Thread

1. dabinat · 1790566087 · focus · HN ↗

   My experience with lawyers is that if you need a legal document, they often have templates ready to go and will take 10 seconds to find & replace your company name into the document. I know this because they often don’t proofread it afterwards. They then charge you $1000 for that 10 seconds of work. Given that I have felt ripped off by many lawyers, I’m totally fine with that industry getting disrupted.

   1. Der_Einzige · 1790568382 · focus · HN ↗

      Lawyer jokes are on point and on brand for a reason.

      They grift about as hard as tech workers did pre-2022. Relying on the fact that no one can easily audit their work to justify their one hour of actually work despite making easily 300K+ a year.

      Please kill their golden goose. Most lawyers are actively harmful to society.

      1. georgeburdell · 1790569332 · focus · HN ↗

         On the other hand, I'm horrified at the thought of zero marginal cost legal work given the strain of the current workload on courts.

         1. [deleted] · 1790569697 · focus · HN ↗

            [deleted]

         2. Razengan · 1790570612 · focus · HN ↗

            > strain of the current workload on courts

            Maybe courts could be replaced by AI too once it's good enough?

            With the right to escalate to human judges of course.

            and without turning it into current phone helplines or support chatbots, god please.

            1. shen · 1790571479 · focus · HN ↗

               How often are you satisfied with the answers from the customer service chatbot vs immediately looking for the talk to a human button?

               1. Razengan · 1790588003 · focus · HN ↗

                  Never. Added that prayer
         3. hibikir · 1790570842 · focus · HN ↗

            The law works because most people won't break it, most disputes don't even end up in anyone getting sued, and most lawsuits end up in settlements before too much court time was spent. Break any of those things, and systems crack. Break multiple, and it all collapses.

            If the cost of what a lawyer does today drops to pennies, the system probably needs robo-judges, and/or massive penalties for taking something in front of a human judge when the facts sufficiently completely one sided, as making them pay the winning party's legal fees will become insufficient deterrence.

         4. somenameforme · 1790572702 · focus · HN ↗

            That is self inflicted by having a system where you're expected to plead not guilty when you're guilty, because otherwise you get screwed. In other country's legal systems, pleading not guilty when ultimately found guilty is taken as a lack of remorse and tends to result in harsh sentencing. By contrast if somebody pleads guilty, shows remorse, and works with the police and others then they can expect to receive relatively lenient sentencing, all other things being equal.
         5. nradov · 1790574677 · focus · HN ↗

            I don't think it will be a huge problem. People aren't going to commit more crimes so the caseload there won't increase much. "Jailhouse lawyers" might file more appeals of their own convictions but those seldom go very far.

            On the civil side, high-dollar disputes are already litigated. The real potential growth enabled by cheaper legal services will be in small claims. Those courts can be scaled up because they don't require a jury or even a real judge.

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