Lawyers, Trees and Fine Print
I recently received a new Visa Cash card. I also received a legal document entitled, Important Information. It was 60 pages front and back, published on 8 ½ x 11-inch thin paper in 8 font. If this were published on 6 x 9-inch paper with traditional book margins it would be a 115-page novel.
What percent of people read this ‘important information?’ Did those who read it understand it? If they didn’t understand something or disagreed, did they act? How hard would it be to find a company person who could answer your questions about the document? What was the purpose of the document—to be informative, for liability purposes or to comply with some Federal and/or State regulation? Either way, an attorney wrote the regulations and an attorney wrote the document. Is there a reasonable person test as to whether the document reasonably informs and adds any value to the consumer.
Documents like this are more the rule then the exception. Often, when we are asked to sign something, we don’t have the time, have doubts we would understand, or sometimes we don’t feel there is an option to signing. Maybe, the root cause of this out-of-control extortion might be that there are too many attorneys and politicians making a good living producing such documents and regulations?
Contributing to the over regulated feeling is the litigious nature of society and the number of regulations adopted to protect us. In the eighties, there were a few thousand statutes and regulations and today there are over 300,000. Of course that means we need more lawyers to write the laws, pass the laws, litigate, defend and adjudicate claims. I have seen it quoted that elected office is the one occupation that allows people to use other people’s money to get elected to a position, to become a millionaire with a second lucrative career looming.
Since 1980, the number of U.S. lawyers has more than doubled, far outpacing population growth. The legal profession has both responded to and fueled the culture of regulation, litigation, and risk management. The more laws and lawsuits, the more attorneys are needed to interpret, challenge, and defend them; but the more attorneys there are, the more finely grained the rules and contracts become. We live in a feedback loop where legal complexity and the size of the legal profession grow together in a classic chicken-and-egg cycle.
