I don't actually see this article on the front page

That'd be because I wrote it in 2008 :-).

(It's still on the front page of the Shop Talk category, as I write this.)

I seem to get told to log in when viewing this page (From the RSS feed) in Opera

I don't know why this would happen. This is just a Web page, and the links in my various feeds are to plain article URLs, not weird redirectors that might perhaps cause some browsers to do strange things. (My Dan's Data feed, for instance, uses FeedBurner, so instead of linking to http://www.dansdata.com/io093.htm it actually links to http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dansdata/feed1/~3/CDYr80GKszQ/io093.htm, so that Google/FeedBurner can track clicks before redirecting to the actual page you want.)

Perhaps it's Opera just giving you the option to log in right away when it sees that you're on a Web page that you can log into (to use the comment interface, on a site where you've already made an account), but you're not logged in at the moment.

Anyway, every single person I know who went to study law at university (Two people, but this would be much more dramatic if it were, like, a billion) were in it purely for the money (One of them dropped out, so it's only one person at the moment. But that shouldn't matter with regards to an internet comment, dammit!).

(That was a joke. It should be simple to whip up a userscript to do that for you, of course.)

But some better way to do comments would be nice. I want my previewing, dammit.

Oh, forget it I suck at teh typnigs. That's why I dictate.

And by way of interest, our exams were hard, but I think they were really a way of weeding out those not committed enough. As you say, all you really have to do is remember a lot of stuff and turn up.

The main education I got by way of law degree was how to critically analyse a problem and to argue about it. They don't really do exams for that (apart from Philosophy of course).

Most nastygrams don't rise to this level, of course, but that's the idea.

Re lawyers who don't seem all that bright: There is not actually an intelligence test to become a lawyer.

TV courtroom dramas always show all of the lawyers to be at least a couple of standard deviations above average intelligence, but those shows are every bit as grittily realistic as the average cinematic portrayal of computer hacking. All you actually have to do to become and remain a lawyer, practically speaking, is pass a rather- or not-quite-so-difficult university exam, and then some sort of bar exam, and then studiously avoid being caught decorating your Christmas tree with the entrails of your, or anybody else's, children.

The ability to memorise a lot of exam-relevant information does not necessarily correspond with the kind of intelligence on display in well-scripted TV lawyers. I can believe that lawyers are on average significantly smarter than, say, prison guards, but all sorts of hilarious idiots have managed to pass difficult exams from time to time, and it is certainly possible to find just plain dumb people who at one point managed to pass a bar exam.

The current moderator of the Skeptic discussion list is Leonard Cleavelin, who used to be a US Navy lawyer. That's right, kids, just like in JAG on thuh tee-vee!

His Bloodcurdling True Tales of the Law, and strong determination to commit agonising suicide rather than return to that occupation, have had something of a deleterious effect on my own opinion regarding the mental capabilities of the average lawyer.

Although my planning doesn't include an endoscope in any fashion. But maybe it should...

It's certainly possible to get total nonsense from a lawyer which doesn't make sense. Trouble can be in the transcription of the lawyer's dictation, followed by a failure in their quality control pre-sending. I have therefore, more than once, had cause to send a response to a fellow lawyer asking exactly what they meant by a particular stream of drivel (and, tbh, vice versa).

[I have lightly sub-edited this comment, to fix a couple of typos, linkify the Private Eye reference, and because I just couldn't resist, given the above. -Dan]

Plus, Bern, the trick is also to express yourself in a way which seems convincingly clear, but also allows maximum wiggle room if you are ever held to your statement in the future. Ever thought why so many politicians are lawyers? That's why.

I would say your analysis of the correspondence is pretty much spot on. It doesn't state exactly what their client's grounds for action against you are, which is usually indicative that either (a) there aren't any or (b) the client has not paid them to look any up.

What you want to watch out for are the highly specific nasty grams, that set out grounds for action (usually with authority), a firm remedy sought, and a sensible deadline for implementation (usually 7 days, not 24 hours). Those are the ones I HAVE to send before I get to sue, because if I don't and the defender immediately pays up/complies, they send their court bill to my client. This is on the basis that the action was completely unnecessary, because if we'd only asked nicely they'd have paid up, therefore I've wasted their and the court's time.

That's not to say you do what they ask, of course, but probably would require more than a VB-fuelled (just a guess) response.

[On that particular night, I believe it was actually a quadruple vodka. I'm a busy man; I've no time to get drunk slowly. -Dan]

It's the usual jargon problem that technical experts have. What makes it worse in the case of lawyers is that their jargon is actually words that already existed in the English language, but that probably meant something completely different.

Then there's the ones that like to talk latin phrases...