There is a big lie about lawyer every lawyer knows but which reporters continue to spread nonetheless.
Lawyers are not miracle workers.
Some lawyers are better than others. Some lawyers blow cases. Other lawyers win cases they might not otherwise. But even the best lawyers can lose when the facts and the law are against them. Even a bad lawyer can win if the facts and the law are with them.
There's a great example in today's news. The Free Software Foundation, having failed to negotiate a settlement for some obvious violations of the General Public License (GPL) by Cisco Systems, has sued. So here were lawyers being quoted as saying Cisco might actually win in court, because they have such good lawyers.
Not going to happen. Cisco has no case. They are hanging tough in order to keep the settlement costs down. A stupid thing to do, in the long run, because they're losing credibility and goodwill every day the suit goes on.
But they are free to be stupid. Maybe they believe the lie as well. Doesn't make it true.
But this nonsense really comes to glory when it comes to elections.
It's really a hangover from 2000, which was decided not by the expert lawyering of the Bush people but the stupid politics of the Gore people. Instead of recounting Democratic counties, they should have counted Republican ones — turned out that's where their missing votes were. Had they gone to Orlando and Jacksonville and Tallahassee instead of Palm Beach and Miami Beach, we'd be celebrating the end of the Gore Administration, not the end of our long national nightmare.
The same is true in the Coleman-Franken recount. This was a highly transparent process. Franken did not win this because Marc Elias is a great lawyer, or because those representing Coleman are stupid. It's because the state's canvassing board made certain to count all the absentee ballots, which in recent elections have tended to skew Democratic. Plenty of margin for error, given how such ballots are handled, to turn a 200 vote loss into a 200 vote win. But there were never any guarantees. It was the facts, not the lawyers, that made the difference.
We live in a world which assumes that the side with the best lawyers win. This is the cynicism of the Nixon Era made manifest. It is not true now, and never was. Most cases are lost, not won, and a lawyer who makes a costly mistake now may not next time.
But there are no guarantees. It really doesn't matter how good Bernie Madoff's lawyers are — he's going down. It doesn't matter how good the TVA's lawyers are — they're going to pay. Having a good or a bad lawyer can tip your chances one side or the other, but it's no guarantee. It never was.
The sooner the media starts reporting that truth the better off we all will be.
…Unless you’re Scooter Libby.
More often than not (in the US), money buys access to the justice system. If you have the money or political influence to help or hurt a judge, you can own a courtroom, be it local, circuit, state, district, and sometimes very easily, federal courts. For example, compare any murder trial (or pick your crime) between someone with millions to spend for their defense (recall Robert Durst) compared to the guy who has to cash in his 401k after he’s been fired from his job after being arrested. Budget justice guarantees you a harsh sentence.
Other than that brute fact, your best hope is to settle. That’s the best most lawyers can ever hope for.