Client Eye For The Law Guy

(Ok, I'll stop recycling permutations of that title soon, but for now I'm still enamored of it as a metaphor for setting someone "straight.")

Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows, doesn't want his babies to grow up to be lawyers: "Lawyers are trained to find problems where none existed before ie to create systems that support more lawyers." Elliot grants this effect may not be intentional, but an example of "the invisible hand at its best." When we chatted last night, I told Elliot I thought what he was describing was a function of the kind of society we have established, where people don't always go for the automatic weapons when they've had enough of each another. Lawyers aren't completely irrelevant to the creative process either. But as Elliot also points out, we're pretty good at rationalizing our existence. The real point of my mentioning it here is to share Elliot's valuable client-side perspective and critique with my fellow parasites.

In somewhat similar vein, Jack Cliente adds his two cents to David Giacalone's farewell post: "Don't send e-flowers to honor ethicalEsq?, but actively work for the consumer of legal services both out in the real world, and through the power of weblogs ... "