The evil called Trump could never exist without dirty lawyers.

[shockey80]

Trump has made a living of finding dirty lawyers to protect him and to do his dirty work. A lot of things need to change and will change after the disaster of Trump. One of them should be the standards lawyers have to meet in order to keep their license.

We have to many lawyers breaking the law and not paying the price for it.

[dlk]

1. Speaking from Personal Experience, Many Attorneys Get Away with Acting Like Their Own Special Mafia

Many of their judge friends, former practicing attorneys, are in on it too. Most people would be surprised to learn how widespread and endemic this problem actually is.

[KPN]

3. Yeah, it's not unlike law enforcement officers when they off-duty get stopped for a moving violation

They simply flash their badge and the officer replies, "Oh, so sorry. My mistake. Have a good day!" Just a more meaningful backdrop.

[Atticus]

5. Yes, there are "many" attorneys and judges who behave that way. And, many have no great concern

for "the law" or justice and are "just doing a job". But, there are others, in my personal experience, for whom law is a near sacred profession and for whom the application of law to achieve justice is their life's work. They are masters of not just the complexities of jurisprudence, but also the simple compulsion of common sense.

There are communities where "Atticus Finch" still practices his steadfast decency.

[lunatica]

7. Is that Atticus who you call yourself after?

[Atticus]

8. That's him. nt

[dlk]

6. Oversight is Practically Nonexistent, by Design

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. The standards don't need to change; they're very high already.

What needs to change is the discovery and enforcement of them. A lot of legal skullduggery goes on behind the scenes and is never found out - look at what Michael Cohen was up to for years before the FBI started digging (and no, it wasn't Michael Avenatti that got that investigation started, speaking of dirty lawyers). It's fairly easy to keep sketchy private financial transactions from coming to light; where lawyers get in trouble is when they steal from their clients' trust accounts (like Avenatti), or when they assist clients in committing fraud or other crimes, and this is discovered in some related litigation or other investigation (like Cohen).

The lawyers who do get caught are usually the little guys - lawyers who practice on their own or in small partnerships. More often than not they have substance abuse or gambling or other financial problems and start stealing from the trust accounts with the intent to pay it back, only they can't. Those trust accounts are audited from time to time, and sooner or later the lawyer gets caught and is almost always suspended or disbarred. In my state lawyers have to pay a license renewal fee of $250 every year that's paid into a client reparations fund that reimburses clients whose lawyers stole from them and can't pay them back.

But guys like Trump will always attract guys like Cohen. Cohen was a small fish who wanted to swim in the big pond and Trump gave him the opportunity to do that, which required him to do some of Trump's dirty work for him. Cohen is going to jail and losing his law license. Trump still squats in the White House.

[Stargleamer]

4. starting with Roy Cohn, who set the mold n/t