Mr. Sope Creek, as a lawyer defending lawyers, you might consider setting a good example of whatever it is you're advocating. Are you seeking truth? Are you trying to win an argument at all costs, regardless the the human collateral damage? One could ask any number of such questions, especially in the context of the notion of people hating lawyers, which incidentally was originally posited in this thread by a lawyer.
I'll take the high road, thank you, and spend a bit of time dissecting what we have here. Let's see if we can show some discernment and locate some truth.
You posted this:which I assumed, perhaps erroneously, was in response to this portion of my post:
So my understanding of your post is that you are suggesting my original post was about lawyers and you're questioning whether I can say anything about lawyers without having seen them in action in court, or perhaps elsewhere. I responded with this:
which is true. In other words,
1. I am asserting reasons that people, who are not lawyers, have for hating lawyers.
2. I am not asserting those reasons have any truth value.
3. I am not asserting those reasons in fact apply generally to all lawyers.
4. I am not asserting anything about lawyers, actually, but rather asserting what is in the minds of people (if any) who have chosen to use those reasons to hate lawyers, to whatever extent they do (which I also made no assertions about).
You followed that post with:
Well, I'm going to assume your basis for this ad hominem attack is that you've overlooked the possibility that I actually wasn't making assertions about lawyers and are firmly convinced I was making assertions about lawyers.
The easiest way to decide that is to look at my original post again and using standard English notice that in fact I made no assertions about lawyers (in the bullet points -- after that I did make a suggestion on honesty for lawyers, which is equally applicable as a suggestion to any human being).
Before I read your second response I posted this:
to which you responded with this:
So here again you appear to be assuming I'm making assertions about lawyers which, as I have shown is not the case.
I'll freely grant one point. When I said I wasn't talking about lawyers, I meant I wasn't making assertions about lawyers, but I didn't explicitly say that, thus my statement is open for interpretation. That said, your attacks on me after I said I wasn't talking about lawyers clearly show that you were not, from that point on, discussing this with me in a good faith attempt to come to an understanding with me and show interest in my point of view. Instead you appear to have been intent on assassinating my character, proving that I'm a hypocrite, and the like.
As I suggested at the beginning of this post, one might question to what extent your posting here is putting lawyers in a less-than-hateful light. Character assassination, for instance, is not a particularly endearing activity. Posting in good faith, to me, involves assuming the other is telling the truth and if it appears to me otherwise, as a first response I seek to verify my understanding before questioning whether or not he's discussing in good faith.
For the record, I will say that I know a number of lawyers, both personally and professionally. I don't hate any of them. I don't think any of them are dishonest, rather to the contrary. In fact, I don't hate lawyers at all. This discussion for me is entirely academic. I would assume that many if not most lawyers have the best of intentions as citizens, so to whatever extent there is general dislike or hatred for lawyers, I would assume that's caused by the bad apples and by the nature of the adversarial system. That's unfortunate. I highly doubt that people hate any lawyers because Erin Andrews won her case, other than those who have to pay up.
