In the perception of most Americans, the judicial system is broken and many believe, because of total lawyer domination of the judicial system and lawyer monopoly in American government, the justice system cannot be fixed. They may be right! When the foundation is faulty, it brings little relief to put up new side walls and re- shingle the roof.
The American perception that the justice system is broken is well founded. It is an undisputed fact that the equity and justice system in America has evolved into a dominant lawyer culture with an eye on the giant business and political opportunity in the legal service profession. Several years ago according to an ABC television news special over ninety million new legal actions are filed annually in the USA at a cost of $300 billion dollars which supports the business opportunity concept. I am sure the number is much larger today. Over 70% of the worlds lawyers practice in the USA. This computes to one lawyer for every 400 people while the rest of the world have one lawyer for every 24,000 people. Washington, D.C has one lawyer for every 25 people with many of those lawyers orchestrating the lawmaking bodies of the nation in the Federal Congress..
It is also an undisputed fact that lawyers have taken over American government. Lawyers do indeed totally dominate all three branches of government. In fact this is the way it stacks up as of the end of 2006. In the Federal congress approximately 60% of that body are lawyers. Twenty four of the 43 presidents have been lawyers. In the third branch of government there are 9 lawyers with robes on. So we have lawyers making the laws, lawyers judging us in the laws, lawyers prosecuting us in the laws, lawyers defending us in the laws, lawyers interpreting the laws and lawyers administering the laws and it is a self-regulated lawyer system. What a constitutional nightmare!
Perhaps no nation has ever been so victimized by a court system of justice as has been the case of Americans vs. The American criminal justice system. The criminal justice system has become a revolving door for criminals. Presently over 2 million criminals of record are incarcerated with 5.6 million criminals of record out on the street. Many of these mad-dog perverts have been cut loose by lawyer judges to plunder, rape, maim, murder, rob and commit all types of heinous crimes. Over 570,000 convicts per year are released back out on the street and many of them avoid probation by disappearing into the woodwork waiting for the next victim to come along.
The criminal justice system consists of two dimensions. The first dimension is the formal dimension of mandated and written law. The second dimension is the informal dimension of "personal and judicial discretion." The problem largely lies in the informal dimension where lawyers, lawyer prosecutors and lawyer judges get together and translate plea bargains, probation, politics, dismissals and judicial discretion into their own personal brand of criminal justice. We can credit this brand of criminal justice to the account of 159 million American lives victimized by personal and property crimes in the 13-year period ending 2002. Crime in American now cost over $675 billion annually with much of that cost going to lawyers. So there is an economic benefit to lawyers to leave the broken system just the way it is.
The case of the broken "civil" justice system is a six headed snake. Millions have been and are being victimized in at least a half dozen ways by this system. Most of the victims suffer economic and psychological fallout. The breaks in this system can also be placed at the feet of the dominant lawyer culture. By the admission of the American Bar Association at least 80% of lower to middle income Americans who seek equity and justice can no longer afford to access the court system. This alone is a sad miscarriage of justice! Those who do have the funds to pay the entrance fee for a lawyer to open the door to the civil justice system are generally in for a financial, deceptive nightmare. Quite often these litigants lose their entire fortune to lawyer theft, lawyer malpractice and other lawyer transgressions with little to no help from the system for redemption or restitution.
All across America paralegals are trying to get a foothold in the legal services arena to perform the most simple, generic transactions for the public at a fraction of the cost that is charged by lawyers. The lawyer monopoly is fighting like a mad snake to prevent anyone from invading their exclusive, lucrative, monopolized territory. This same scenario of monolopy would bring the FTC down on any other business in the free enterprise system in a heartbeat. Such a happening in the case of lawyer monopoly is highly unlikely with a lawyer generally heading up the FTC. Numerous cases are a matter of record in most states where paralegals and others have attempted to assist the public in simple legal procedures. These cases have resulted in the dominant lawyer culture extending their laws and rules into the courts (more lawyers) to bring criminal charges against these people for practicing law without a license. This lawyer monopoly of the legal services arena has brought us to the point where a lawyer's hourly fee will normally be fifteen times that of the average client's hourly wage. Is the system broken?
It is a miscarriage of justice that millions of Americans cannot afford equity and justice in America, but let's consider the plight of those who are "fortunate or unfortunate" enough to access the court system through a lawyer.
Victims of lawyer theft:
Research shows lawyer theft is a large category in the long list of lawyer transgressions and exceeds all types of formal complaints against lawyers nationwide. Theft occurs in a number of ways. The most common manner of theft is when a lawyer collects funds from his client-or on behalf of his client, which funds are to be held in a trust account and disbursed to a third party or to the client-and the lawyer diverts those funds to his own personal account or purpose. One lawyer who represented my corporation some years ago collected a sizeable sum of money in the form of a check made payable to the corporation and then forged the check endorsement to gain personal control of the funds. It was only after threatening to file criminal charges that we were able to gain a small portion of the funds. Some states have created victim funds for victims of lawyer theft but in most cases there is little hope for complete recovery.
Victims of lawyer malpractice:
Victims in this category are most common and most overlooked and abused by the judicial system. A lawyer can be guilty of the sin of omission or commission and in either case create malpractice action for his client. Most malpractice actions occur through slothfulness of the lawyer in one form or another. Other malpractice actions occur through lawyer dishonesty, fraud and a variety of other actions or non actions. According to the lawyer laws and rules, malpractice is not an actionable cause for appeal so the judicial system offers little help in these cases.
Victims of lawyer fraud:
There are many victims in this category and few realize it. Lawyer fraud can be disguised and redefined as another issue or excuse to hide the transgression. Nevertheless thousands of victims emerge from the system because of lawyer fraud. The judicial system offers little help in these cases.
Victims of deception of court:
Deception of court may be caused by lawyers on either side of litigation. The transgression occurs frequently in civil cases. The court is simply misled by a lawyer to believe evidence and testimony other than the facts and truth. This often results in obstruction of justice but is hardly ever identified as such. With three lawyers in the court room, courts overlook this as a matter of fact.
Dishonesty and Misrepresentation:
Lawyers are given to the proposition that truth is not an abstract but a hundred shades of gray. Few court verdicts are rendered based upon truth and honesty but upon "case law" or judicial discretion. Judicial rules actually encourage lawyers to lie for their clients.
In most cases a litigant becomes the victim through lawyer transgression and quite often the litigant becomes a victim of judicial politics because of a relationship between the lawyer judge and an adversary lawyer in the case. I have been the victim of the former on numerous occasions and also the later on a few occasions before mastering the system to practice pro se (self representation).
Until legal justice reform becomes a reality, victims of the judicial system will increase. Thousands of litigants who have lost their fortunes through lawyer representation have turned to pro se (self) representation to escape this legal tyranny. While they meet with abuse of the due process and other constitutional violations, some are having success turning to self help law books, videos, tapes and learning how to use law libraries. Still there is a blatant obstruction of justice by total lawyer control of the court room.
While every American citizen of a sound mind has the right to represent themselves in court, judges at all levels of the system show a deep bias and prejudice toward the pro se litigant and in many cases actually forbid them to come into court without a lawyer, an unconstitutional violation on the face of the act.
Over 100,000 formal complaints are filed annually against lawyers and lawyer judges in the USA. Estimates are that number would greatly increase were it not for the gag rule placed on complainants in 34 states. Of the number of formal complaints filed, less than 2% are actually prosecuted by the lawyer self regulated system.
With over a hundred million new legal actions filed annually in America litigation costs are beginning to impact the gross national product. Many of these lawsuits are frivolous and without foundation. Many of these lawsuits are filed by lawyers seeking a lucrative settlement out of court. This is a form of extortion, but the system looks the other way. A Bush one administration study estimated trial lawyers extract $27 billion annually from the medical and insurance fields through frivolous lawsuits. It is much higher today. This is an area that is not discussed in the subject of national health care reform by lawyers studying the issues.
Experts who study the problem reported in Fortune Magazine that there now exists a tort tax equal to $1200 for every man, woman and child in America. That is much higher today. That tort tax is factored into the cost of consumer goods and services and passed on to you know who!
The USA has 20 times more lawyers than other democratic nations such as Japan and West Germany. Is there doubt why we have to struggle to be competitive with a tort tax of $1200 plus for every American built into our product costs? Is the system broken?
History has taught us where there is no hope, people give up. One of the largest groups of victims of the judicial system and perhaps one of the least identified, are the thousands upon thousands-perhaps millions of psychological victims. Thanks to research and study by Psychologist Karin Pearson-Huffer of Nevada, these victims are now being identified. Ms. Huffer, in addition to her private practice as marriage and family therapist, has an impressive background as a lecturer and seminar leader on the subject of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ms. Huffer's findings on the subject of PTSD have now been published in her book titled; "Legal Abuse Syndrome, Beyond Rage".
The millions of judicial victims in the USA is the prima facia evidence needed to show the American judicial system has been broken under the weight of lawyer domination. If litigants continue to file the same number of formal complaints against lawyers and lawyer judges as they filed during the past six years, this would exceed the total number of practicing lawyers and judges in the nation. That single argument far outweighs the dozens of issues raised by lawyers in the system to diffuse the argument.
From the lawyer side, we are often met with the age old argument that the judicial system is an adversarial system and there have got to be losers-there have got to be unhappy people-there have got to be disappointments-there have got to be unpopular lawyers and lawyer judges, etc.. However, when the smoke clears it still comes down to the argument that we have permitted the evolution of a dominant lawyer culture replacing the equity and justice system in America with a giant political and financial opportunity for lawyers. The judicial system is no longer about justice-it is all about winning by both prosecuting lawyers and defense lawyers. This legal tyranny must be eliminated through drastic judicial reform. Until that happens the masses must become students of self help law. To help fill this need the SELF HELP LAW CENTER was established on the Internet. Here you will find dozens of do-it-yourself legal kits, hundreds of fill in the blank legal forms and a complete self help law library. We invite you to visit the self help law center at; www.atps.com/lawcenter
E-mail: legal@money-finance.us