Vocabulary notes

to swamp	заваливать (заявлениями)
fine print	мелкий шрифт
adept	сведующий
to charge	взымать (о суммах)
to moonlight	работать на стороне, подрабатывать

Task 3. Read the text again and make sure you know all underlined parts of the text. Give their Russian equivalents

Task 4. Answer the following questions:

1. What is the reason for the swamping of the legal system?

2. What do many new laws result in?

3. Why are lawyers more adept at taking dis­putes to court?

4. Why do the big law firms offer high starting salaries?

5. In what cases do lawyers really get overpaid?

6. What lawyers have no reason to economize?

Task 5. Agree or disagree with the following statements. Agreement or disagreement should be followed by some comment

1. The output in last year's session of Congress included more than 600 statutes.

2. There is more and more to sue about.

3. There is less and less law business every year.

4. Americans have some 700,000 lawyers for a population of 240 million.

5. The United States has just ten percent of the population.

6. Law always has been a prosperous profession, but the situation is under control.

7. The Congress set a strict ceiling on the rates that could be charged.

8. The fees were moderate and a poor client could pay a lawyer.

9. A Harvard law professor tried to collect more than $300,000 for helping a poor client.

10. Courts allow huge awards because they don’t care.

Task 6. Ask questions to which the following statements are the answers:

1. Journalists often rate a Congress by how many new laws it turns out.

2. Federal regulations also generate lawsuits.

3. There are 30 state legislatures in the USA.

4. Most of the lawyers in the world now live in the United States.

5. There is little satisfaction in placing No. 2 in a lawsuit.

6. To encourage lawyers to represent penniless individuals who have been victims of discrimination.

7. Such awards can run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

8. Either taxpayers or consumers pay the large amounts.

Task 7. Explain in English what the words and word combinations mean. Use them in your own sentences

Over-lawyered, lawsuits, statutes, to generate, state legislatures, to resolve disputes, a prosperous profession, to get out of balance, to get overpaid, to pick up the bill, losing defendants, to set no ceiling on, top partners, to economize

Task 8. Practice the speech patterns given below. Make up two sentences of your own on each pattern

1. Lawyers who can benefit from limitless attorney-fee statutes have no reason to economize — the more hours they spend litigating, the more money they collect. I know that the longer I sat, the meaner I grew.

2. We have some 700,000 lawyers for a population of 240 million. A judge can handle some hundred cases monthly. My guess is she is some twenty years old.

3. To encourage lawyers to represent penniless individuals who have been victims of discrimination, Congress passed the Civil Rights Attorneys Fees Awards Act in 1976. To help this process along, Congress and the courts must set some limits on their will­ingness to subsidize litigation.

4. It's hard to believe that the restaurant would have been willing to pay that much out of its own pocket. In any case I do not believe that rapists are that calm or that rational.

5. Courts allow huge awards because they operate one case at a time and seldom consider who is really pay­ing the large amounts they distrib­ute.

Task 9. Make the summary of the text. Use the key words and word combinations

Text 3

Task 1. Answer the questions:

1. What is a judge’s work?

2. Why do people prefer their case to be tried by jury?

3. What human dis­agreements can be solved in courts?

Task 2. Read the text to get the main idea paying special attention to the underlined parts of the text (key words and word combinations

Overweight. It used to be, as Justice Louis Brandeis said, that unlike the other institutions of gov­ernment, "here we do our own work." Judges were once respected because they themselves thought through and decided their cases, and wrote opinions for all to see. Now judges have law clerks in ever-growing numbers who help with legal research and drafting opinions. Partly as a result of their large staffs, appellate judges write opinions that are much more lengthy and ponderous than those of a generation or two ago. These befuddle the law. A recent opinion by the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington contained a footnote that ran on for four pages and consumed 1700 words. This same court is responsible for opinions that have run more than 100 pages. Justice Holmes used to do a more-than-adequate job in four or five.

The volume of legal palaver was once limited by how many sheets of carbon paper would fit in the typewriter, or how much the client would pay to have the attorneys’ deathless prose printed. Now court decisions are on computers. Word processors and photocopiers make it possible to crank out more pages in the time allotted, so judges are forced to read longer briefs.

Some Solutions. Lawmakers have to set tighter limits on the disputes that courts will entertain. "Palimony" is a good example. When the law provides a perfectly clear option (marriage) for arrang­ing mutual obligations, why should courts feel free to create new ones?

Arbitration already has replaced court litigation as a way of resolving disputes under most major commercial contracts and labor agreements. Because the Constitu­tion guarantees the right to a jury trial, it probably is impossible to require arbitration in personal-injury matters or to leave civil dis­putes to be settled by judges rather than by juries, the way nearly all lawsuits are in England. Arbitra­tion could be required, however, to limit court cases brought under many federal statutes, such as em­ployment discrimination and Social Security matters, just as workers’ compensation statutes took cases out of the courts earlier in this decade.

Incentives for litigation have gone too far. Punitive damages, which hold out the hope of striking it rich, should be abolished except in truly egregious cases. Other awards should be kept in rein, especially where damage is not clearly demonstrated.

Some of the legal system's difficulties probably will be moderated over time by market forces. Com­petition is likely to inspire new systems for delivering legal services, such as group insurance programs and supermarket-style operations. Such devices may help middle-class citizens resolve disputes. More lawyers probably will become salaried, and by the end of the century, the contours of the legal profession could look decidedly different.

Meanwhile, to help this process along, Congress and the courts must set some limits on their will­ingness to subsidize litigation. If the courts are overloaded, we can pass fewer laws that authorize lawsuits and can look for alternative mechanisms to settle disputes. If there are too many lawsuits, courts can exercise tighter control over what types of human unhappiness they are willing to order payment for — and how much. If there are too many lawyers, we can stop subsidizing them with money from sources other than their clients, and let nature take its course.

Finally, as a country — and as individual citizens — we need to stop taking everything to court. If family, church, school, even bureaus of government themselves don't try harder to solve more human disagreements on their own, no number of courts and lawyers will be able to do it for them.