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Isn't it a bit weird+ that personal injury lawyers are considered the scummiest lawyers?
I'm not saying they're all saints, but isn't it weird that the legal professionals who are the only reason corporations ever get held accountable for the harm they do to individuals are supposedly all really sketchy and a scourge on a society? "Ambulance chasers" they call them.
+when I say weird I mean convenient for rich people
I'm not saying you should make yourself rich off of other people's suffering, but frequently a personal injury lawyer is the only way someone can get any compensation for truly horrible things that have been done to them.
What is so sketchy about that exactly? Or is it the fact that they advertise at bus stops & in poor neighborhoods and run ads in Spanish? You know... advertising their services to the people most likely to need them due to being systemically disadvantaged.
I'm just saying, when—for a random example—McDonald's hands you scalding hot coffee that burns you horrifically, you are going to want a personal injury lawyer.
And McDonald's would like you to think that THAT person is the scumbag in the equation.
Strange how we're supposed to respect and revere the type of lawyer who gets poor people locked up in prison (prosecutors are so cool on TV), but outright *despise* lawyers who bring civil suits on behalf of people who have been wrongfully harmed (i.e., lawyers who cost rich people money).
Feels backwards somehow, doesn't it?
Cassandra@artemis I think there’s appreciation for some civil suits, like environmental ones...
@artemis
I'd bet half the people with this mindset would cite the McDonald's hot coffee case as the kind of scummy thing personal injury lawyers get into, despite it being debunked roughly 40 times a day on every Internet platform for twenty years, too.
"Oh, well, cases LIKE that..."
@thecrushedviolet
Exactly. Even when you show that it is straight-up, deliberate propaganda, they go "well, maybe not THAT case, but I know it happens all the time."
No, you don't... That's the propaganda talking.
@artemis a friend worked an internship at a personal injury lawyer office, and they had him scouring the newspapers for car crashes and calling them.
There were also personal injury lawyers caught in a conspiracy to commit fraud on workers comp where they would instruct their clients to claim more injuries than the medical doctors would back up to charge more to workers comp. This can fuck over the workers needing workers comp payments.
If it were just advertising, that's one thing, but many of them got their reputations for being insensitive to their clients and greedy.
@CorvidCrone
I mean, look, I'm not arguing for sainthood here. Obviously in this culture, wherever a profit possibility exists, some people will show up to milk it to the fullest extent. But it's still incredibly suspect that the existence of abuse, should *in this particular instance* discredit the whole profession. That same rule doesn't apply societally to many other groups that have extremely high rates of abuse.
@CorvidCrone And I gotta be honest, while perhaps your friend's example may be one where the primary goal was getting business on the books without concern for individuals, there is some good reason for someone in this line of work to proactively contact people: many people may not be aware that they have any rights in a situation. They won't look for a lawyer because they don't know that they *should* look for one.
@artemis
It's weird how thoroughly we're conditioned to think, not just that restitution is gross, but that the morally pure thing for a victim to do instead is to take satisfaction in the wrongdoer's punishment.