Too Many Lawyers?
From my favorite Justice, Antonin Scalia:
Well, you know, two chiefs ago, Chief Justice Burger, used to complain about the low quality of counsel. I used to have just the opposite reaction. I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise.
I mean there’d be a, you know, a defense or public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?
I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.
And they appear here in the Court, I mean, even the ones who will only argue here once and will never come again. I’m usually impressed with how good they are. Sometimes you get one who’s not so good. But, no, by and large I don’t have any complaint about the quality of counsel, except maybe we’re wasting some of our best minds.
True, so true. Err……Gregg……what are you trying to say?
Even lawyers are welcome at the Peking Gardens http://www.pekinggardenswest.com/
So after a post like that, I think the logical follow-up question is, why, Gregg, are you a lawyer and not “out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?”
Gregg is an inventor, too. but if I told you what he invented I’d have to kill you.
Dave is right, but our marketability research was less than encouraging. Maybe I should say “I’m a failed inventor!”
Craig, you really lost me on that one.
I’ll assume it wasn’t the automobile?
I’m not sure where Craig was going with that one either, but I used to love eating at the Peking Gardens when I lived in that area. Great food.
Nope. It wasn’t the automobile.
Gregg- Why the mystery, are you too shy to let us know about your baby?
No, I’m not too shy. I am just not familiar enough with the patent rules to know what I can say without jeaporizing our pending application.
Is it too late to get in on it? I could mail a check tonight.
Not to be all hair splitty or anything, but if the application is still pending, don’t you think it’s a tad premature for you to be saying you’re a “failed inventor?”
Just my usual modesty, Mihalis…