As a
lawyer, I’ve been called a lot of names in my career. I even have a few standard lawyer jokes, at the ready, to respond to the smirked attempt at humor “do you know the one about
the lawyer and…” [pick your favorite vile creature]. I’ve learned to live with the ignominy.
But, today I
received the ultimate sucker punch. A
recent poll conducted for the National Council of Legal Advisers indicated that
the general public feels that lawyers are ultimately [gasp!] unnecessary. We’re not evil, corrupt, expensive
sharks. We’re not even the kill-joy,
paper-pushers who put the kibosh on every good business idea. No, rather, we’re dinosaurs.
Dear
readers, cheer me up. Surely there’s
someone out there who believes that lawyers are useful for something—even if
it’s just the butt of a joke.
--Judith Gliniecki
Many lawyers, unfortunately, dig the 'bad reputation' hole for themselves and that often doesn't do justice for the entire Law field. I'll give you a recent example. I went to a lawyer in Tarnów recently for a simple price consultation regarding a potential case against a neighbor blocking access to my parcel of forest via a farm road. Initially, according to her, the fee for only discussing how much this lawyer would charge me was 'free'. After I made several remarks in my poor Polish and explained myself concisely, this particular lawyer saw that I had a strong American accent. After only 10 minutes of explaining my situation to her and asking how much she would charge for such a case, she decided to take advantage of this 'wealthy American' and charged me a 50 zloty fee just for asking her how much such a case would cost. Aside from that, she was rude to me throughout the entire conversation. It seems that lawyers in Poland have two price structures: one for the local Pole, and one for the foreigner (now a citizen) living in Poland. How are such lawyers even allowed to practice law in Poland? I then walked through the city to find a better lawyer and did find one who kept her word to me. The next lawyer didn't charge me any consultation fee and provided me with all costs and details involving such a case, such the court fee, survey fee, and lawyer fee. That was great. What wasn't positive news is the entire case, a simple one at that, was to cost over 6,000 zloty, just to have the court grant me 300 meters of farm road access from a public road to my forest for firewood so that I can stay warm during the winter. Ridiculous, isn't it? Is there any moral left, or is money the primary driver these days?
