How dangerous is the profession of lawyer? Lawyer is a very important profession in modern society. They safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the parties and the correct implementation of the law. Besides, they have a lot of responsibilities. So how dangerous is the profession of lawyer?
How dangerous is the lawyer profession? 1 risks of the role of lawyer.
Risk and income are twin brothers, and there is always risk when there is income. Almost any profession has more or less risks, and the lawyer profession is no exception, and the risks may be more prominent.
As far as reality is concerned, the high risk of lawyer profession is particularly obvious in the field of criminal defense. The provision of perjury in Article 306 of the Criminal Law, like the sword of Damocles hanging over lawyers' heads, has always made lawyers feel uneasy and even "talked about". Many lawyers urgently call for amending or even abolishing Article 306 of the Criminal Law through various channels and on various occasions.
Generally speaking, lawyer's practice risk can be roughly divided into normal risk and abnormal risk. Among them, litigation risks such as losing due to insufficient evidence can be classified as normal risks, and litigation risks may be more "exciting" in lawyer risk agency.
Suspected perjury and suspected tax evasion may be the main abnormal risks faced by lawyers in China, which are stipulated in Article 306 and Article 20 1 of the Criminal Law respectively. In my opinion, the provisions of Article 306 of the Criminal Law on perjury of defenders and agents ad litem are really unreasonable. Under the background that the current lawyer's practice environment is still relatively bad, Article 306 of the Criminal Law undoubtedly increases the risk coefficient of criminal defense lawyers' practice, and criminal defense work can be described as "walking on thin ice and trembling".
In recent years, lawyers have been detained or even sentenced for perjury, and the proportion of lawyers participating in defense in criminal cases has also begun to decline, which has to be said to be related to the introduction of Article 306 of the Criminal Law. But we should also objectively face up to the practice risks such as suspected perjury. Undeniably, it is indeed their own fault that a very small number of lawyers who intentionally provide perjury are punished according to law. Therefore, while calling for amending Article 306 of the Criminal Law, it is more important for lawyers to have a good sense of self-discipline and risk prevention.
As for the risk of suspected tax evasion, it has not really attracted the attention of lawyers. The phenomenon of tax evasion in which lawyers fail to declare their income truthfully and pay taxes according to law has long been an "open secret" in many places. Lawyers are becoming a veritable high-income class. If lawyers themselves don't take the common sense of "paying taxes according to law" seriously, I'm sure that many lawyers will make the same mistake as a movie star who is suspected of tax evasion sooner or later. For lawyers, lack of honesty, self-discipline and cunning tricks may mean fatal risks.
Risks and benefits coexist, and China lawyers who are constantly maturing must "take risks seriously and actively guard against them".
How dangerous is the profession of lawyer? First, the lawyer's life is stressful.
Lawyers lack social security.
It is an indisputable fact that lawyers, especially young lawyers, are under great pressure. Apart from their personal reasons, the poor practice environment of the whole lawyer is an important factor.
Practicing as a lawyer is a bit like a self-employed person hanging in a luxury shopping mall. On the surface, it is glamorous, but in fact it is not as beautiful as ordinary people look!
Independent lawyers have no social security, unlike civil servants, enterprises and units to help pay social security and pay wages.
The nature of lawyer's fees is like the turnover of self-employed, which includes a lot of expenses such as venue rent, taxes, management fees, five insurances and one fund, travel expenses, law firm commission, office and case handling expenses. The net income that lawyers can finally get is actually not much.
Moreover, each lawsuit takes a long time, ranging from several months to several years. In addition, the workload of cases is generally large, and it is common for lawyers to work overtime at night and weekends, and there is not much time for real rest and vacation.
Therefore, the income of lawyers' time is not high.
(2) It is difficult for lawyers to find the source of the case, which is unstable, time-consuming and costly, and the repurchase rate is low.
It is normal for some lawyers not to receive cases for a month.
Even if I accidentally received a lawsuit, I have been fighting for a year and a half and the service is very good. If I win, the client will be happy and grateful to the lawyer. However, customers don't need to go to court, and of course they don't want to spend money to hire a lawyer.
At most, I just need to call for advice. But in these cases, lawyers are generally not good at charging fees, but will consume lawyers' time and energy.
(3) The lawyer's sinking cost is high.
The sinking cost of lawyers is mainly reflected in the following aspects:
1. Sunken cost of education and learning
To become a lawyer, you must have a bachelor's degree or above, and now there is an increasing trend for the requirements of academic qualifications.
Secondly, you have to pass the law exam (formerly called the department exam). If you don't pass the exam in one year, you have to take it for a few more years. After passing the law exam, you have to practice for one or two years with barely enough food and clothing to get a lawyer qualification certificate.
Finally, every case requires the professional quality and skills of lawyers. Even if a lawyer has obtained a lawyer's qualification certificate, it usually takes a lot of time and energy to learn and improve himself.
It can be said that lawyers are either at work or on the way to study.
2. Time sunk cost
Every time a lawyer provides legal services, he needs to spend a lot of time and energy on the prophase preparation and anaphase maintenance, for example, receiving clients, answering questions, collecting evidence, due diligence, sorting out files, making case memorabilia, sorting out case facts, conducting legal retrieval and case retrieval, formulating optimal rights protection scheme, drafting legal documents and following up subsequent cases.
However, some parties either don't know or understand lawyers, or take lawyers for granted and are unwilling to pay equivalent lawyer fees.
Take legal consultation as an example, most parties are unwilling to pay the consulting fees of lawyers.
3. The sunk cost of intellectual property rights
Every legal document of a qualified lawyer can be said to be an intellectual property achievement for a specific party, but the fees paid by the general parties have not reached the value of their intellectual property achievements.
Moreover, because it is a customized and personalized intellectual property achievement, which involves the business secrets or personal privacy of some parties, it is difficult to sell it to third parties repeatedly, resulting in insufficient liquidity and difficult matching of lawyers' labor efforts.
These work and efforts of lawyers are often off the stage, and the parties generally can't see them, often don't understand the efforts of lawyers, and some even doubt lawyers, thus causing considerable work pressure to lawyers.
Lawyer's health expenses
In combination with the above, due to the unstable income and huge expenses of lawyers, lawyers must make greater efforts than ordinary people if they want to adhere to this industry.
So it's normal for lawyers to work overtime.
Whether it is paralegals, trainee lawyers, young lawyers, or those big coffee lawyers, this is true.
In addition, there is a phenomenon that lawyers with higher incomes prefer to work hard, and they unconsciously ignore their physical and mental health.
Family pressure.
When a lawyer has no case source, no income, and can't make ends meet, the family may be flying dogs and jumping.
Lawyers have too many cases to handle, so they work overtime every day, leaving early and returning late, and have no time to take care of the children. They were scolded: "Do you want to leave home?"
Therefore, lawyers will face great pressure if they can't handle the contradiction between family and work.
How dangerous is the profession of lawyer? The first is reputation risk. If there are some illegal operations in lawyers' practice, such as illegal charging, unauthorized charging, cheating clients, being late for court, dishonesty, etc., these behaviors will affect the reputation of lawyers. Once there is a risk of poor reputation in the lawyer industry, it will directly affect lawyers' acceptance of entrustment and provision of legal services, and will also directly affect their income.
Second, the risk of personal injury. That is to say, lawyers may encounter a series of personal injuries from clients and their close relatives, other clients and their close relatives and other interested parties because they are dissatisfied with lawyers' legal services or for other reasons, thus leading to the risk of personal injuries for lawyers.
Third, the risk of civil compensation. That is to say, lawyers face the risk of civil compensation because of intentional or gross negligence in their practice. For example, in the process of handling a case, if a lawyer does not appear in court for subjective and objective reasons, causing damage to the parties, the parties may require the lawyer to bear civil liability for compensation.
At the same time, bear the risk of criminal responsibility. That is to say, in the process of practicing, lawyers need to bear criminal responsibility because some behaviors of lawyers violate the criminal law, such as forging evidence or helping, instigating parties to forge evidence, meeting illegally, making inappropriate remarks, etc. These may face the risk of criminal responsibility.
In addition, the industry punishes risks. That is, the risk that a lawyer will be punished by the Bar Association for violating the relevant industry norms and professional ethics of the Bar Association in the course of practicing, generally including warning, stopping practicing for a period of time until the lawyer's qualification certificate is revoked.
In addition, the risk of administrative punishment, that is, the risk that a lawyer is given administrative punishment by the judicial administrative organ and other administrative organs because of a series of illegal or irregular behaviors of lawyers in the course of practicing, such as fines and confiscation of illegal income.
Finally, other practice risks. For example, other violations of laws and regulations in the practice of lawyers may cause some troubles to the normal practice of lawyers.