Thoughts XI

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." --- Shakespeare

The legal profession has about the broadest range of intellectual ability as any of the prominent professions.  Known to most as an important profession, necessary in a complex society, but for which billed fees are perceived as disproportionate to the services rendered.  This we know.  However, it is the range of skill of lawyers, from supreme intellect to barely literate that we come upon. 

It's all in the licensing. Many folks could handle simple wills, property closing, contract execution and enforcement, and numerous lawyerly skills. For most of these tasks there are strict procedures of practice. Very little actual legal knowledge is required. There is a difference between understanding the nature of the law and preparing a will or trust for some needful client.  To be sure, without licensing the doors would open to completely unscrupulous, incompetent, and immoral practitioners.  Licensing is not unlike a dike that keeps out an ocean of pollution. It protects nothing within. 

Practice of law is now so routine that one can purchase software that contains the skeleton of innumerable legal documents.  Just make the needed changes, insert the correct names, and print.  There are even online websites that will help you on all this, even incorporating a business, getting a green card, making a will, and dozens of other functions.   It would be possible in many cases to set up "lawyer shop" to use these tools. It would be a limited practice. Alas, this is forbidden because the would-be entrapeneur does not have a license.

The license guarantees minimal training and minimal competency.  The license guarantees a right for a fee for services often done by the secretary.*  High or even good quality work is not part of the fee.

On the other hand some legal matters and situations are so subtle there is needed a legal mind of the highest caliber.  Their arguments and decisions are beyond the reach of most of us.  Some legal minds, in the past and currently, are of the highest intellect.

* On this I have inside information.  My mom was a legal secretary for years. Her work was demanding and exacting. She was given considerable responsibility. 

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How do they do it?

Norway vs Russia in a pre-2014 world cup match. Score 1-1. But why?  The populations of Russia and Norway are respectively about 140,000,000 and 5,000,000.  Both countries are mindful and enthusiastic about their sports, particularly soccer.  both have a proportional number of children that play.  All use roughly similar tactics and strategies.  But Russia's gene pool for the best players is 28 times that of Norway.  This is a prodigious advantage which applies to players, coaches, managers, and every other skilled position in the pyramid of soccer infrastructure. Yet the match is played to a tie, and this was not a fluke.  It happens frequently every day across sports competition between many countries with disproportional populations. Simple logic compels us to believe Russia should totally dominate Norway in a disproportionate number of games game. 

It does not happen. So why is that?

I have only one explanation.  The winners of the world cup over the last couple of decades have been from large population countries, each with an avid even rabid soccer loving populous, each with highly skilled and highly paid professional teams, and each seemingly with a national mandate to excel in international competitions. Of course, there is an exception.  The Netherlands, with a population merely at 16,000,000, has been dominant in the last several World Cup matches, winning in 2010.  This year the favorites are the usual, Italy, Spain, England, Germany, Netherlands, Brazil, and the like, but with tiny Portugal (pop. 10,000,000) and Belgium pop. ~11,000,000) also ranked in the top ten contenders.  How do they do it?

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Everybody can learn math.  Yeah, right.

Educators have been beating the drum that all students can learn math. 
See Helping Children Learn Mathematics, National Academic Press (2002), located online at http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10434&page=37
Among the many goals in this book we see the following advice to teachers.

• Be committed to the idea that all children can become proficient in math.
• Develop and deepen your understanding of math, of student thinking, and of techniques that promote math proficiency.

However, I've never heard the same about writing.  Here, it may be, reality has set in.

For some reason, the USA has ventured down a path that is patently not so.  Moreover, that some or many students cannot be proficient writers, or physicists, or gymnasts, or electricians seems to be accepted without question.  In trying to achieve this "math" goal huge resources are expended, curriculum is changed, teachers are frustrated.  It is true the teacher should do the best she can, but she cannot live in guilt for inability to achieve what is not possible.