Having established Simple Justice some time ago, I regularly receive requests from folks.  All sorts of requests. From the constant link exchange emails, as marketers tell their clients to seek, to guest posts, to advice on all manner of blawging issues.  And then there are the new lawyers seeking to break into practice, or break into criminal defense, or just not break anything. 

From there we have the defendants, who are empowered by the ubiquitous lawyer websites to ask questions of lawyers who do not represent them.  Free questions. Free answers.  The business model of many of our finely conceived lawyer-finder type websites all involve entitling people to expect answers to their questions upon demand. The websites sell advertising off views by people seeking free legal advice.  Lawyers are expected to provide the fodder to draw the eyeballs, while the website makes money off their backs.  And lawyers appear all too happy to be stupid.

I quietly ask myself, from time to time, if I’m the only person who thinks this is lunacy.  When I tell a unknown caller, who merely wants to tell me their story for a half hour or so and obtain some free advice that will change his life, that I cannot do so, I hear him curse me out for being a horrible human being; a greedy lawyer.  Do other people find this acceptable?

No, thank goodness, I am not alone.

From Mike at Crime & Federalism and Walter Olson on twitter, I have found a brother.  Better still, someone as curmudgeonly as me who is willing to spell it out, tell it like it is, take no prisoners.  Meet John Scalzi.  He’s a writer, which means he can do so better than me, but if I was a writer rather than a lawyer, then I would write what he does.

I would love to copy and paste his whole post in here.  True, the application to law isn’t precise, and requires a bit of squinting at times given our different functions, but there isn’t a word in there that isn’t worth reading.  I won’t, however, because they are his words, not mine.  But I will take a bit, fair use and all, to whet your whistle.

The person who determines what a writer should do for others is the writer, not you. Why? Well, quite obviously, because it’s not your life, and you don’t get a say. And if you’re somehow under the impression that well, yeah, actually you do have a say in that writer’s life, take the following quiz:

 

Think of your favorite writer. Now, are you:
1. That writer?
2. That writer’s spouse (or spousal equivalent)?
3. Rather below that, a member of that writer’s immediate family?
4. Rather below that, the writer’s editor or boss?

If the answer is “no” to the above, then guess what? You don’t get a vote. And if you still assume you do, that writer is perfectly justified in being dreadfully rude to you. I certainly would be. I certainly have been, when someone has made such assertions or assumptions. And if necessary, I will be happy to be so again.

It’s as if I’ve found my long lost brother.  When I wrote something similar, the Slackoisie were all over me like flies on feces.  They didn’t get it then, and likely won’t get it now.  They are, you see, entitled.  They are the people Scalzi is writing about, the ones who think they have a right to demand that others perform for their convenience, serve their interests, wait on them.  Like their mommies did.  It’s all about them, and the rest of us exist only to make their lives easier.  Or else we’re mean to them.

I wish to take this opportunity to welcome John Scalzi into the Curmudgeon Club.  If he wants to be president, the job is his.  Now please read the rest of his post, and pretend that it came from me.