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Show I'm , WHAT IT COSTS TO GO TO LAW ' Going to law is a most expensive Wjk' necessity when one is driven to that jl extreme. A good illustration of the IflLcosi of litigation is presented by a H' coast paper in a review of the West-R,ern West-R,ern Pacific case. Kji The legal fees in the "Western Pa- Bwcific receivership case," says the pa-Brper, pa-Brper, "reduced as they were from th9 ! B'origlnal high estimates, show that no K risks are being taken of getting the , fl railroads tied up by a lawyers' strike. Omitting the receivers' and trustees' (fees, the legal expenses allowed in ithe Western Pacific case amounted Bjto $151,000. This was paid to law-Myers law-Myers for finding out what the law was Bbid calling the court's attention to ' mwht- The receivers' and trustees' fees, IKwhich represented a service more dis-tinctly dis-tinctly visible to the layman, bring viae grand total of legalistic expenses il to more than a quarter of a million Kf dollars. This sum is equal to the m-d average net income, as given in the w latest available statistics, on eighty K, miles of a typical American railroad. That is, the legal knowledge of the .'lawyers in the Western Pacific case B was considered to balance the value of eighty miles of track, plus the roll-M roll-M ing stock used thereon, plus the ptrength, skill and executive ability of the men employed thereon. At the average capitalization of $80,-000 $80,-000 a mile eighty miles of railroad are worth about $6,400,000, and so it must appear that the legal information informa-tion and natural genius of the lawyers in the Western Pacific case was also considered to be worth $6,400,000. "Of course, it is not fair for the layman, ignorant of the difficulty or reading and remembering law, and of working up a good practice, to sneer and jeer at these statistics. Perhaps Per-haps the man who has learned law and is able to put it to good strategic stra-tegic use is actually worth several times what Is paid to the ordinary doctor, clergyman and engineer, and many times what is paid to skilled labor. Perhaps there actually is more social service In interpreting stupid legislation than in building a bridge, leading an orchestra, writing a great novel, or fixing leaky piumomg. dui why should the law be so constructed that no one but a highly trained ex. pert can understand it? Why should we have a bankruptcy code so involved in-volved that, as In the Western Pacific Pa-cific case, it takes six million dollars worth of lawyers to dig out the meaning mean-ing of it? Why, even after all that expense, should the" procedure be such that as to give the victory to, the cleverest lawyer, not to the one whose cause is most just? The lg norant layman, naturally suspicious of what he does not understand, is tempted to look on some great lawsuits law-suits as contests for fees between clever lawyers. Why use a government govern-ment for that? Why not go down an alley and flip coins?" nn |