Posts by Logan O'Callahan
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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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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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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According to this of 150,000 criminal cases filed in 2007, there were less than 500 acquittals. 35000 were withdrawn (diversion scheme?), 4200 were dismissed, 3000 were discharged (not the same as discharge without conviction).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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You can read the legal aid report for 2007/2008 here:
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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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As another lawyer:
0. An oath should be taken requiring a higher standard of ethics.
I have been fairly involved in looking at the recent Lawyers and Conveyancers act, the Rules that followed. I think it would be fair to say:
a) lawyers are one of the most heavily governed professions, all with the intention of enforcing an ethical basis to our business
b) lawyers consider ethics on a day to day basis more than any profession I can think of,
c) discipline of lawyers is at the extreme end of harsh.I would also say that a lawyer acting as a jury is more correctly known as a judge. There is simply no need for juries. You could have judicial panels for more serious offences.
And ScottY has already made the point: courts and trials are the most publicly visible part of the legal system, but they represent a tiny part of the system. Even most criminal proceedings involve no trial.
What the public tend to see are the difficult cases where there is room for doubt - either because the facts aren't clear or the way they fit within the law isn't clear. Throw in some wayward reporting and you've a recipe for crowd dissatisfaction.
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Why should they need to look like incandescent bulbs?
It's not like those big round blobs are actually pretty!! They're only made that way because that's what worked best.
I like the curly look. If that's what works best, that's what they should be.
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We've installed lots of the CFLs. I found the early phillips ones pretty poor (didn't last).
We had a few problems with recessed down lights. Some of them would only just reach the bottom of the sockets (screw ins) due to the shape of the fitting. I think this resulted in a few dodgy contacts which ate a few more bulbs. Then I found some miniature GE ones. They've been great.
I've also had the problem of bayonet ones not fitting sockets where the plastic shroud of the holder was getting in the way. - usually where the shroud was used to support a lamp shade. A bit of hacksawing dealt with that.
And I disabled a dimmer in our dining room room to put them in there too.
Personally I like a bright white CFLs. I had been looking for an alternative to the "soft tone" glow feel of most incandescent bulbs. I also dislike the orange glow of the sodium vapour street lights.
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In another case of follow thy leader, according to at least one other cabinet minister National is the gummint of New Zillun.
If only that were true.
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I find hipocrisy in the idea an artist's reward should be conceptualised as something that society extends out of the goodness of its heart, as opposed to being inscribed in the same mercantile logic that governs the exchange of all other goods that people work to produce
But the copyright system is only something that society extends out of the goodness of its heart.
And around the world the practical arts (making physical practical things) get little or no automatic protection. NZ is perhaps the most generous in the world, providing copyright for 3-D product design for a whole 16 years. A far cry from the sort of protection music artists get.