Ignoring a landslide

Why ask for someone’s opinion if you’re going to ignore it?

I know I’ve pointed this out before, but I enjoy repeating myself. The State Bar of California has done it again — requested public comments and paid no attention to them.

As you may recall, the Bar asked for opinions about a so-called “portfolio bar examination” that would allow law grads to work for a lawyer instead of taking a test to gain entry to the Bar.

A fine idea in theory. A terrible idea in practice at scale.

According to a report from the Bar, 2,814 public comments poured in: 698 liked the idea, 102 liked it with changes, and 1,989 hated the concept.

The most interesting statistic was this one: 25 people had “no position.”

What?!?

Did they write “No comment” after being asked to comment? Did those people refuse to answer until represented by counsel?

Or maybe they said “I don’t care” after caring enough to comment.

Or maybe they thought there were good people on both sides.

It’s a mystery.

Anyway, after a landslide victory for the no votes, the Bar decided to approve telling the Supreme Court it should go ahead with a pilot portfolio exam program.

Democracy works in strange ways.

Never mind. It’s not only Supreme Court justices who don’t have to worry about punishment. Apparently other judges need not worry either — all they have to do is quit.

Some of you may remember Donald Trump’s sister suddenly retiring as federal judge in 2019 while being investigated about the family tax schemes.

End of investigation.

Now remember the complaint filed against the Fifth Circuit bankruptcy judge over what seemed like some serious conflicts of interest. We thought the Fifth Circuit was actually going to do something about an errant jurist.

Nope.

The judge quit so there’s no further action from the court.

DoNotRepresent? Every now and then a judge’s ruling seems like it belongs in a collection of science fiction short stories.

I refer you to ruling by a federal judge in Illinois that begins with this sentence: “This case pits real lawyers against a robot lawyer.”

I’d read that story.

In case you’re wondering, the real lawyers were claiming the robot lawyer owned by a company called DoNotPay, Inc., should be put out of business because it hadn’t passed a bar exam.

We all know by now that artificial intelligences can pass bar exams. It hardly seems worthwhile giving them exams.

But what about the people who program and/or own robot lawyers? Should they have to pass bar exams?

Law programmer school may soon be replacing regular law schools.

Sci-fi can be scary.

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