Lawyer bashing on CD

[jonathan lall]

Why is there lawyer bashing in the FIRST community? One huge reason that has barely been touched on is that Dean Kamen, and others, have made on more than one occasion, degrading comments about lawyers. Is that unexpected? No. But I think it is a tad uninformed. Nobody here needs me to lecture them about how lawyers are the only group of people out there to protect their personal rights. Most people here are smart enough to figure that out themselves. In this thread, I keep seeing comments like, 'crooked lawyers like Johnny Cochran' are out there to screw you. To a small extent, you are right, but to a bigger and much more important extent, there's another truth.

You are all wrong.

Are you honestly saying the guilty do not deserve the best defense they can get? Are you honestly saying that the burden of proof and the rights of the accused are not to be protected? Johnny Cochran and his team put up a pretty brilliant fight, and while they defended a man who kill--sorry, it's called "wrongful death" in the States' civil court--who caused wrongful to his wife, they also did their job, fulfilling a bigger need of society than punishment for the guilty. The Government's case and prosection against a guilty man were bad, and it's as simple as that.

Now, back to FIRST, the thread's original topic, and the second reason people hate lawyers on CD and in FIRST. The truth is that people are not born with jurisprudence. As such, we end up with those not trained in that field despising people who are capable of thinking in that way. It's perfectly natural, but it's also disappointing. I find it difficult to respect someone who sees in black and white and can't put up an argument. For some here, it's the opposite. When the average person sits down and reads the rules, he sees the rules. When a so-called 'lawyer' sees them, he sees the rules to mean exactly what they mean. If a rule is open to interpretation, it is either meant to be that way or it is a bad rule. Yes, there is such thing. FIRST's resident 'lawyers' jump on this and get flak for it.

In the end, before you jump on the bandwagon and hang you a lawyer on CD, make sure you're not doing it because said lawyer thought of something you wouldn't have thought of. I find that the majority of lawyer-bashing incidents on CD occur when someone comes up with a brilliant idea that is seemingly within the rules. I find it especially annoying when someone gets it clarified and approved by FIRST and still gets flak for it. A lot of the time, it's an engineer who comes up with a device that needs a 'lawyeristic' interpretation of the rules.

</rant> *ducks*