The lawyer's irrelevance

Much of the lawyer's time is wasted in negotiating the jungle he himself has created. Time is wasted on arguments about minute evidential points or in filling out masses of largely superfluous documents or in arguing about definitions instead of substantive issues.

They are obsessed by the need to maintain the facade of the logical inevitability and profundity of legal reasoning when sociologists have long since exposed the very wide value of choice and therefore political power that dispute settlement gives to a judge or lawyer. They are losing the ability to cut through details to the relevant problems.

Most of the examples are too difficult to understand without a legal training, because the job of creating complexity has been so well done. But two are the artificial and irrelevant rule on capital and income which so dominate our creaking tax system, and much of the out-of-date and unnecessarily complex property law.

Most of these observations are obvious to anyone but a lawyer. But the consequences are probably not as widely understood by an outside observer, and are significant.

First, the impact of lawyers opting for conservatism and irrelevant trivia has an important impact on the snail's pace development of our social institutions.

Lawyers have made little more than token contributions to the crucial issues of modern society which fall within their natural domain.

The problems are mostly a variation of one theme: the critical need for control of bureaucratic structures to make them more responsive to community goals as expressed by democratic processes. They include conscious direction of technological growth and all the related problems, such as pollution control and industrial relations, restoring sanity to town planning, more fair and thoughtful tax laws.

Second, the legal system reflects, for those with the perspective to see, a firm bias against underprivileged groups. Third, the community must bear a cost for the routine work of the law which is heavier than it should be.