I can't recall anything as cliche as debasing lawyers. You should bring something stronger if you want to get at him. I'm sure he's grown immune to that kind of crap by now.
I'm not debasing attorneys at all, simply the job. Even at the Milbank Tweed's of the world, it's an hourly gig. I spent several years at a Wall Street firm measuring our worth in the league tables. That was the right side of the boardroom equation. We got paid based upon % of transaction value. We hired Millbank to read all of the exciting corporate charters and resolutions, contract minutiae, poison pill docs and write red herrings. As an advisor, they billed us on an HOURLY basis. That is atrocious. At the height of the profession, working on multi billion dollar transactions and they were billing hourly. The brightest of that bunch often left their side of the deal and joined the wire houses, if they weren't mathematically challenged (and a lot were), and bought new boats soon thereafter. Attorneys in the boardroom are certainly in heady company, but are still billing at an hourly rate and limited by the hours in the day. The guy that takes care of my yard bills me in the same manner. He'd be better off if he could fix the price and work faster to earn his money more quickly and move on (become more efficient). However, I won't allow it. If he wants a fixed fee, he'll have to find other clients because I can find another lawn guy to do it my way. The legal profession is the same way, just with better educated people in Hickey-Freeman and Ferragamos living in the god forsaken metropolis. Clients are not about to allow attorneys to work on a fixed fee basis, unless it's ambulance chasers or structured settlement types who prey on imbeciles. They can hire more people and bill them out at a spread, but so can the lawn guy.
Seems to me that if I'm the best in my profession or become more efficient, I could translate that into more income or more leisure time. Not so in the legal world. Still have to bill the client hourly and clients often distrust a new attorney more than one they've grown accustomed to ignoring. Hence, senior guys often have to spend inordinate amounts of time with established clients to make any money. That's miserable. As mentioned above, partners can make more money by hiring more attorneys, but there's more management headache and personnel issues to deal with, plus the need to find more clients to feed the larger beast. Vicious cycle.
The only part of the profession that I want any part of is to pay them their $200 per hour to painstakingly read garbage that I would never consider poring through for that kind of money. There are great attorneys in the world and I call a lot of them friends, but I would never consider trading jobs with them.
There, not denigrating the people nor the profession because we need attorneys. Just saying the job sucks.
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