Gender Gaps in Performance - male associate lawyers bill 10% more hours and bring in twice the new revenue as female lawyers: Evidence from Young Lawy

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Sure they can. They can also tell you there is something wrong with your car that isn't there. If you get a second opinion you may find out they were screwing you over. I went to a car place like that to get my car fixed and 3 days later I saw them on the news for being in trouble for making stuff up.

A lawyer would never do such a thing, I'm sure. Or a Dentist, either.

I'm not sure if you are kidding here. I did get a second lawyer who did not rip me off. The first provided an invoice for $2500 of doing essentially nothing.

Re: dentists...

Here's the thing. When I was a kid, like between 11 and 14 I would go to the dentist on my own without my mother who was bedridden. The dentist used to say I had cavities all the time and the money he got was pretty much automatic from the state. I can't be sure he was doing the right thing...but later in life (when I was 15), I moved in with my aunt and uncle.

A different dentist in another state told my aunt (whom I lived with at the time) I had 11 cavities that needed filling. She didn't believe it because she saw me brushing my teeth everyday at home. So she went to a different dentist to ask for a second opinion. He said I had none. Zero.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

The Problem of Inflating Billable Hours

Yellow Page Ads as Evidence of Widespread Overcharging by the Plaintiffs' Personal Injury Bar - and a Proposed Solution

 

[ronburgundy]

Being honest and not harming others to get a desired legal outcome puts massive limits on profit making in the law profession. The truth will only occasionally be on your side, and will rarely justify the largest possible payout. Consistent victories, and the largest settlements requires unethical dishonesty and knowingly harming others and undermining the integrity of the justice system for personal gain. Thus, yes, the best for-profit lawyers tend to be terrible people willing to engage in such actions on a constant basis, which essentially requires a near-pathological lack of conscience.

Oh come on, we need a little dishonesty in our blood to produce the results necessary to offset the unfair advantage of truly immoral behavior. If one becomes so principled that they cannot in good conscious do any wrong (for instance, moderate financial harm to those that will suffer but not substantially so), then they're allowing integrity to stand in the way of superior results. That's not to say there shouldn't be integrity laced amidst our slippery deeds, but when it comes to willfully lacking some integrity, let's not forget: everything in moderation.

Haha

Not sure why you ended with "Haha", you make a valid and serious point. I agree. Dishonesty isn't always ethically bad. It all depends upon the goals for which it is actually used. In this case, we are talking about for-profit lawyers motivated by personal financial gain lying and misrepresenting the facts and using psychological manipulation to get juries and judges to reach conclusions about reality that are not supported by rational thought and thus probably not objectively true. Those conclusion cause serious harm to at least on party involved. In this context, lack of integrity and honesty is almost always harmful and unethical, and thus what the OP research might actually reflect is that male lawyers are more unethical and more willing to harm others for personal gain than female lawyers.

 

[ronburgundy]

Being honest and not harming others to get a desired legal outcome puts massive limits on profit making in the law profession. The truth will only occasionally be on your side, and will rarely justify the largest possible payout. Consistent victories, and the largest settlements requires unethical dishonesty and knowingly harming others and undermining the integrity of the justice system for personal gain. Thus, yes, the best for-profit lawyers tend to be terrible people willing to engage in such actions on a constant basis, which essentially requires a near-pathological lack of conscience.

That's not right at all. On the defense side, one of the surest ways to lose a client (be it a business or an insurance company retaining counsel for its insured) is to get the analysis wrong. If you tell them that the plaintiff doesn't have a case but then the plaintiff ends up with a high settlement or judgment, you got some explaining do to. I've see this. The defense lawyers who keep their clients are the ones who spot the weaknesses in the defense case early and inform their client of that risk. On the plaintiff side, being dishonest is rarely rewarding because the defense can easily sniff out that dishonesty, juries punish for the dishonesty, and a lawyer's license can be suspended or disbarred for that dishonesty. The legal profession is self-regulating, and it takes that task seriously. At the end of any state bar journal is list of attorneys who have been reprimanded, suspended, or disbarred.

This notion that attorneys are unethical and dishonest is Hollywood bluster.

You give an example of a lawyer whose dishonesty harms their client as proof that lawyers don't profit from dishonesty? That is absurd. Of course their own personal gain depends in the long (and often short) run on their success in getting the best outcome for their clients. But a huge % of the time, the best outcome for their client requires dishonesty and harming of other people. Of all the possible outcomes in any case, only one is compatible with truth and with a rational analysis of the facts within a rational application of the law. Almost never is that single outcome the best outcome for both parties, and most often for neither party. Thus, achieving the best outcome for a client virtually always requires leading the other party, the jury, or the judge to decisions that are not reasonable or fact-supported. Of course, you cannot do this so sloppily and obviously that those other players involved see through it and react against you. That doesn't mean you cannot be unethically dishonest, it just means you have to be good at it.
We don't need Hollywood to tell us that, just a rational mind capable of reasoning about the inherent features of our legal system.

 

[ronburgundy]

Shouldn't an unbiased measure of performance be success in the courtroom?

That's the judge's role, to make sure neither side brings up irrelevancies or is being dishonest or breaking the rules.

In fact, under our system, it is the lawyers role to be biased (i.e., to advocate), which is just a sugar coated ways of saying to use and undermining of others rational thought whenever it serves their clients interests (which is often does in nearly every case for both parties).

The Judge is incapable of catching 99% of such dishonesty unless they conduct their own personal investigation of the facts in a case, which they never do. Thus, the Judge is only capable of catching the more obvious (and stupid) lies that are directly refuted by the facts "established" by what the lawyers themselves have already chosen to present to the court.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

And it means the mechanic can't pad the bill by working slow.

Sure they can. They can also tell you there is something wrong with your car that isn't there. If you get a second opinion you may find out they were screwing you over. I went to a car place like that to get my car fixed and 3 days later I saw them on the news for being in trouble for making stuff up.

ETA: also regarding lawyers, I had retained a lawyer who was screwing me over on prices, too. Retainer was non-refundable allegedly. I went and got a different lawyer, asking the first lawyer for an invoice. The first lawyer charged me $2500 for a phone call and a meeting they internally had regarding strategy. When I got all my paperwork, there was no such meeting in the records. The second lawyer was way more reasonable on prices and did not rip me off.

I am a lawyer in Ontario, so I can speak with some authority on this. Some lawyers do indeed pad bills. They do it in the expectation that another lawyer won't see it or that the client won't challenge them on it. As soon as you challenge them, telling them you want their fees assessed by the court (which is your right), these unscrupulous people will back down fast. If you have an experience like you describe with a lawyer, tell other lawyers you meet about it. We all have an interest in keeping each other in line. It is unfortunate that lawyers in general get such a bad reputation despite all the work we do to self-regulate.

 

[ronburgundy]

There is a lot of talk about men billing their clients more hours for the same work, but that is not implied by the OP study. It merely says that "Male lawyers bill ten percent more hours and bring in more than twice the new client revenue than do female lawyers." Since it would be near impossible to control for the differences in the cases, this does not mean men bill more hours for the same work. It merely means that men bill more hours overall, which includes having more clients and having cases that require more billable hours. Ripping off clients is not the most likely source of the gender disparity. More likely any disparity due to unethical actions is likely to stem from the countless unethical (by basic decency standards not legal ones) actions that are almost definitional parts of being an "advocate" under the system and almost never prosecuted and par for the course. One reason to bill more hours is that the case requires more work to win, and a major reason for that is often that the facts objectively contradict the best outcome for the client. Thus, the lawyer must "build a case" (i.e, construct a web of dishonest half-truths, misdirections, misinformation, and emotional manipulations) that undermine reasoning about the objective facts and therefore make an outcome most favorable to their client more likely. Not only is doing so almost never prosecuted, it is often viewed within the legal setting as the "ethical" duty of a lawyer to do so. Even when the facts favor a client, they rarely favor the biggest possible windfall for a client, so "stretching the truth" (i.e., lying) still serves the clients interests, unless done incompetently in a way that is easily exposed by the opposition (and even then, the jury has to buy the oppositions argument that you lied). Of all the ways that a lawyer can be and are dishonest to "advocate" for their client, only a tiny fraction will get them in trouble in a way that undermines the net payoff for the improved verdicts that lying very often brings.

 

[Axulus]

That's the judge's role, to make sure neither side brings up irrelevancies or is being dishonest or breaking the rules.

In fact, under our system, it is the lawyers role to be biased (i.e., to advocate), which is just a sugar coated ways of saying to use and undermining of others rational thought whenever it serves their clients interests (which is often does in nearly every case for both parties).

The Judge is incapable of catching 99% of such dishonesty unless they conduct their own personal investigation of the facts in a case, which they never do. Thus, the Judge is only capable of catching the more obvious (and stupid) lies that are directly refuted by the facts "established" by what the lawyers themselves have already chosen to present to the court.

Then it is the lawyer for the other side that should be catching the dishonesty and bring it up to the judge.

 

[ronburgundy]

In fact, under our system, it is the lawyers role to be biased (i.e., to advocate), which is just a sugar coated ways of saying to use and undermining of others rational thought whenever it serves their clients interests (which is often does in nearly every case for both parties).

The Judge is incapable of catching 99% of such dishonesty unless they conduct their own personal investigation of the facts in a case, which they never do. Thus, the Judge is only capable of catching the more obvious (and stupid) lies that are directly refuted by the facts "established" by what the lawyers themselves have already chosen to present to the court.

Then it is the lawyer for the other side that should be catching the dishonesty and bring it up to the judge.

Most of that dishonesty is perfectly legal and actively encouraged under the system, and that which isn't is very hard to prove, thus the judge has no power to stop it. For example, half-truths are equally dishonest as direct false-hoods and used for the identical purpose of leading others intentionally to a false conclusion. Not only are half-truths perfectly legal in court, it would strike everyone including the judge as bizarre for any lawyer not to tell half-truths whenever the whole truth was less favorable to their client. If anything, the judge might find a truth telling lawyer to be in contempt and deliberately trying to create grounds for a mistrial.

In addition, "Should" according to what and whom? According to the self-interests of the other lawyer, then yes, they should try to expose dishonest, but in reality they are highly limited in what they can do. In contrast, according to basic decency and general ethics (which has nothing to do with standard legal practices), which should apply equally to law as anywhere else, it should be lawyers on both sides who police themselves and refuse to engage in dishonest acts, even if it helps their client and thus their own profits. But like in most for-profit areas, profit wins and ethics are disregarded by many and it is very often this indecency that underpins their economic/professional success.

 

[Trausti]

Then it is the lawyer for the other side that should be catching the dishonesty and bring it up to the judge.

Most of that dishonesty is perfectly legal and actively encouraged under the system, and that which isn't is very hard to prove, thus the judge has no power to stop it. For example, half-truths are equally dishonest as direct false-hoods and used for the identical purpose of leading others intentionally to a false conclusion. Not only are half-truths perfectly legal in court, it would strike everyone including the judge as bizarre for any lawyer not to tell half-truths whenever the whole truth was less favorable to their client. If anything, the judge might find a truth telling lawyer to be in contempt and deliberately trying to create grounds for a mistrial.

Now may be a good time to move out of your parents' basement. Every lawyer, or at least every good lawyer, tries to do what is best for his client. Part of that is interpretation of facts. But half-truth or not, the Jury will sniff it out. In the anglo-american system, the jury is tasked with deciding that facts and, importantly, determining who is telling the truth. A judge does not punish a lawyer for telling the truth because the judge has little say in that matter. The judge is there to ensure that procedure and the law is followed.