The myth had taken hold of hackers and geeks by the throat, as was abundantly clear soon after the story broke.  But because Ladar Levison was the good guy, and because the geeks, skilled as they may be in code, were still binary in grasp.  It was wrong then, and it’s dangerous now. The myth must die, or the hackers and geeks will surely fail.

Yet, the myth was repeated in Levison’s Guardian post revealing his trials and tribulations in dealing with the government.

In the first two weeks, I was served legal papers a total of seven times and was in contact with the FBI every other day. (This was the period a prosecutor would later characterize as my “period of silence”.) It took a week for me to identify an attorney who could adequately represent me, given the complex technological and legal issues involved – and we were in contact for less than a day when agents served me with a summons ordering me to appear in a Virginia courtroom, over 1,000 miles from my home. Two days later, I was served the first subpoena for the encryption keys.

Except this wasn’t Levison’s first rodeo with the feds.  He had been turning over Snowden’s and others’ emails well before the shit hit the fan, and should have figured out that he needed some legal advice. Forewarning doesn’t get much better than this.

This isn’t to say that what the government, and the judge, did to Levison wasn’t wrong.  But those Pollyannas who want to whine about the unfairness of the system need to extract their heads from their naïve butts and come to grips with the fact that this is a nasty system designed to destroy lives and businesses.  Grow up and deal with it. Making excuses for failure saves no one.

When someone starts a business, it’s generally a good idea to find a lawyer because we live in a society where law insinuates its way into pretty much everything. Yes, that’s wrong much of the time. No, I can’t stop it. Neither can you. Let me know when the revolution is over and we can talk about what to do then. Until then, protect yourself.

And when your business model runs contrary to the government’s interest, such as a secure email service or heroin distribution ring, then the need for a lawyer really shouldn’t be an open question. When Mike Masnick made this obvious observation in his latest recap of Levison’s opus, he was taken to task by commenters for siding with the government against his own team.

There are two completely independent issues here, which the Techdirt commenters refused to accept.  The government was absolutely wrong. Levison should have been prepared for the government to be wrong, and to protect himself, his business and his clients. Think defensive driving. The other guy may drive like crap, but that won’t make your kids feel better when learn that the crappy driver killed daddy. Daddy is still dead, albeit with a great excuse.

Levison says it took him a week to “identify an attorney who could adequately represent” him.  Maybe he was unfamiliar with this thing called “the internet,” which gives a guy really fast access to tons of information. There are, of course, tons of lawyers there, and with a half-decently conceived search, you can find a few million. But that’s not really the best way to accomplish the task of finding the right lawyer.

There are a handful of lawyers in this niche who are fairly well-known, who have written extensively, and are all over the internet, including here. They aren’t hard to find, even if people who should know better are adding to the mystery. There is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Hanni Fahkoury, if he can’t help himself, will no doubt be happy to point you in the right direction. There are law school clinical groups dedicated to the defense of internet privacy, like Jennifer Granick’s. And then, there are those handful of big court decisions, each of which names the attorney who handled the case. Call them. Ask them for a referral, if they can’t take the case.  We’re lawyers. We’re everywhere. Anonymous has nothing on us.

But what about the fee?  Yes, most lawyers charge money, since we have to pay for stuff just like you do. But the claims that it would cost $50,000+ make lawyers do double facepalms. If that was the price quoted Levison, then he sucks beyond compare at finding a lawyer.  Some might have taken the case for low-, even pro-, bono. Most would take the case for a fraction.

Much as we would all love to be paid millions for everything we do, that’s not how it is. These cries about the cost of lawyers are laughably wrong, and the continued insistence is pure Dunning-Kruger.  If one lawyer’s fees are too high, there are a hundred others to pick from whose fees will be far more reasonable.

But what of the emergency, of the last minute flurry of activity by the government demanding the lawyer drop everything and be there when needed?  This is our world. People rarely get a call in advance to let them know they’re going to get busted next week. Emergencies are us. While it’s true that we are sometimes committed to be elsewhere on a given day, that’s when we call up our trusted backup lawyers to show in our place.  If a lawyer can’t do it and can’t provide an alternative, there is another problem brewing. It’s not that it’s an emergency.

And finally, what about the unfairness of it all, the plethora of complaints about how normal people shouldn’t need lawyers, how it should all be easy, how outrageous the government is and how much you hate the law.  So start a revolution, but until that gets traction, do something to protect yourself.

Most of these complaints are unsound, but it requires some depth of understanding to appreciate it.  The reaction to some harsh truths in the past has been a whole lot of butthurt whining, but far too little assimilation of the point.  This isn’t a post to ridicule the stupid geeks and hackers. You aren’t supposed to be able to manage your own legal affairs any more than you can do your own brain surgery. This is a post to save you, and in the process, save the state of the law from you, so that we are all protected from the government.

I know, you like it better when we, hated lawyers that we are, tell you how right you are, how mean the government is, how greedy and unhelpful lawyers are, and how badly we feel about your getting screwed.  But here’s a different proposition: How about you not get screwed in the first place?

The game of life sucks, but it’s far better to win it than lose it. Give it a try.