Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever go back to the way we used to be.

The law gets a lot of attention in the news.  That’s something of a gimme – all that you have to do is turn on the television at any nightly broadcast and you’ll hear of at least one lawsuit per week and one criminal case per day.   (Suits, of course, last longer than criminal cases – hence they’re less frequently on the news.)  With all of the exposure that the American legal system gets in the news, I have to say – having both a legal and a journalistic background – it absolutely sucks that the American legal system has such horrible press.

A lot of it, of course, comes from the fact that the journalists who report on legal issues aren’t lawyers, or legal professionals.  When a legal professional writes a piece on the law, it tends to appear on a trade magazine.  Sometimes you’ll get some good legal insights in a major news publication like the New York Times.  But rarely does the world actually get to see insights into the legal profession from legal professionals.

A part of this is due to the fact that the law, in the eyes of most laymen, is an archaic, arcane maze of technicalities and frivolities.  To them, it is a place where legal fictions are the rule, rather than the exception, and things like “Woman wins suit against McDonalds because coffee is hot!” are possible.  The problem, of course, lies in the fact that the law is somewhat contrived – there are formulas that need to be followed, expressions that need to be dictated, rules that need to be observed, all of which are unwelcoming to the layperson.

Americans are litigious people – yes.  The American Rule allows people to sue for almost anything, so long as they’re capable of paying for a lawyer (or, their legal fees, if they decide to go it alone, poor sods).  Which is what makes it so surprising when I read another idiotic “Person sues for something obvious!  Yet more proof that the American legal system sucks!”

Let’s examine the logic behind each and every one of those arguments again, however:
(1) The American Rule allows you to sue anyone for any reason.
(2) Some person – call them P – sues someone else – call them D – for some idiotic slight.
(3) The American legal system sucks because the American rule allows P to sue D for some idiotic slight.

The problem with the argument, of course, is that the American legal system has nothing to do with the suit.  In fact, if the slight is idiotic, the system ensures that the suit is dropped.  The American rule, however, is another matter entirely.  Given that I’ve stated it multiple times now, let me explain.

The American rule – as opposed to the English rule – states that, but for a few statutory exceptions, parties pay their own legal fees.  The English rule, of course, states that the loser pays for the legal fees.  You see where this is going?  The American rule exists to allow anyone to bring forth their grievances – it is fundamentally grounded on the idea that everyone deserves their day in court.  The English rule, however, exists to ensure that only those suits where the plaintiffs have a reasonable expectation of victory are brought.

It is this basic differentiation which allows Americans to be as litigious as they are.  Is this a fault of the legal system?  Well, honestly, maybe.  Americans being who they are, at their core, would rather have had greater liberties.  And so now the system is in place such that anyone can bring a suit, so long as they can afford a lawyer.   This isn’t really all that problematic.

The real problem is twofold: One, people are stupid.  That, too, is a gimme.   The second is that lawyers come in all variety of forms.  And there are, unfortunately, greedy lawyers – those who do bring frivolous and nuisance lawsuits in order to force a settlement on a claim that shouldn’t have been brought.  But neither of these is a fault of the system – it’s a fault of the society that exists around the system.

It is true that the system isn’t perfect.  No man-created system is.  But the system has an amazing capacity to heal itself.  99% of the time, when you read a story in the… well, I was about to type “newspapers” but I just realized that nowadays I get almost all of my news from blogs (or the BBC… go figure) so when you read a news story about some frivolous lawsuit, the law suit hasn’t even begun.  It is just some idiot who has filed some idiot suit that’s not going to go anywhere!

So to decry the American legal system for being faulty or fucked up because there are idiots in the planet Earth is absurd!   Admittedly, it is the lawyers themselves who should be doing a better job of policing what cases we take and file.  If every lawyer would just ratchet up their moral fiber by a few grams, then maybe we wouldn’t have so many idiotic suits.  Yes, I admit, it’s the fault of the lawyers that the legal profession, and the legal system, is in such a state of disregard by the general public.

Legal professionals have to start stepping up to the plate.  Step out of the lofty towers and down into the world, where we can have an actual dialogue with people.  Maybe rub some of the mysticism off.  Get people more involved in the system.  Open up the doors to the public, so that they understand what it’s about.

I’m not sure.  But every time I read a story in the news about the next big idiotic lawsuit… my heart breaks a little.  It breaks because they just don’t understand.  The truth is, most of the time it’s not idiotic, and when it is idiotic, it’s idiotic for a different reason.

By the by – the McDonalds coffee woman?  Completely not idiotic.  McDonalds had made a corporate decision to keep its coffee at dangerously high temperatures to discourage people from going for their “free” refills.  But, of course, that’s not what the public heard: the public just heard “Woman sues McDonalds because coffee is hot!”

Which, I admit, sounds ridiculous.

I am in love.

I walked home tonight at 10 after having spent close to 5 hours at it, and I had that stupid grin on my face that one gets when one is seriously, unequivocably in love.   I got home and the first thing I did was rush online to sing the praises of my desire.  I’m in a natural high that’s lasted close to six hours now.

Let me be clear, and say it for certain:

I.  Love.  What.  I.  Do.

Today was my mock trial for my Civil Trial Practice final.  Openings, closings, two directs and two cross examinations.  Two students per team, so the tasks were split between me and my partner – the impeccably awesome Lonna, whose praises I’ve sung before.   We were up against Elizabeth and Leah, two likewise impressive attorneys-to-be.  I had seen Elizabeth do a closing argument the week before, so I knew that she was going to be a force to be reckoned with.

But man did we hit them good.  I still have the giddies from my all-too-close, and really technically-victorious although not for the sake of the exam directed verdict.  I got a lot of praise and feedback on my arguments at that point.  It was a real show moment, if I do say so myself.  (I’m actually somewhat miffed at this – not my argument, but that technically legal arguments are so much more impressive to the layperson than actual sound fact-based arguments.  But its the way that people see the law – an obscure, arcane maze of technicalities, whose navigators are the master lawyers.  Well, I had my moment in the blazing sun today, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that we weren’t going to decide who won or lost the trial,
I would have won on a technicality.)

And of course, they got me hard too.  Their closing was a completely different theory of the case than I had thought they’d go with.  Of course, that’s part the picture – I should have won my directed verdict because they wanted to do this surprise theory of the case.  But they’re not really allowed to do that as the plaintiffs – it’s their burden to carry the case.  So when they come into their closing and I suddenly see the word homicide (in an accidental gun discharge/suicide case!) I’m suddenly looking at my closing argument and thinking “Holy shit, I can’t use any of this.”

So I chucked it.  I stood up, and I saw that the jury was as confused and befuddled as I was.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” I start, in my most casual tone – a complete and total departure from my original plan of We’re-really-sorry-he’s-dead-but-these-are-the-facts tone – “You’ve been had!  Bamboozled.  Hoodwinked!”

I got smiles from the jury.  I got nods.  I got laughs when I introduced my own murder theory: the invisible, silent, space-phasing quantum midgets who assassinated the victim.  It was ludicrous.

And it was a whole lot of fun.

I love what I do.

So apparently I’m getting an average of 1500 pageviews a month.  Which is about three times as much as I had seen the last time I checked the stats.

And I know that many of these are spammers.  Quite a few of them are looking at my Realms and Planescape campaign blogs (incidentally, a good place to find some decent fantasy fiction written by some of my friends and myself).  But what are the rest of the people looking at?  I barely write these days – how can my numbers go up?  Perhaps this is just the way the internet works – there’s a period of exponential growth, regardless of content, and then a period of minimizing returns, when the content fails to meet people’s expectations.

Today is my birthday.

Now, I don’t like making a huge deal out of my birthday.  Three years ago today I could legally drink, yes – but four years ago today I was already drinking.  Eight years ago today I could drive, yes – but I haven’t driven in damn near a year anyhow.  My point?  It’s just a day.   I usually forget until someone reminds me.

My friend L reminded me almost all day long.  First, she had got me a cupcake – did I mention I love my friend L? – but had forgotten at home, so she apologized for that.  I gave her permission to enjoy it in my stead.  Then she wished me a happy birthday later when we were working on our civil trial practice final.  And, again, informed everyone in our civil trial practice class that it was, in fact, my birthday.  No, I remembered my birthday was today.

Because I get to go home tomorrow.

Now I say “get” like I’ve been kept from going home.  Really, I haven’t.  Money and expense (which is considerable) aside, I could go home whenever – by which I mean I would be welcome there.  But rarely do I feel like going home.

Lately, I’ve felt like going home.  It’s nothing, see, but the stress and the work and the this and the that – mankind wasn’t meant to be under pressure for seventy hours a week.  Our minds can’t handle it – we start to break down.  My body can’t handle it – I’ve been sleeping less and less as the stress and the work and the this and the that have been getting to me.  Now you guys – you guys know I don’t stress.  I still don’t, not really.  But it’s starting to wear.   Cracks, however fine, are beginning to show.

So I’m going home tomorrow.  And I’m going to lie by the pool and stare up at the empty naked sky and I’m going to see if I can remember who it is that’s deep inside.  Because I’m forgetting.  And I just need that nice warm day in the sun and the water to remind me.

The real reason of I love my friend L?  We’re walking out of Corporations on Monday and talking about our respective weekends.  She asks if I saw Harry Potter.  “Yeah, I saw it on Saturday and I have to say I…” and I freeze, my jaw hanging open like a dumbstruck idiot.

I’m staring – staring mind, though not necessarily oggling (well, maybe a bit of oggling, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t have enough time to oggle) at this sexy, curvaceous girl walking right past us.  She’s wearing a low cut top with bare midriff and a skirt that accentuates her lower features.  For a moment I don’t recognize her, and then I realize that it’s Legs.  (A longtime reader could recognize the term.)

Holy frakking shit.  And just as quickly she’s gone through a door into a nearby classroom.

L and I keep walking in silence for a few steps.  I realize my jaw is still dragging along behind me on the ground and I shake myself loose.  “I’m sorry,” I say as I shake myself awake, “I got a little distracted.”  And I look over at her.

Her jaw’s dropped to the floor too.  “Oh,” she responds laughing, “I’m right there with ya.  You certainly don’t see that every day in law school.”

“You really don’t…” I say.  “Damn shame.”

Anyhow.  Huzzah for years with a lot of prime numbers.