“At the Age of Nine, I Realized Wrestling Alligators was More Than a Casual Hobby…”

I have been finishing up my 2011 continuing legal education obligation. It’s a tough ordeal. There are hard choices.

The way CLE works is like this. Other lawyers cover part of their own requirement by performing in CLE lectures, and then the Florida Bar charges you insane amounts of money to watch them. The cost for this stuff is outrageous. You need 30 hours, and one hour can cost $40. There is other CLE out there. Why not use it? Because the bar places its videos in courthouse libraries. I’m not sure why they charge $1200 if you buy it, while sending it to libraries that give it away, but hey, it’s government in action.

To make matters worse, you can’t order 30 hours. You have to take it in chunks. If you take three courses, and the closest you can come to 30 hours is 34 hours, tough. Consider the extra money a donation.

You can find very short, cheap courses to pad the list. This is very helpful. The bar has a one-hour online ethics program for nothing. That will put me within half an hour of my goal.

Guess what I’m choosing to fill that half hour? It’s gut-wrenching. They offer a $35, 23-minute “historical video” about…Janet Reno. The woman who presided over Dade County’s criminal justice system when you could hardly walk out to get your newspaper without getting shot. The lady who was responsible for Waco.

I don’t care. It’s SHORT. The other ones are an hour long. That’s just too much. And a lot of them are about liberal judges. They would just give me ulcers.

This stuff is nearly worthless. When I practice, I don’t rely on superficial videos. I research until I am convinced I can’t be bitten in the rear end by ignorance. There is no comparison. Any lawyer who relies on CLE in a lawsuit deserves to be sued into the dirt. I hope no such person exists. And if you don’t know this stuff from your own research and simply from talking to the lawyers you work with, you should probably turn in your license.

Maybe the ethics stuff is useful. After all, what lawyer, in the course of his practice, researches the counterintuitive and seemingly capricious reasons the bar uses to punish its members? CLE taught me that you can actually be disbarred for rudeness; I would never have guessed that from what I’ve seen. Most lawyers behave just fine, but jerks are not rare.

I’ve noticed a difference between doctors and lawyers. Maybe I’m wrong; I don’t know too much about medical education. Lawyers almost automatically lionize any low-life bottom-feeder who makes money in tort cases. If you win lawsuits and make big money, you are considered worthy to teach other lawyers. I don’t think doctors idolize other doctors just because they’re rich. I’m pretty sure a doctor has to be good at what he does in order to be asked to teach. You don’t have to be a great lawyer to make money; aggression, narcissism, and a strong stomach will take you a long way.

I did a few tort cases when I worked with my dad, but I don’t think we would have gotten rich from it, had we continued. The reason is that we automatically turned down unsound cases. That’s no way to build a tort practice. Tort lawyers don’t just make money from winning good cases. They make money scaring innocent defendants with bad cases. Like I heard a lawyer say in a CLE recording today, these days, a trial lawyer is lucky if he does two or three trials a year. Most cases are settled. And a really bad case will often get you some “get lost” money.

I had a case where I told the client to go away, as soon as I learned he was lying to me about what happened to him. I could have held on and tried to squeeze cash out of the defendant; it was a losing case, but they would probably have paid me several thousand dollars, in order to avoid paying more money to their own lawyer. As John Edwards demonstrates, not every tort lawyer cares whether a case is well grounded.

I can’t believe I’m going to pay to watch Janet Reno. I may need to spend a little extra. On a pint of tequila, to get me through it.