Dissent Decree

Recent articles in the Lansing State Journal told of lawsuits filed by Cooley Law School against a New York law firm and several bloggers. Cooley says it is defending its reputation in light of allegations that it has an excessive number of students defaulting on their student loans, an unusually high dropout rate and that it has published questionable employment figures for its graduates.

Whatever the truth of those allegations a larger question looms. That is the abundance of lawyers in our society and the disproportionate effect of the legal mindset upon our society and government.

Michigan has more than 40,000 licensed attorneys, and each year the law schools graduate more. Where will they find work? And what is the correlation between this abundance of lawyers, the number of frivolous lawsuits and the public’s increasing distrust of lawyers and government?

Consider the current Congress (112^th) of the United States. There are 148 lawyers serving in the House and 52 lawyers serving in the Senate. By comparison there are 15 medical doctors serving in House and 2 in the Senate. In the House there is 1 physicist, 6 engineers and 17 farmers. So whose professional influence and approach to problem solving is likely to dominate?

Much of the political circus in Washington owes its mediocrity, inefficiency, ineffectiveness, waste and lack of imagination to an entrenched legal mindset with its emphasis upon winning. The interminable arguments and legal maneuverings too often negate meaningful, substantive, timely, and effective action and have brought our country to its economic and cultural knees.

Our adversarial legal system teaches that the client, no matter how reprehensible he, she or it may be, is entitled to the best legal representation. So when lawyers are elected to public office they come predisposed to framing every issue as a contest—as something to be argued and won. The problem is that the greater public good isn’t easily identified or defined as a client or contest. Nor can it lobby for itself or sign checks.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2011

NOTE: Columnist John Schneider published portions of this piece in his blog in the Lansing State Journal. Responses to the remarks may be seen here.