THE SCREWING OF THE AVERAGE MAN: How Your Lawyer Does It
Peters, Charles
THE SCREWING OFTHE AVERAGE MAN : How Your Lawyer Does It by Charles Peters A recent Gallup Poll found a dramatic growth in the popularity of law as a career: “Among young adults who...
...For $150-cashY please-he would see to it that the lawyer friend would get the special guardianship in the estate...
...Public knowledge of a disputant’s unfairness is a powerful persuader to reasonableness...
...Disputes are settled quickly and inexpensively, perhaps because the alternative may be an assignment by the mediator to read more of the thoughts of Chairman Mao...
...Schrag’s indignation inspired him to lead a successful effort to persuade New York City to enact one of the country’s toughest consumer protection laws and set up a well-staffed agency to enforce it...
...Now her brother-in-law, who knew his way around politics in the county, entered the picture...
...20,000.’7 _ _ Minimum Wage There are of course some legal matters that do not require much of a lawyer’s time and which the average man should be able to afford even at today’s inflated hourly rates...
...Of course, the percentage is lower in some states, but, whatever it is, a substantial part usually goes to lawyers...
...This is true in England, but not in the United States...
...They are the real high priests of American society...
...In a smaller firm in a medium-sized community ,” according to a national legal magazine, the going rate is $40 an hour for an experienced associate and $30 an hour for one fresh out of law school...
...If paranoia is the major mental disorder of Americans, lawyers are its Typhoid Marys...
...But something about these proposals to make more work for the lawyers rings wrong...
...This associate has power, as do all highly talented young lawyers...
...All the stperlawyers usually get is fair treatment for their clients...
...For years the American Bar Association took the position that it would be unethical for a lawyer to work for less than these minimum fees...
...The most benign version of this sort of thing is the small-town Rotary Club, where membership is restricted to one person for each occupation...
...The average man is not represented in hearings before government agencies like the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Interstate Commerce Commission...
...The chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board has observed that “ordinarily the Board does not specifically seek out the views of persons who would not otherwise be likely to present their views to the Board...
...Anywhere from one fourth to one half of a big firm’s partners will reach six figures...
...John MacKenzie of The Washington Post recently wrote under the headline, “Business is Booming for Capital Lawyers”: Washington’s starting salary of around $18,000 for the brightest new recruits to the largest firms runs slightly behind New York’s...
...They couldn’t afford the legal work needed, but Schrag was paid by the NAACP to take the case...
...Indeed it’s hard to counsel settlement whenever it threatens the size of your fee...
...But to some extent, on these smaller estates the patronage list was controlled by a certain court clerk...
...To understand why legal fees are what they are it is helpful to review these figures from Student Lawyer for "a smaller firm in a mediumsized community": ASSOCIATE'S ECONOMIC BUDGET 1. New Associate Chargeable Hours 1,200 Hourly Rate $ 30 Gross Earnings $ 36,000 Salary $12,000 Overhead $ 10,000 Total Cost $ 22,000 Profit per Associate $ 14,000 2. Experienced Associate Chargeable Hours 1,500 Hourly Rate $ 40 Gross Earnings $ 60,000 Salary $ 22,000 Overhead $ 20,000 Total Cost $ 42,000 Profit per Associate $ 18,000 The profit for the associates is, of course, divided up among the partners...
...The federal courts seem determined to limit the potential of class actions...
...These rates present something of a problem for the average man in need of legal help...
...Modern Typhoid Marys The most disgraceful example of minimum fees is in probate...
...It found that Francis B. Froehlich, president of the Nassau Bar Association, had received $22,500 in such fees, and Charles R. Carroll, his predecessor, had received $1 2,000...
...Me, they won’t trust...
...Often, however, these minimum fees have been formally adopted by a local bar association...
...on salary but theoretically take on the hope of profit and the risk of loss of a joint owner of the enterprise...
...This is the contingent fee...
...The question is how many face the fact...
...The catch is that the only people who get that fair treatment are people who can afford to pay five- and six-figure legal fees...
...That’s all I have to know...
...This is like a surgeon who, after scheduling an operation, requires that you insure yourself against the possibility that he will remove the wrong organ...
...I didn’t believe it, either, first time...
...It applies to any case where you have a clear claim for a substantial amount against a well-heeled defendant...
...That, according to Senator Kennedy, is a shorthand way of saying that only commercial interests related or directly affected are involved in the administrative pro cess . Fo rmer Co m missioner Nicholas Johnson has said that “citizen participation in the Federal Communications Commission process is virtually nonexistent...
...Clark Clifford really believes that when he says it...
...In 1962, eight per cent chose law as the best career...
...A family friend and lawyer who was handling the estate warned her she would be up against a peculiar and slightly expensive problem: a special guardian...
...An outstanding associate of one of Washington's more prominent firms told me that four years out of law school, his work was being billed at $120,000 a year, while he was being paid in the mid-twenties...
...Appeals by the losing party to a higher court require both sides to have lawyers...
...But this one exception should not obscure the general rule that the lawyer profits by making and complicating trouble...
...A survey by The Washington Post of area judges, lawyers and individuals who have field suits shows that a consumer who, without a lawyer, goes into court against a merchant who has an attorney faces formidable odds...
...Philip Schrag, who was New York’s first Consumer Advocate, reports: A chain-letter franchising plan that was the subject of a Federal Trade Commission proceeding moved into New York but came to our attention only because one of our lawyers was approached to join...
...Young associates can look forward in their middle or late twenties to salary increments of perhaps $2,000 or $3,000 each year for five to eight years...
...The three-year law degree is one of the greater frauds in American life...
...One said, “I would never have believed how much time I spend on hand-holding...
...Chief Justice Burger is right for once in complaining that most lawyers are incompetent at trial work...
...It has been estimated that the average cost of estate administration is about 20 per cent for an estate of $20,000 and about 10 per cent for an estate of $1 00,000...
...So does Edward Bennett Williams, solemnly intoning that “every citizen is entitled to legal representation,” as he strides into court with a Jimmy Hoffa...
...The lawyer’s advice to the client is to protect the client’s interest when it often should be to look at the best interests of both parties to the marriage or to the best interests of their whole family...
...Juries Are Right...
...And even then we sometimes don’t ask our lawyers questions that should be asked for fear that we would be treading excessively on their patience and good will...
...For our 200 million we need 350,000...
...The Fairfax County (Virginia) Bar Association has adopted minimum fees for a title search of one per cent of the first $50,000 of the purchase price and one-half per cent of everything over $50,000...
...But most Americans are not so well organized, and, on a net screwing basis, they are losers...
...Now her brother-in-law had a lawyer friend who was on this list, and although the normal fees for an estate the size of Harry’s would be about $500, the lawyer friend, as a favor, would do it for a token $100...
...A Rockefeller will not panic if his lawyer has to wait a couple of days in the courtroom for the judge to get to his case...
...But more training isn’t the answer...
...And it should be remembered that Judge Frank came to the bench, not from the rigors of private practice, but from the relative relaxation of academia...
...The fee schedules may go, but as we observed last month in another article about lawyers, their morality lingers on...
...We are united by a daisy chain of mutual plunder...
...There are innumerable rackets connected with probate...
...And you’ve got to pay them or the estate never gets settled...
...It says that after three years of academic training, a man has arrived at the point where he can represent you adequately in any area of the law...
...Where Oedipus consulted Teiresias, the modern executive calls for Joe Califano...
...Company executives must have chuckled over that one: no truck owner was likely to sue the auto giant, because a lawsuit would cost more than the $500 required to put safe wheels on a truck...
...In Virginia, a consumer’s victory may be shortlived, because the defendant’s lawyer need fde only a simple notice of appeal of the case, and the winner must then decide if the money is worth the appellate legal fees...
...Indeed, one wonders if Americans generally care that much about the screwing of the average man...
...Innocents may think our courtrooms are full of Siricas, vigorously leading the search for the facts...
...GM urged prompt replacementat the owner’s expense...
...The more influential ones, the men he owed bigger favors, of course got the larger estates and correspondingly larger fees...
...Many lawyers try to use that power wisely, but many use it primarily to maintain and increase their legal business with the client, which means convincing him that he is a threatened man who needs his lawyer even more than the kings of old needed their seers...
...Probate is society’s means of making sure that the dead man’s will, if any, is valid, that his debts and taxes are paid, and that his estate will go to the people named in his will or the people named by the law in the event he left no will...
...The Daisy Chain Another piece of legislation pending in Congress that could help the average man is Senator Kennedy’s Public Counsel Corporation bill “to insure full participation by and on behalf of unrepresented citizens in administrative rule-making proceedings...
...This defect extends beyond the small claims courts to include most of the American judiciary, by their non-participation they become silent partners of those who can afford the best attorneys...
...Indeed, in many of the larger firms, it is the total reputation of the firm and quality of its work that attracts and holds business rather than "rainmaking"— the profession's term for business getting—senior partners...
...The special guardian said: “Don’t get excited boys...
...The late sixties witnessed a flowering of “pro bono” practice, with young law graduates demanding that their prospective employers give them time for good works...
...He later phoned two witnesses to the will and filed a brief report in which he concluded that the will was valid...
...The average man is bribed by his piddling tax deductions to sanction a tax system that gives a hundred other more lucrative deductions to the rich...
...There the emphasis is not on litigation, but on mediation, usually by one’s neighbors or fellow workers...
...Ralph Nader told me, “The legal system has priced itself out of the range of most of its potential consumers...
...And the good ones would be good after six months’ apprenticeship with a firstrate trial lawyer...
...A nation of 800 million gets along without any lawyers...
...Class action has appeared to many to be the salvation of the average man...
...In 1970, they were sending the law firms questionnaires about pro-bono...
...With an attorney representing even one party, judges must adhere to strict rules governing evidence, which often keeps a complainant from telling his whole story in court...
...He called Harry’s sons in and said: “Boys, I know you want to be playing outside, so I won’t waste your time, Tell me: when your father made out his will in December, 1965, was he sane...
...Another way to get a good lawyer at little or no cost is to have a case that is intellectually fascinating...
...Except when there is a complicated tax problem, the only probate matter that should demand a lawyer is where the will is contested...
...THE SCREWING OFTHE AVERAGE MAN : How Your Lawyer Does It by Charles Peters A recent Gallup Poll found a dramatic growth in the popularity of law as a career: “Among young adults who are presently deciding on careers, the trend in favor of the legal profession is even more marked...
...You don’t want your friends to think you’re being bullheaded...
...Perhaps five per cent of lawyers have a true love affair with the law and find interesting cases hard to resist...
...But then it had been a big favor...
...The trouble is that many of the offices are understaffed and large parts of the country are not covered...
...Then I started hearing stories of how much these courthouse characters can ask for...
...The currently fashionable pre-paid legal services proposals, the lawyer’s version of medicine’s health maintenance organizations, would at least offer ‘some prospect of controlling fees...
...With the $150 to the court clerk, Julia and her sons had paid out, in effect, $125 an hour for “work” that any fairly intelligent legal stenographer could have done-at $3 an hour...
...Thus a Washington divorce lawyer told me his firm will not ordinarily take a divorce for less than $2,500...
...Still, these laws show the potential of class action as a consumer weapon...
...You don’t need lawyers to get married...
...But what if the average man does wake up and some kind of national will emerges to reform the legal system for his benefit...
...But here the legal profession meets the challenge with a device called the “minimum fee...
...In fact, most lawyers don’t seriously contemplate settlement until the moment of trial is near...
...When you die, when you get a divorce, when you buy a house, when you have an auto accident, not to mention the hundreds of times during your lifetime when you are fleeced in your role as a consumer, a lawyer either must or should be involved...
...Whatever the motivation, the result, according to Professor Jerome Allan Cohen of Harvard Law School, is that things do get settled out of court and with much less animosity among the disputants than is typical in America...
...To produce these salaries, leading partners are now billing their clients at $150 an hour...
...The appeal would exist if, regardless of the dollar amount at issue, the loser would have to pay a healthy fee to the winning attorney...
...They encourage their clients to think with selfish defensiveness, to imagine and prepare for the worst from everyone else...
...Bloom goes on to tell of a study of special guardian fees awarded in 1965-66 in Nassau County, New York...
...Most try to explore the possibilities of reconciliation, but it’s hard to put your heart and soul into an effort that may cost you a $2,500 fee...
...One source of quality legal help is the contingent fee...
...If they had the courage to stand up to their firms, they could get plenty of pro bono time...
...His damages are often not enough to pay the fee of a good lawyer...
...Then the certainty of hard work combined with the possibility of losing inspires conciliation in all but the toughest of the hired guns...
...she said...
...If not, he virtually forfeits his “victory...
...Two young lawyers, Leonard D. Jacoby and Stephen D. Meyers, have been accused by the bar of “moral turpitude and dishonesty...
...This decision of the Nixon Court shows the same concern for the average man that characterized the Administration’s decision to raise the minimum price of its high-interest paying notes from $1,000 to $10,000...
...But the court clerk had to be paid, too...
...Most of these men are not crooks, nor are most of the officials with whom they deal...
...Those who become partners no longer are Charles Peters is editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly...
...Ralph Nader calls it “The Screwing of the Average Corpse...
...While most auto accident victims would be better off under a no-fault system, the man lucky enough to be seriously injured by a well-insured motorist can get a good lawyer to take his case...
...The average man knows that his lawyer’s meter is ticking at anywhere from 50 cents to $5 per minute...
...An interviewer for Covington and Burling, one of Washington’s most prestigious law firms, told me that when he visited the University of Virginia Law School in 1969, he had 25 applicants, most of whom expressed an interest in pro-bono practice...
...He’s been fighting futilely for it for years, but this recent outrage by the Court may stir up the consumer movement enough to put his bill across...
...Attorneys’ fees are now awarded the prevailing party only in such exotic realms as securities fraud and antitrust...
...Her indignation and vehemence must have brought c r i e d skepticism to my face...
...But wait a minute...
...The result is that the Interstate Commerce Commission will give a truck company a rate increase that raises the price of your food and you don’t have a chance to object...
...It is unlikely that the Clark Cliffords or the Edward Bennett Williamsesor indeed most lawyers-will do anything serious about reform of their profession...
...In reality, there are many things he can’t do at all after three years and many more that he could have done with just a few weeks’ or months’ training...
...The sex appeal here is the probability of being paid a substantial fee...
...Clearly we have to do something...
...Thus, the California State Bar Association has instituted proceedings against a firm called The Legal Clinic of Jacoby and Meyers...
...They are an important source of the firms' profit...
...You should be able to get an uncontested divorce by the same kind of simple procedure by which you get married...
...A larger number will be attracted by the case that will interest the public, receive press attention, and make their reputation...
...In the fancier firms, the profit per associate is much higher than above...
...Most would be equally incompetent after 10 years of training...
...The auto dealer, the banker, the insurance man, the lawyer, the mortician, the realtor, the doctor each get to screw all the others in return for their right to screw him...
...Over half the counties in New York, for example, have no Neighborhood Legal Services offices...
...Wild isn’t it...
...Having paid for the expert, he now has to pay for insurance to protect him in the event that the expert turns out not to be an expert and his search missed a defect in the title...
...Like hundreds of other people in the Washington suburbs, Holloway is experiencing the pains of pursuing a small claims case in a Maryland or Virginia court...
...The law has never gone in for economies of scale...
...Judge Jerome Frank, after serving several years on the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said, “‘This is the easiest job I’ve ever had...
...Nader went on to point out that what is bad news for the average man is also bad news for the average business, “which can have all the legal problems of a giant corporation plus one more-they can’t afford to pay a good lawyer for the time it would take him to handle the work...
...Every time you hear about overloaded dockets, take a look around your local courthouse at 5 p.m...
...The risks are on a high plane since the firm may set a floor of $40,000 to $60,000 under the earnings of a new partner...
...They can certainly call the tune as much as the senior partner who has passed the point of being willing or able to burn the midnight oil long enough to prepare that winning brief...
...It is important to realize that those people who are represented before the ICC don’t think of themselves as screwing you...
...He said he could save Julia some money here...
...Indeed 15 minutes probably is the rule for the easy-to-search titles of the recently subdivided property that is common in Fairfax County...
...Now they’re too busy putting on their vests...
...A friend who is a partner in the great New York firm of Sullivan and Cromwell estimated that for just the first year of that work alone, he would have billed us $60,000...
...And since lawyers dominate both the Congress and the state legislatures (by running for office they get free advertising...
...In contested divorces, it would seem clear that lawyers are needed...
...Our system of adversary antagonism simply costs too much in too many ways...
...We shouldn’t leave the realm of judges and clerks without noting how their leisurely schedules contribute to the delays that screw the average man...
...Five hundred dollars is not bad for 15 minutes...
...The clerk was paid and the friendly special guardian came to Julia’s home one Saturday afternoon...
...But now that a Nader lawyer has convinced a federal judge to outlaw the Fairfax County minimum fee and Senator John Tunney has begun to expose the nationwide scope of the scandal through his Subcommittee on the Representation of Citizen Rights and Interests, the bar is quietly advising its local affiliates to take the fee schedules off the bulletin boards...
...But GM was in for a surprise...
...Judge William Haworth of Oklahoma, appearing on the CBS television program, “60 Minutes,” estimated that 90 per cent of probate legal work is unnecessary...
...There is actually a statute forbidding their recovery in suits against the federal government...
...They claimed that GM was not only obliged to make their trucks safe, but to replace the wheels on all affected vehicles, at an estimated cost of $97 million...
...Philip Schrag and Michael Meltsner, writing in the November, 1972, issue of The Washington Monthly, described a California case: In May, 1969, after General Motors had received more than 200 complaints of wheel failure on three-quarter-ton Chevrolet and GMC truck models sold between 1960 and 1965, the company sent an “advisory” to 200,000 truck owners warning that the defective wheels constituted a “serious safety risk...
...However, according to Ralph Nader, “The minute there was a slight recession in the legal job market in 197 1, the law students got chicken...
...by making the laws, they learn where the loopholes are), it is unlikely that those bodies will do anything about reform...
...What’s the matter with you...
...Say he’s cheated on a $300 refrigerator and wants a lawyer to sue the seller...
...This may be why the Chinese system works so well...
...And so do their lawyers...
...It sets the minimum damage figure for each member of the class at $10...
...This is why lawyers, except those on retainers or with poor clients, seldom counsel settlement until they have put in a lot of billable time...
...Short hours and long vacations characterize the American judicial system...
...The law’s delays and its endless forms fall especially hard on the average man...
...Both men are speaking truth-and this is what is missed in the cynical exposes of the superlawyers...
...Similarly, Senator Kennedy’s and Congressman Eckhardt’s bills, while persuasive in terms of the present system, don’t seem to get at the roots of what is wrong...
...A title search could involve as little as 15 minutes of a lawyer’s time in the courthouse record room...
...Even the time of a young associate is being charged at $50 an hour...
...Murray Teigh Bloom, in The Trouble with Lawyers, tells how he learned of one: Harry left a modest estate to Julia and their two young sons...
...The result was that the system beat him again: The delays and obstructions I had experienced in the Allen case were to my surprise equally visited on public law enforcers...
...This popularity is not a product of the impractical idealism so often attributed to the young...
...Thus some lawyers are good at trial work and terrible at taxation...
...This year Covington had 140 applicants from Virginia, not one of whom mentioned pro bono...
...One fascinating fact that emerged from my talks with Washington lawyers is how many of them have become the first person to whom their clients turn for counsel on corporate, and sometimes even personal, problems...
...The bar in their area of California charges a minimum fee of $400 for the same service...
...Too One solution is for newspapers to take a much more active role in reporting how the average man is screwed when he buys a house, a car, insurance, a television, a refrigerator, medical care...
...As he explained it to her, every surrogate kept a patronage list of lawyers he appointed as special guardians...
...The same applies to divorce...
...After hundreds of hours of work and the passage of four years, the case was settled, with the Allens finally relieved of the obligation to make further payments but still not recovering the money they had paid...
...In fact, if you’re poor, you may be able to get first-class legal assistance from the Neighborhood Legal Services program...
...Until recently, it seemed that having a worthwhile case would get you a good lawyer...
...It’s as if you couldn’t buy a car for less than In modern America, the need for a lawyer is even more certain than the need for an automobile...
...Practically every call from a Washington lawyer to an administrative agency contains some variation on this theme: “Now I don’t want any favors, I only want to see that my client gets fair treatment...
...With most small claims involving amounts under $500 and most lawyers charging a minimum of $100 for court cases, many people decide to go to court without a lawyer and find-in both Maryland and Virginia-that : Court clerks are reluctant to help laymen fd out the legal forms needed to fie a suit...
...In addition to having to give $500 to the lawyer, the purchaser also has to buy title insurance...
...Their offense is having set up an office designed to deliver low-cost legal help through the use of young paraprofessionals and the development of timesaving manuals covering procedures in typical cases...
...It’s an amazing shift and it’s generally true at the 20 or so schools where we recruit...
...Lawyers are not monsters...
...One is struck by how often American juries of “neighbors and fellow workers...
...They have to bring in some outside lawyer...
...Another way to get quality legal help for the average man is suggested by the success of the contingent fee in attracting lawyers to cases where there is a substantial claim against a wellheeled defendant...
...They think they are protecting themselves from being screwed...
...Their fee for an uncontested divorce, for example, is only $100...
...And former Chairman Lee White of the Federal Power Commission has written: “On the whole I believe meaningful citizen involvement in the administrative process is sorely lacking...
...The lawyer will charge one third of the amount recovered...
...in fact to the extent the government had to cope with internal bureaucratic sources of delay, its problems were magnified...
...Many states have established small claims courts to deal with the refrigerator case I mentioned in the beginning of this article...
...Chickeiiing Out There are ways of getting quality legal help if you aren’t rich...
...Perhaps two hours of work in all for the $100...
...Congressman Bob Eckhardt has a consumer class action bill that will straighten things out...
...serving part-time and with modest compensation, come to the right conclusions...
...After five months-and $190 in lost wages because of court delays-Holloway has yet to have a chance to plead his case...
...Thus the average man, if he tries to act on his own, or if his lawyer isnot as skillful as the other side’s, will probably lose...
...The Supreme Court recently ruled that everyone in the class must have sustained at least $10,000 in damages before they can sue together as a class...
...A couple named Allen had been cheated on a freezer...
...Sometimes these are informal...
...This reminds me of a major element in the screwing of the average man: judges and clerks who are neutral referees, who don’t tell the average man his rights, who don’t ask the questions he or his lawyer should ask...
...Two California truck owners did sue to force the automaker to pay for the new wheels...
...Fortunately, however, the pro bono spirit still lives among the ‘69 and ‘70 graduates, and among that splendid but small minority of lawyers who have always had it...
...The lawyer will have to explain that his fee would be larger than the amount that could be recovered in the suit...
...The law is much like medicine in that the older lawyers exploit the junior lawyers (although at higher salaries than interns and residents receive), who arrive at their seniority feeling fully justified in taking similar advantage of the young lawyers in their firm...
...Burger Is Right, For Once One answer that would provide more and cheaper lawyers would be to cut the academic training from three years to one-which is all that’s needed for the basic courses-and provide for a system of apprenticeship in the various specialties such as taxation...
...the victims saw no reason to complain because even after they learned the government’s allegations, they thought they could make money by selling further franchises to expand the chain...
...The figure rose to 20 per cent in the latest survey...
...Of course he was,” the older boy burst out...
...There is almost no one to explain the various rules that can be used by the opposing attorney to delay a case and force a consumer to miss work by appearing in court and finding the case postponed...
...Peter Schrag’s Counsel for the Deceived begins with his indignation at our refrigerator problem...
...Unfortunately, only California and Illinois have laws encouraging class actions...
...The Action Line columns do some of this now, but there is not nearly enough analyzing of trends and naming of names of principal offenders...
...The Chinese do not have the complete solution-obviously their system fails to protect the individual from arbitrary action by the state-but they may have part of the answer...
...Everyone has a good chance of coming out ahead...
...Lumped together with others who were sold a car with the same defect, they reach an amount that will pay the lawyer’s fee and support the research necessary to prove the car was a lemon...
...The truck company and its competitors are heard, but not the average man...
...Maybe they can be our mediators...
...Its legal work has been done largely as an act of charity by four Washington lawyers and the two firms with which they are associated...
...A third way to make the law more accessible is through legal insurance, but this holds the threat of the same kind of fee escalation produced by Blue Cross-Blue Shield...
...Shortly after the suit was brought, GM agreed to offer free wheel replacement to 40,000 of the truck owners...
...And, of course, the program does not help the average man...
...The partner takes it from there...
...He may bring in the business, but they do the work...
...Are lawyers really the best people to deal with a troubled marriage...
...As she explained it to me, the surrogate court had to appoint a special guardian “to make sure the rights of our sons weren’t being compromised...
...Those fees are just too good to give up...
...Jay Mathews, writing’ in The Washington Post, describes what most of these courts have turned into: When L. Thomas Holloway’s daughter fell off a horse and the doctor charged him $180 for two IO-minute visits to her hospital room, Holloway got angry and decided to fght the fee in Fairfax County’s small claims court...
...Skill in specific areas of the law is as much a matter of aptitude and temperament as of training...
...This magazine is an example of the problem...
Vol. 5 • February 1974 • No. 12
