Comment Wrong question (Score 1) 328
As a lawyer, I'd have to say that the lawyers win this contest if techies understanding of law is reflected by the posts in this thread.
First, "the law" is not nearly as monolithic as people seem to assume. Most posters seem to equate "lawyers" with "trial lawyers," when the latter is only a subset of the former.
But even within the much more limited field of trial law, folks just aren't getting it. They equate "law" with "rules" as though they were one and the same.
They aren't the same. The fact is that court decisions are made by people subject to human frailties, and "rules" tend to be the after-the-fact justification for decisions that are made at a much more emotional level. In other words, "law" is the aesthetic of social control; the real only rule is, "it depends on who's asking."
Trial work really isn't about rules. It's about persuasion, whether the decision is made by a judge or a jury. Which client and which witnesses are more appealing to the decision-maker? How should people dress? What order of proof tells the best story? And study after study has found that most jurors make up their minds based on the first few minutes of opening argument, rather than on the presentation of evidence.
A friend once explained that he found out after he got out into practice that he had wasted three years of his life going to "law" school because he learned that it was facts that won cases, not law, but there was no "fact school" to go to. There's a lot of truth in his observation.
As a champion of unpopular causes, this isn't the way I'd like it to be; however, it is beyond question the way it is. But until techies wake up to the fact that the rules are far less important than who's making the decisions, I'd have to say that lawyers understand far more about tech issues than techies understand about "the law."
First, "the law" is not nearly as monolithic as people seem to assume. Most posters seem to equate "lawyers" with "trial lawyers," when the latter is only a subset of the former.
But even within the much more limited field of trial law, folks just aren't getting it. They equate "law" with "rules" as though they were one and the same.
They aren't the same. The fact is that court decisions are made by people subject to human frailties, and "rules" tend to be the after-the-fact justification for decisions that are made at a much more emotional level. In other words, "law" is the aesthetic of social control; the real only rule is, "it depends on who's asking."
Trial work really isn't about rules. It's about persuasion, whether the decision is made by a judge or a jury. Which client and which witnesses are more appealing to the decision-maker? How should people dress? What order of proof tells the best story? And study after study has found that most jurors make up their minds based on the first few minutes of opening argument, rather than on the presentation of evidence.
A friend once explained that he found out after he got out into practice that he had wasted three years of his life going to "law" school because he learned that it was facts that won cases, not law, but there was no "fact school" to go to. There's a lot of truth in his observation.
As a champion of unpopular causes, this isn't the way I'd like it to be; however, it is beyond question the way it is. But until techies wake up to the fact that the rules are far less important than who's making the decisions, I'd have to say that lawyers understand far more about tech issues than techies understand about "the law."
