Hard News: Veitch
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mark taslov, there is already state-provided aid for people who cannot afford lawyers off their own bat - it's caled legal aid.
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As Russell said Islander,
I don't think there's a different law for celebrities so much as an enormous advantage in being able to afford a top-notch defence.
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10 print "which is undemocratic..."
20 goto 10 -
Thanks for replying again ScottY.
I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one. You clearly have a view that the state can be trusted and can be relied on to get it right. I have the view that if you concentrate too much power in the state that power is likely to be abused.
Not necessarily, as I'm not convinced I disagree with you, almost everything you've said seems thoroughly reasonable to me, I would be one of the last to argue that the state can be trusted and can be relied on to get it right. Essentially I'm just interested in a feasibility check. As you said;
Most lawyers don't do court work. They're mostly property lawyers, or commercial lawyers, or patent attorneys etc. Even litigators don't spend that much time in the courtroom.
The Information I'm trying to garner from you is, how many lawyers are there, and what is a rough average weekly workload irrespective of their visibility or specialty
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Most lawyers don't do court work. They're mostly property lawyers, or commercial lawyers, or patent attorneys etc.
Actually, very few are also patent attorneys, 100 perhaps.
For Mark, some back of the envelope numbers, the accuracy of which would be far from sure:
The legal aid budget is about 100 million. This was paid to about 1500 lawyers on behalf of 53,000 clients. So the average legal aid paid was $2000.
Just over half of that is criminal court work (50000 claims for $55million). Family law was 20000 claims for $30 million, and treaty claim representation was 150 claims for $12 million, and civil law was 1900 claims for $6million.
With about 9000 lawyers nationwide I would expect total fee revenues (or time equivalent for in house lawyers) for the country of $2-3billion. Legal aid work is done at a cut hourly price. Overall, this suggests that criminal legal aid work makes up between 2% and 4% of law work (in hours) across the country. If you made some gross assumptions that the same amount again for the prosecution and that half of all criminal trial work is legally aided, You arrive at 10-15% of all law work is criminal trial work: including prosecution and defence, preparation and trial.
In most firms the litigation team does dispute resolution of all kinds. For very good commercial reasons very few issues go to court trial.
Most law work is assisting people to conduct their affairs where these interface with the prevailing law (of all types). Eg: when you buy a house you use a contract drafted by lawyers to cover a range of circumstances that, by experience, lawyers know can arise, but which no regular person would ever think of. And the property lawyer might advise other clauses to include or exclude according to the particular transaction, and will then help by recording the transaction with the relevant registries.
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You can read the legal aid report for 2007/2008 here:
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Thanks Logan, that clears up a lot for me, I'm left with one further query, if you could direct me up the right avenue. How much of this $2-3billion comes from business?
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And some more interesting statistical resource:
According to this of 150,000 criminal cases filed in 2007, there were less than 500 acquittals. 35000 were withdrawn (diversion scheme?), 4200 were dismissed, 3000 were discharged (not the same as discharge without conviction). I wish I knew what these terms all meant....
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$2b/9k=$222,222,222.2*
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at a guess 55% of total NZ lawyer time relates to business, keeping in mind that allot of NZ business is very small (individuals and sole operator companies).
Alot of the rest relates to property and personal finance structuring (residential conveyancing, trusts, estate planning and administration, divorce).
Also, keep in mind that my guess includes the time spent by in-house lawyers, community law centres and so on, as if they were lawyers in private practise.
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Nope:
2b/9k= 222k
For every lawyer in private practise you will see an average of two additional, non-lawyer, staff. +premises and other overheads.
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My question is...
Who the hell ends up on juries?
I have been called to jury service 3 or 4 times since 2000. Once I was working overseas and was obviously excused. The other times I have managed to be excused because I am a high school teacher and I could see large numbers of my students missing out on NCEA credits if I was missing from the class for several weeks ( I would be happy to serve if I could see that I was the only one going to be negatively effected).
Are those who end up on juries weighted towards those who are either a) not working or b) in jobs where they won't be irreplaceable?
I'm not trying to be a prick, but am seriously wondering whether our juries are being slanted towards those who aren't overly aware of WTF is going on.
yours worried citizenly,
yamis -
Thank you Logan
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Nope:
2b/9k= 222k
For every lawyer in private practise you will see an average of two additional, non-lawyer, staff. +premises and other overheads.
Yes, my shocking, got a little over excited there, as by the looks of it, that's still over three times what most teachers earn.
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The maximum an ordinary teacher can earn is around 70,000 at the moment so it's well over the average which would be low to mid 60s I guess (teachers start on around 43,000 at the moment).
The holidays kind of make up for it I guess... if it weren't for the fact I've been either marking, or writing assessment, or lesson planning for what seems like every single moment of them and am teaching the future inmates of Mt Eden Prison.
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am teaching the future inmates of Mt Eden Prison.
harsh!D
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[quote]Yes, my shocking, got a little over excited there, as by the looks of it, that's still over three times what most teachers earn.[/quote]
My estimate is gross fees not lawyer income. So the 222k supports the lawyer, the two extra non-lawyer staff and the overheads of running a business.
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For anyone who wants a reasonably in-depth layman's look at the inner workings of a jury trial, I recommend 'the juryman's tale'.
(UK crown court perspective). -
Who the hell ends up on juries?
am seriously wondering whether our juries are being slanted towards those who aren't overly aware of WTF is going on.
I have never been asked, because I have a minor, minor, reemphasise minor conviction and certainly would be in a category of "peers'' with a wee drug charge but do they want me? NOOOOO I have a slanted view of being aware..
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I'm not trying to be a prick, but am seriously wondering whether our juries are being slanted towards those who aren't overly aware of WTF is going on.
That's one hell of an assumption. I've been summonsed three times, served twice (didn't make it beyond the ballot the third time), and would take great offence at anyone suggesting that I'm "[not] overly aware of WTF is going on."
The first time I'd just been made redundant, so was out of work.
The second time I was part of a team so the workload could be shared. I also stopped into the office most days, kept my cellphone on during breaks, and also did some work from home during evenings.
The third time, I got summonsed for a Wednesday appearance. As did the MD of the 10-person company that employed me. Yes, what're the odds? She let me go, again because I was part of a team and could have my day-to-day workload shifted to others, and got excused herself because she was already letting 10% of the company workforce attend.It's actually pretty arrogant to assume that jurors are all unemployed or useless. The last trial on which I served had one retired, one unemployed, a student, and the rest of us were working one way or the other. At least one was fairly senior employee in their respective field. A group of us used to go off for lunch together, and always of the conversation revolved around current affairs.
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Yes, my shocking, got a little over excited there, as by the looks of it, that's still over three times what most teachers earn.
How many teachers are paying the wages of three people (based on what Logan's said, and it certainly doesn't sound inflated), and paying for their office space, their telephone/internet, and all the sundry expenses that associate with working in a heavily paper-based field? Even if the lawyer has only a single secretary, and is paying that person only $40k, they're unlikely to be taking home much more than $100k themselves once they pay for all the other expenses that go with being a lawyer.
And unlike the teacher, the lawyer is paying for their own professional insurance, and carrying all the risk of fucking up in their job. -
I'm not trying to be a prick, but am seriously wondering whether our juries are being slanted towards those who aren't overly aware of WTF is going on.
That's one hell of an assumption ...
The other issue, though, is to what extent barristers use the challenge system to massage the makeup of juries. My perhaps overly cynical impression is that prosecutors in particular don't want independent thinkers with trained minds assessing their arguments, and will try to weed these people out if they get beyond the ballotting phase. The ideal is a jury of, ahem, 'average Kiwis' who will be oblivious to the extent to which they're being intellectually bullied.
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they're unlikely to be taking home much more than $100k themselves
I suppose I'm the only person 'round these parts who thinks that's quite a lot of money?
Righto then. As you were. :)
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The other issue, though, is to what extent barristers use the challenge system to massage the makeup of juries.
The challenge system is pretty limited in NZ I understand. Unlike other countries where you can question the jurors, I think in NZ you can just challenge based on their appearance. I think the defence and prosecution can challenge up to six times?
So you might challenge some women for a rape case, you might make guesses from their appearances about how they'll treat their client, but as a lawyer you're really just guessing.
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No, Danielle, you're not the only one. But $100k < $222k by rather a lot. And after four years of tertiary study, and with the requisite experience to maintain a sole practice, it's also not an unreasonable income.
In reality, a lot of small-time lawyers are sitting around the median household income. It's the partners at the big firms that skew the profession's mean incomes so far away. Remember that the $222k figure was achieved by dividing an estimate of the total profession's income by the total number of lawyers, so it's a) a very wild guess, and b) prone to over-estimation of the majority through very, very high figures for a minority.
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