public, and the rotation of attorneys would be done through a lottery, so that no side in a litigation would be able to manipulate the outcome through the hiring of a better lawyer. You'd get what the system gave you, regardless of quality or specialty. In addition, there would be resource caps on litigation, so that the system couldn't be gamed by using teams of lawyers against individual litigants. Finally, all corporations, institutions or other agencies would be stripped of their legal departments, with everyone going into the L-SCREWinG, with the exception of those redundant staffers who would be LOPPED off.
The end result is equality of representation for all Americans. Of course, the legal profession would take massive cuts in compensation and would end up being worked much harder without supporting staff, but if they're willing to impose this on the medical profession, then they ought to be willing to accept it being done to them.
Aside from Wei, who may actually like this idea, I'd be curious how persons on the left react to this. Feel free to disseminate it. :evil-grin: