Chucking the old phrase, “just tell em’ what they want to hear” right out the window is famed Wyoming trial lawyer Gerry Spence. Having begun his own blog, Spence is brutally honest with his readers, questioning the law, speaking out about the unfairness of the legal system and referring to law school and the bar exam as a “fraud.” According to Spence, it costs $100,000 to get through law school but a “law school graduate doesn’t know enough to pass the Multi-state Bar and has to spend another $5,000 or more to prepare for that.”
And what makes the exam a fraud?
Spence writes: “The exam does not help the law profession to determine those who will fight for people, who are honest and who have courage-the most fundamental requirements of a lawyer for the people. The bar exam only tests the applicants ability to play their mostly silly word games.”
Spence goes on to say that he’d prefer a nurse than most lawyers fresh out of law school to assist him in trial. “Lawyers know little about listening,” said Spence. “The nurse chose her profession because she cares about people. Lawyers are not taught to care.
“They are engorged with the rare niceties of legal gymnastics often taught by ponderous-headed professors who have never looked into the painful eyes of a client and who have never tried a single jury trial for a human being.”
Spence writes that in law school, professors remind their students that they don’t teach justice, they teach the law. Being able to teach an eighth-grader in twenty minutes how to brief a case, explained Spence, a law student’s education doesn’t prepare him to actually walk the walk in the courtroom.
“The matriculating young lawyer is as qualified to represent a client with the education he has suffered through as a doctor who has never seen a patient, who has never held a scalpel in his hand and who learns surgery by having read text books about it and becomes skilled in surgery, if ever, after having stacked up piles of corpses who represent his pathetic learning process.”
Spence continues by emphasizing the importance of art and literature and how it strengthens the lawyer within. Self-expression, communicating through poetry and painting are a few examples of how he suggests learning to better connect with clients and jurors. Unlike what lawyers are taught, which is to “shield” themselves against their feelings, Spence thinks that they start to find it almost impossible to get in touch with them. And without that, it is also impossible to connect with jurors who “make their decisions based on their feelings.”
“Little wonder that lawyers,” said Spence, “disabled by all of the stifling, mostly useless mental exercises they have suffered, have trouble relating to jurors much less to the rest of mankind.”
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