Comment by knighthack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by knighthack | Hacker News Reader

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> Every skilled profession has people who are managed. Doctors, lawyers, they all have managers, and most of them interact with the public, who can override their expert opinions.

Speaking as a lawyer, and as a programmer: your statement is utter falsehood.

In many countries lawyers are not 'managed' by other lawyers. In fact, most non-lawyers have no say in how lawyers practice, and are there to assist only in clerical/administrative matters. In some jurisdictions, non-lawyers are even barred from taking any cut in the outcome of matters (e.g. possible champerty/barratry), and definitely cannot override expert opinions.

We even have a derogatory word for those who 'manage' lawyers: touts.

In a similar manner, the non-professionals who think they can 'project manage' professionals often over-evaluate their own ability at management; I've seen them make plans that have no basis in engineering reality or technical compliance/requirements especially when it comes to development timelines. Your defensive posture of non-programmers is very indicative of the kind of mentality that true professionals must guard against. Professionals must do a job well, and not just be told to rush out buggy, unsafe products by non-programmers the majority of whom cannot even program to save their lives.

Interesting! So you're saying e.g. a legal practice can never be run by non-lawyers? That does seem to make sense.

Still, what about cases like a legal counsel for a firm? Surely in those cases, the manager of the lawyer is the CEO, who might not be a lawyer himself?

Generally, lawyers can only be managed by other lawyers. Exceptions apply in limited circumstances (e.g. see Australia).

As to your reference to the word 'legal counsel': a distinction must first be made.

The use of the word 'counsel' is often confused by non-lawyers. 'Counsel' is a specific term used to refer to lawyers appearing in court ('counsel of the courts', or 'court practitioners', or 'barristers').

Whereas 'legal counsel' is more specifically used in reference to in-house employees of companies, who handle regulatory compliance, general legal affairs of their companies, and so on. Such legal counsel may be legally trained/qualified, and may have had prior experience in legal practice. But they are not considered 'lawyers', in so far as they are not active/practising members of the bar at which they are practice, and in some instances are referred to as 'non-practising' lawyers. This is about the same distinction as e.g. a graduate of civil engineering, who has decided not to practice as an engineer and has gone on to some other field. Lawyering is however a very traditional profession, and the distinction between practising vs non-practising lawyers is very marked, and generally 'legal counsel' (as described above) are not treated as lawyers at all. It is not uncommon to find an in-house 'legal counsel' who has absolutely no idea what they're doing in practical/commercial reality, as they've never handled proper disputes or difficult contracts before except in non-contentious settings.

Thus in certain jurisdictions legal counsel are often prevented from performing any acts that must and can only properly be done by actual practising lawyers - e.g. 'legal counsel' cannot represent other companies/people/entities in courts (as they have no right of audience or locus to represent third parties), they cannot give legal advice as lawyers, etc. 'Legal counsel' as referred to in such context may be 'managed' by a CEO, but that's only because they are staff with legal knowledge, and not lawyers per se.

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