Have you ever tried to find a phone book that does not have an ad for an attorney on the back? I have travelled a lot of places in this country and always make a point of checking the back of the phone book to see. Most of the time, they are malpractice attorneys at that. So far, in my years of searching, I have probably checked over 100 different phone books in at least 15 states and have only found one phone book that did not, and that one was very out of date. The phone book we receive here even has a magnet of a malpractice attorney firm on the cover so one can put it on the refrigerator just in case one comes upon the emergent need to file a malpractice lawsuit.

Do not get me started on the class action lawsuit ads against every medication that has that possibility of have some unpleasant side effect. Many of those ads are targeting some of the very precious few decent medications that psychiatry has available to help people improve their quality of life. Realistically, the benefits of the medications far outweigh the risks of the side effects, which are at times extraordinarily rare and often cannot be proven to have actually been caused by the medication itself vs the fact that some people are going to get diabetes, weight gain, etc.

The problem is there are too many lawyers. Law schools do not do a good job at limiting the amount of new lawyers to the amount that the market is going to need. A lot of new lawyers are graduating with no job and $75,000 or more of student loans to pay off. Even when they do get jobs in a criminal or civil law firm, there are only so many criminal or civil cases out there. So they create work by drumming up malpractice cases, class action suits and social security disability cases.

Lawyers know there are too many lawyers out there when they enter the field. I have spoken to many of them who admit that it is very difficult to get by so I do not have a lot of pity on these guys. They knew what they were getting into when they entered law school. Like most doctors out there, there is not a lot of love lost between all those Social Security disability/malpractice/class action suit lawyers and me. The guy that did the closing on our home mortgage, he is okay. But he is not stabbing anyone in the back to pay his bills, either.

The debate has raged endlessly about putting limits on excessive malpractice suit payouts, and I, like most doctors support this, but I do not expect to see this happen anytime soon. For one, there are a lot more lawyers than doctors. Medical schools do not overproduce doctors, they try to use some common sense. Second, most of our legislators are attorneys and there are very few doctors elected to public office. My response to the whole thing is to at least stand up as a group and voice our dissatisfaction with the corrupt malpractice attorneys but designating an official:

National Give a Malpractice Attorney a Wedgie Day

During that time, all reasonable adults should be allowed to, without fear of repercussion, be allowed to give as many wedgies to as many malpractice attorneys as they like. It may not get anything done, but it would sure be a lot of fun and for once maybe these guys would know what it was like to be on the receiving end.