Vince Carroll writes again about the Trial Lawyers attempt to blackmail other professions into forcing Mark Hillman to drop his initiative that would have capped their fees.
It was a ploy reminiscent of the Cold War strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction, and it quickly paid dividends: On Wednesday, the trial lawyers triumphantly announced that after "recent negotiations," both sides had withdrawn their initiatives.
Unfortunately, to do what they did, they clearly violated their own ethics rules as we have written elsewhere.
Under the current system, where lawyers directly control their own ethics rule making and enforcement, that may not be particularly worrysome to anyone in the legal profession. It should be. The system is completely out of control. This victory is just another public illustration of that fact. When there are enough illustrations, the public will demand reform.
That reform can, and almost certainly will include a requirement that the legal profession clean house - that it immediately rid itself of lawyers and judges who have felt free to damage the public in open violation of their ethics rules.
It won't do the trial lawyers who won this victory much good to have won if they no longer have a license to practice law. That would be the classic definition of a Pyhrric victory.
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