I'm playing in a SR3 campaign and we just came across a decent windfall, allowing my Shadowrunner to legally immigrate in the UCAS (through some favors) and get a SIN. One of the first things I got was a lawyer.

Technically he's on retainer but for a Shadowrunner with a SIN it seems like a great contact to have. I'm surprised I haven't heard more about it. After all, shadowrunners make a living slipping between the cracks in a heavily balkanized, jumping from one legal zone to another. I can't imagine lawyers haven't taken advantage of it and if a lawyer can keep me out of trouble with the Star why wouldn't I hire one? After most modern-day criminals have excellent legal representation.

So I have a few questions:

1st, how do you handle payment. So far I'm talking with the GM and I thinking of something like a DocWagon contract. You pay an annual fee to have a lawyer on call, with extra payment if it goes to trial and more service if you pay a larger annual fee.

2nd, how does the law work with extra-territoriality. For example, lets say my character make a run on Renraku, get off their territory but get caught by the Star on UCAS ground. Is evidence from Renraku legally admissible in a UCAS court?

3rd, how does the law work in megacorp territory? There have to be laws in order for any territory that operate efficiently (the law being whatever the boss wants works well occasionally but over the long-term creates so much chaos and inefficiency it can't be effective) and UCAS citizens have to have some rights on megacorp property (otherwise no one would go there to BUY things).

From a slightly more metagame perspective, the Shadowrun world is a dystopia where the "have-nots" are screwed and the "haves" are virtually untouchable. What happens when a shadowrunner starts to get enough money/influence/contacts to fall onto the "have" side rather than the "have-nots"?

(For the record, my character has spent time and money building up the kind of contacts and resources to make me appear as a small, successful businessman. He spent $100,000 on a bar which he owns and operates, lives in a nice neighborhood, wears expensive clothes, drives a nice car, knows respectable people, etc.

1: Depends on how you're dealing with the Lawyer. A retainer is always good, with various optional payment plans with the bigger firms. Also, Lawyers need Shadowruns too, and if they know what you're being tried for, they also know what you do for a living. Oh, major thing, make damn sure the money is CLEAN. Otherwise the DA/CA/whatever can try and argue that there was a Conspiracy to Commit a Felony, which loses your Lawyer.

2: Badly. It all depends on the politics currently going on. Extradition to/from Corporate Territory is a tricky business. Smart 'Runners pay attention to politics and know that Evo and the UCAS are currently on negative political terms, and can duck into an Evo Enclave with their Evo Citizenship SINs and hide there, and the Security Company will tell the UCAS, "What people, we have no one like that. No, you can't see our Personnel files. No, you can't come here. Good-bye.". On the flipside, if those problems went away, and the UCAS has evidence, Evo will hand them over nicely as they're supposed to respect the Government they're in the lands of. All part of The Great Game.

3: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... This one is a bit of a dog's breakfast, and depends on the Corp. But mostly each Corporation has it's own laws, and if you're on their territory, you're expected to obey those laws (Like if you were visiting a foreign country.). A good example of this is a Japanese person visiting Canada, and bringing their Manga for nighttime on train trips and the like. Some Manga is illegal in Canada due to the Age of Consent differences, and a Japanese person would be expected to obey those laws.

1 - That's how I understand it working, so seems reasonable.

2 - This is where things get complex. A lawyer can only work where he is... licensed? This is why a lawyer in Louisiana can't work in Mississippi, unless he's licensed in the second one as well. For a runner who does a lot of travel, this is obviously a concern, and, more commonly, for extraterritoriality. A lawyer licensed with the UCAS won't be any use if you're being held for trial in Renraku territory. If he's part of a legal group, it's more likely they have lawyers registered for multiple different jurisdictions (and paying for that service will probably cost extra on your jurisdiction). I would be surprised if any companies have lawyers with ALL jurisdictions, you'll either need multiple lawyers on retainer, or just avoid getting caught in certain territory.

And all of that is rather moot if the corporation decides that it doesn't want your particular lawyer to be represented, or that, for whatever reason, your crime doesn't warrant a standard trial.

1: Seems reasonable.

2: Megacorps (AA and AAA) are pretty much sovereign in their own right. They have their own laws, and their extraterritorial possessions are bound by those laws. If you committed a crime on Renraku soil, the UCAS has nothing to do with that. The UCAS might extradite you to Renraku, but no crime has been committed on UCAS soil, so the UCAS courts aren't involved.

3: Megacorps have their own laws. Some are nicer than others.

Nice?

I would think that since the Corporate Court grants extraterritoriality and has some sort of agreement with most of the nations of the world that there is a universal bar exam so lawyers can represent their clients in more than one area. This would streamline the legal process and allow corporations to represent their clients when caught on national (or other corporate) soil, have a judgement agreed upon by everyone to be fair and balanced, and would allow public defenders paid for by the state to be used anywhere.

Alternatively, the courts may very well push their lawbreakers off to the host country's legal system much like we do today. Get caught in Seattle on Renraku territory, be prosecuted as according to UCAS law. Get nailed on an Evo territory in Russia - well, I hear the gulags aren't nice this time of year.

Today, while a lawyer has to be a member of the bar association of whatever locale your being tried in to represent you solo; the easy work-around is to associate with a local attorney for that case. Your attorney still represents ;you, and the local is there to advise on the variations in the law for the area.

It would really have to be similar in SR, there's simply no way in that type of Balkanized world that you could have a universal lawyer. At least half of each Bar Exam is on the local law, and no one is good enough to remember every variation.

Yeah. Nice to them. I particularly like a little bit of Astlaner/Aztechnology law : a criminal is the sole responsible for whatever collateral damages Aztlan police does catching him, and the police always comes clean. Even if they use frag grenades in a marketplace...

Some will a little lube before before they have their way with you. Others might ask nicely.

Many won't.

You dont really exist so...

Sure you could. Common corporate law would allow for extraterritorial sites to have their own basic code of laws like any nation does. No killing, no theft, no property damage - these are all common to the great majority of legal systems that exist today. With the easy connection to the Matrix, any lawyer can slot a chip on 'local legal mumbo-jumbo' and have what they need.

Even today, U.S. states are starting to gravitate towards a 'Unversal Bar Exam' that covers common law. A murder trial in Florida is more or less the same as a murder trial in New York.

Corporate Court on ZO?
I would imagine they have high-powered lawyers.

and think about those "mesophylioma" lawyers now. In 2070 I bet they have a field day with shadowrunners trying to get data to force Megacorp X to cough up a tiddy little settlement on the giant class action suit.

Still, I would imagine that outside lawyers specializing in Renkaru Law or Ares Law are..a very minor pool of people.

Sure, today we're gravitating towards a more unified, federalized legal system, where a Bar Exam could cover multiple locales that more or less use the exact same system. That's not what the SR world was gravitating towards at all, last I checked.

That is certainly not normal where I live. You pay by the hour in almost all instances. Some standard cases, you pay a flat fee (like writing and registering a deed).

For example, Ares law resembles UCAS law to a far greater degree than Renraku law does. So the chances of any Ares punishment being cruel and unusual aren't as high




Wouldn't that be setting a risky precedent?

It's standard for businesses (at least the larger ones) and wealthy individuals (and criminals) who regularly need a lawyer. Retainers are not common at all for anyone else.

Usually the Retainer is above and beyond any specific legal work.

It's for general legal advice, and for them to show up at your house at 3am before the police arrive to take away the dead hooker.

If they have to go to court, or draw up legal papers of any kind, they charge you billable hours.
The retainer is to make sure they'll pick up your call, and be there for you.

How so? Corporate lawyers can slot the local customs pretty fast, and it was established back in Sprawl Survival Guide that judges were available 24/7 (which pissed them off beyond belief) due to the sheer amount of cases on the docket. Either the corp is going to turn them over for a judge to preside in Corp v Shadowrunner or the 'runner's going to disappear due to being SINless and in a potentially nasty place.

I could see a problem with the 'runner blabbing about what he saw re: human rights violations and other stuff, but I'm not seeing much of a better way for a shadowrunner to have a lawyer on retainer with the current balkanization.

Unless you've got common corporate law/universal bar with headware to fill in the blanks depending on where the case is held. Then your UCAS retained lawyer has a staff that can slot the chip, tell him what Mitsuhama corporate law is and how it differs, and he can cover the case. At the same time, one wonders how many shadowrunners are actually prosecuted on corporate grounds. My guess is 'not many'.

I've preferred a Fixer to a Lawyer. A fixer might have the connections necessary to spring you, though it may require a service rather than passing some cash, maybe even the ones that manage to get your criminal SIN 'lost in the system'.

I'll have to remember that one when I start having drones lay down LMG EX-ex suppressive fire into a crowd.

That's not far off from current US criminal law. Under some states' felony murder rules, if a cop shoots a bystander in the course of trying to arrest an offender who is in the course of committing another felony, the offender is liable for murder.

Any death that is the result of committing a felony is concidered murder.

So, you're committing a felony and some security guard runs after you and has a heart attack? congrats you just coped a murder 1 charge.

The cop's also suspended from duty while the shooting is investigated. If civilians are getting hit, chances are the board's going to rule it was a bad shot and he's gonna lose his badge.

Cops also have a pretty specific list of "acceptable risks to take during pursuit" and the like, and if they go off that, they can easily find themselves facing criminal charges of negligent homicide and the department would be likely be liable for lawsuits as well. So the whole "absolving of all responsibility" thing that Aztlan has is pretty far from current law.

What I mean is, it could set a bad precedent for an extraterritorial corp to deny their own jurisdiction. If a crime is committed on Renraku soil, and Renraku has it prosecuted in a UCAS court, that sets a precedent that the UCAS has jurisdiction over Renraku. And that's something they schemed so hard to prevent in the first place.

Actually, I think it would violate the Shiawase Decision and Business Recognition Accords for a corp to export jurisdiction over a case that should rightfully be the corp's. It's tempting the Corporate Court to strip the corp of extraterritorial status.




Just because captured/extradited shadowrunners might not get the trial they are "entitled" to, doesn't mean the corp couldn't try them if it wanted to. But in practice the runners just get a cranial bomb and a make-up suicide mission most of the time.

I see it like this: formally the SINless have basic human rights, just like citizens. But the few Amnesty-like groups that try to protect the SINless in court are chronically overworked and totally sabotaged. So just because SINless people have the right to a trial according to the UN, doesn't mean legal representation reaches them before they're sentenced to the chair.
The difference with SINners, is that SINners are citizens of this or that sovereign body, who may protect said citizen, and try to get a fair trial. Renraku will make sure Ares doesn't randomly persecute their wageslaves. SINless people have no-one (with real power) to watch out for them.

Ooh, that's true. I hadn't considered that precedent. Leans more towards the 'universal bar exam' idea then, augmented with knowsofts.

I suppose the Corporate Court might have its own bar exam, for lawyers qualified to mediate in jurisdiction disputes (you know, the disputes that really count). After all, the CC is all about keeping the corps' and governments' jurisdictions functioning. That probably includes the grease on the wheels (lawyers).

1st, on lawyers, bar exams, and regional laws. I figure if you're buying legal services through a retainer, you're probably going through a legal company (Fastjack & Associates, etc) with a team of lawyers so if you get in trouble with Ares, they dispatch their Ares lawyer who is licensed to work in Ares territory. If you have a single lawyer contact though, I can't see why the corps would allow a lawyer to be licensed in both the UCAS and their territory. Besides, I can't see the lawyers liking the idea of a universal bar exam (if anybody can do Ares law, then a lawyer is pretty cheap. If only a few specially licensed people can do it, then they get to charge a lot for their services).

2nd, on corps prosecuting shadowrunners. The problem I see is that most of the fluff seems to assume that if you're a runner and you're caught on corp property then you're SINless and they can do whatever they want with you. The problem I have with this is that the average UCAS SINer is going to walk through at least a half dozen different extra-territorial zones in a given day. If Corp law comes down to "whatever the local corp boss wants to do" then there's no way the average SINer wageslave is going to subject himself to that just to buy a new tridvid at a Renraku shop. A UCAS SINer has to have some legal protection on extraterritorial property. The problem I have is I have no idea what those rights would look like.
For example:
I get caught running in Fuchi. If I'm SINless I'm screwed, end of story. If I'm a SINer though, I get a call off to my lawyer before I'm caught and he puts in call to the Fuchi courts saying he knows his client has been detained and he wants to set a court date. Does the corp then have to formally try me in their courts? If they don't, why would any SINer risk going there on daily business? If they do, even if I don't have a chance in court that gives me a chance to call some friends or have my crew bust me out.

Thanks, I've really enjoyed some of the replies.

Considering Slamm-O!s security company, I'd suggest another firm.

I went and did some digging in Vice, and according to that; "non-corporate citizens caught committing a crime on corporate territory can be dealt with as the corporation pleases". However, notice that it's "territory" and not "property". Just because you knock over the local Stuffer Shack doesn't mean that Aztech gets dibs on you, but do a run on any of their major facilities and they certainly will. Extraterritorial property is not "anything a AAA owns" (or it shouldn't be, anyway). Unless I'm reading things wrong, the extraterritorial clause only applies to places non-corpers are not going to be welcome, ie major facilities, enclaves, arcologies, etc. Unless you're working for the relevant corp, you aren't likely to have a (legal) reason to go there. On your question about getting caught inside an extraterritorial - you're probably going to have whatever rights the UCAS is willing to go to bat for you to have... in other words, unless you have a crackerjack story why you were (and maybe even if you do) they're going to wash their hands of you.

If you're running against a foreign national power though, it's much more likely to be effective.

No, paying a lawyer a retainer is pretty common. The $1,000 retainer you paid them two years ago means that they show up when you call from jail instead of waiting until your girlfriend delivers them $10,000 in cash up front. Which I'm told is the minimal amount needed for a lawyer to even show up for a murder case around here.

I know my company offers a legal service con contract. But it's for minor stuff, like writing letters to deal with issues. But it's also not a lot of money.

Retainers are more expensive if the lawyer expects you'll actually need him, and the retainer is applied to the hourly charge, it doesn't replace it. Though you might get a deal.

We never needed a lawyer. If you end up needing a defense lawyer you are SO screwed....

I live in Denmark, so things might well be different.

But as someone pointed out, and you seem to say too, the retainer doesn't include any actual work - you're still going to pay him per hour for anything he does. The only difference seem to be that the US it is common to "establish a relationship" by paying a retainer.

slot a couple know softs, and you'd be surprised.

Yup. But defense attorneys normally work for people who are in fact guilty of crimes, so they tend to take steps to ensure they get paid by the criminals they work for. I've been told by lawyers that this normally means someone has to pay them (in cash or some other sort of irrevocable fund transfer) at least $10,000 and possibly a lot more before they will show up. And most people find it hard to raise $10,000 in cash at 3 am when they are sitting in an interrogation room.

I'm not sure how common it is to actually do, as I've also been told by attorneys that they really don't want to get involved in something that smells to them like someone planning to commit a crime.

We always avoided the whole arrest process in any game I played, so I'm not sure exactly how this would work. If you need a lawyer to take care of minor stuff your lifestyle should cover it. If you actually get arrested for the sort of serious felonies that most runners do you are pretty much cooked. Even if you get off in the trial 18 months later how many month of showing up to game just to tell the GM that "Bob will sit in his cell and ponder how to escape" while everyone else does cool stuff.

Doing the whole "We all know that in 20 minutes my overpiad lawyer will walk in that door, and I'll be out of here in time to catch the Screamer's game tonight" routine could be fun though. The movies are full of criminals getting caught without the police being able to hold them.

But if you're not walking right away, getting out on bail, or doing a jailbreak, yeah the character is dead. For the first two, a good lawyer would come in handy.

In the old Lone Star source book, there were rules on it iirc.

It's not really all that weird actually. Corp law isn't a closely guarded secret, not the portions a wageslave normally comes into contact with anyway. Extraterritoriality law comes with obligations to the corps to clearly label such territory, and I assume with AR tags of local regulations visitors should be aware of, such as parking regulations, controlled substances, smoking in public buildings, legal drinking age, age of consent etc.
It's like going across the border in Europe to do some shopping. It's been quite normal and relaxed for several decades now. The Swedes go to Denmark to buy cheap booze without any fuss, but the Dutch know not to bring marijuana to France on a holiday.
Get caught in another country doing a crime? Sure, you might be in some trouble, but lawyers will sort it out, along with the consulate. Now, if you happen to be an illegal alien (SINless), you might be in a bit more trouble, and you won't get as much consular assistance I imagine.



The Renraku Arcology was a major shopping and entertainment center for Seattle. Extraterritorial ground isn't for everything, but it's not that rare either.



This is indeed a major point. On the one hand, a character that actually has a good lawyer on retainer might be able to get out quickly enough to remain playable in cases where a character without lawyer wouldn't.

If a character is locked up, that seems like a good moment for the GM to ask the player how attached he is to the character; if the player prefers to keep the character, it's time to cook up a way to get the character out of jail (but not for free!)

Thanks. That makes a lot of sense.


That's basically what I'm aiming for. Sometimes things go wrong and I like having a "get out of jail" free card, even if we might have to do a run to pay for it. Also, it would be interesting to do a run where the goal isn't to avoid leaving evidence but to avoid leaving legally admissible evidence.


That means certain things, for example that the corp has to follow the published laws. It's like the difference between going to France and going to North Korea. Both of them are foreign nations but the rule of law is very different in each. I'm trying to figure out which side of that divide a megacorp would fall on.

Generally I think they do follow their published laws, at least in the places where the general public is welcome. Secret bases are different of course. If they did too many weird things in the public-welcoming locations, they'd lose customers.

Not to mention employee dissatisfaction, negative pr campaigns from citizens' rights groups, and most importantly - loss of investor trust which really impacts stock value. Investors won't like it if there's a secret police that gets to operate outside of the law, without oversigt and full disclosure. What else are they doing? Is corruption spreading? Is it being used to further the goals of individuals rather than the bottom line? This something top management would worry about too - they set out guidelines and expect people to follow them, they can't just have people doing their own thing.

That doesn't mean they always play nice, but I imagine it working in many ways like the US. Sure, you might rub some folks the wrong way, but most of the time, that's not going to get you dissappeared - but planted evidence, false testimony, coerced witnesses, leaned on judges, that's another matter. But very, very few people actually have the ability to just lose you.

As you say, secret bases is another matter, and some counterintelligence unit perhaps wouldn't let you see a judge either - but again, that's much like today, where reporters get gunned down by attack helicopters and no one is the wiser.

IIRC: The corp must have clearly delineated the property as extraterritotrial (Fence, sin posts, AR etc) for that to qualify.

There's also a minimum square footage rule.

The key word here beind published. For exemple Aztlan's constitution has several classified sections whose content is not known outside of the upper ranks of power...

Do you know what it is?

I sort of handwave it away by saying that the country has to acknowledge the area as extraterritorial, which has various not-really-defined conditions that need to apply if the corp wants to press it through.

As a side note, in RL I live on property owned by an African state. I used to be their embassy, and I know lease it from them. AFAIK Danish law applies in my home.

It's mentioned in one of the books. Though I honestly don't remember where now.
Or it might have been in one of AH's files that he put up for free after he stopped writing for CGL.

I remember reading it, but now I can't find it.

One thing I want to point out is that the idea that no one lawyer could act in any court isn't really backed up by the whole "he/she wouldn't be able to memorize all the different regional/corp specific laws". I personally can't imagine a lawyer in 2060 without some cyber to enhance their performance, so they would likely have access to any and all relevent know-skills.

A 2060s lawyer would likely have a few of the following:
datajack (to allow knowsofts and lingasofts)
commlink
cybereyes or at least image link (to look up and view case info without stopping proceedings) & eye recording unit (you just KNOW a lawyer would record everything "just in case")
cyberears or at least ear recording unit (again)
Tailored Pheromones (to help with juries, but less likely to see since it's illegal)
Cerebral booster
Sleep Regulator
Encephalon
Clean Metabolism


They're likely have to take a bar for each corp though, mostly because they'd have to pay the relevant corp the licensing fee, can't miss out on that; especially if you make them renew it. It also allows the corp to restrict the legal presence in their territory. Since they can make their own laws they can easily discriminate against the lawyers taking the exam however they like, such as "did this lawyer embarrass us before?", etc.

So yeah, I think a well connected lawyer could easily represent on several different corp territories.

Home turf advantage will probably always apply. A prisoner of KE or Lonestar is technically a prisoner of the nation they're serving the contract with, so for Seattle technically you'd still be a UCAS prisoner. Though they may do stuff like lose you in processing so no one knows where you are. In such a case, a UCAS citizen, being held in a UCAS jail, with a UCAS Lawyer might field an advantage, especially in resisting extradition. Bonus if KE and/or Lonestar find the incident amusing and think the corp in question deserved a good 'f-u', hell they could add conflicting evidence supposedly gained when they picked the criminal up that counters the story the original corp is giving. "What? sorry your pyramid is on fire, Mr. Aztechnologyman, at the time you say this prisoner was screwing around in your facility, we actually had eyes on him committing another <insert minor/whatever> crime, which is why we picked him up."

On the other hand, for those in Seattle that screw with Ares and get caught by KE, there might be some additional hurdles.

A UCAS citizen taken prisoner on corporate soil that has its own independent domain rights, is pretty much screwed, and best bet for survival is whatever personal skills they have to convince said corp not to otherwise end their lives. The UCAS citizen with the UCAS Lawyer might be able to get extradition requests filed, but the corp would likely tell the UCAS Lawyer to fuck off. If they don't just deny having the UCAS citizen in the first place.

I'll just chime in here with some thoughts from my own practice.

Generally speaking, reading about how the law works in SR makes my head hurt (literally, a couple of times). So it's best to just decide what kind of storytelling you want to use when incorporating this. I'll tell you that I don't put a lot of thought into it because I play the game as an escape. Aside from that it can easily become too engrossing if you get caught up in the details--and with the law, it's nothing but details. So I just wing it on the few times it's come up.


Good idea.


That's fine. It's basically how some prepaid legal programs work, but really we're mostly talking about retainers for the opportunity to have a lawyer/firm on call, but then billable hours kick in. And, yes, it usually costs more than double per hour for going to trial.

I keep reading about how civil lawyers are being pushed to go into a different model similar to what you describe, especially with corporate clients. I don't like it, but it's a buyers market for legal services, so I can see someone offering this in SR for civil and criminal services. The thing is that civil representation in these contracts are already based on an expected relationship. Of course, civil lawyers are being outsourced to India now. So basically it sucks to be them in SR.

A criminal representation contract would be a crapshoot because there's not much you can legally or ethically plan to cover, so the assumption is that a runner gets the all-inclusive package that covers everything from shoplifting to capital murder. But that's a . That's why legal insurance and prepaid plans just work for civil law. Since it focuses on money, there are built-in quantifiers where the relationship can just end and there's no ethical or other considerations (it's not well-regarded in legal ethics or by the courts to drop a client in the middle of criminal defense. In civil, shit happens. It's a ethical grey area, but there's no Constitutional issues at stake). But there's a huge difference between paying $1,000 flat fee for a DUI and $100,000 just to have a lawyer agree to represent you on a murder charge (And, yes, I know lawyers who do that.) because that is a down-payment on a quarter million dollars of defense you are about to get (and pay for).


Probably similar to laws between nations, because that is in fact what we are discussing here. There's also the whole issue of international law that then comes up with these dealings, and that whole subject matter is either complicated or vague and either way is hard to enforce or even grasp. Look at the law from the extraterritorial corps' perspective. They have one set of laws that applies globally to their extraterritorial holdings (theirs and the Corporate Court's). They have do to business with different laws in each country and in different parts of a lot of countries.

As to your specific question: Probably. It depends on the rules of evidence for the specific UCAS jurisdiction on how it needs to be authenticated for admission and whether or not that it meets the various criteria for authenticity and relevance. I can tell you that given the way tech works, especially in SR4, that this would be a huge deal and a lot of time and effort and law would be focused on this issue.


Exactly. Foreign citizens have to follow the law of their jurisdiction. A UCAS citizen has to follow Aztechnology's law in the Seattle pyramid just like they would if they went to Aztlan or France or the moon (which I guess would be Ares or Evo law).


They can buy their way out of trouble.

I assume that the Corporate Court has the same process for admitting lawyers to the bar as the Supreme Court does, which is pretty much a paperwork issue. Look at the parties who are even allowed before it. It's not a long list. The bar is already set by the client themselves, and they probably have solicitors' offices like the Department of Justice made up of hotshot lawyers who do nothing but Corporate Court casework.


If you're going with the legal equivalent of DocWagon, then it's easier to just say they have an affiliate counsel/firm for each megacorp. Again, to get into minutiae there's going to be some picking and choosing. "Oops. Your contract only covers AAA corps. You're on your own with Yakashima (which would be bad. Very bad.)"

They might, but I can't imagine a lot of lawyers would. It's a huge hassle to get admitted to multiple state bars. You're talking about admission to multiple international bars. Getting admitted to practice before Aztechnology is literally like me getting admitted to practice in Mexico. It can be done, but why? There are a lot of reasons to oppose universal bar exams by lawyers, courts, and state/quasi-state entities, mainly based on competence. People bitch about having to memorize information for the bar exam (it is the last legal writing one will ever be expected to do without research material), but yet people still fail them all the time because they are not competent to know and understand and articulate on the law without having to hit up Westlaw. Even then, Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis are not the be-all end-all of the law, and there is a point where you either know something or don't.

At least in the United States when it comes to criminal law (which is what we're discussing here. I treat SIN-related issues as immigration law, which is civil, and which sucks because the Constitution doesn't protect you like if you were charged as a criminal) there is a universally-applied floor: The Constitution. Pan-corporate law doesn't really have that except to the extent of whatever part of the Business Recognition Accords and Corporate Court caselaw are recognized by the corps on the matter, which I treat as about as much and as relevant as what the World Court and the UN Declaration of Human Rights have to say (basically nothing) to government's criminal laws. And that's for something relatively universal.


Most people traveling abroad don't know or care about those laws. It generally doesn't matter because they're not going to break the law (or if they do it's minor and probably won't even be known or hassled), but if they break the law then it's their ass. And tough shit. Ignorance of the law is no defense. Never has been. Never will be.

A UCAS citizen has the same rights everyone else has on corporate property. The way the law works in SR, you know that they're going to be treated liked human beings (not saying where) compared to SINless runners who are out of luck. But I'm sure that there's a story every sweeps period in the UCAS about some dumbass getting run over by some corp's laws because they did something stupid at an extraterritorial mall. Not knowing that there are different laws in AAA/AA marked territory is like not knowing the law in Mexico is different. The only people who wouldn't are either stupendously ignorant or don't care at their peril.


Everyone hates lawyers.

Right up to the moment they need one.


Well, I'm not going to prison because I guessed wrong and didn't report what could have been pre-planning and the DA decided to burn my ass (right before I get disbarred). Of course, if I do them my client is going to be just a little pissed and I'm going to be sued for malpractice. It's a horrible grey area where you're screwed either way. So see above about planning for legal services. The first thing on any paper for people who walk in would be to tell them to keep their mouths shut about anything even hinting at intent to do anything.

A datajack ?Maybe.

Blackberries might as well be surgically attached at the swearing-in ceremony now.


And that toxin filter for all the alcoholic and cokehead lawyers (There is a significant incidence of substance abuse in the profession).

The problem with recording everything is that there aren't many cases where I would expect the environment not to be set up for it. I'm also not comfortable with the idea of recording everything on principle and because it may violate wiretapping laws.


Except that sovereigns love the idea of their own laws and don't particularly liked adhesing them to someone else's. Getting states to update changes to the Uniform Commercial Code is a pain, and that's a pretty straightforward set of laws they've all already agreed to in past forms. Plus it's a good idea in general. But the ALI is filled with model uniform rules and statutes that are good ideas that will never be adopted.


It's not that common now.


Oh, sure. There's the MPRE (ethics) and the Multi-state bar exam test. But there's will always be an essay component decided by each state's board of bar examiners, and some of the differences are significant.

And murder trials are always different, and the rules of evidence and criminal procedure can vary more than you think. And criminal law is pretty uniform in the U.S.

Civil law is hugely different from state to state.


I would beg to differ.


Like I said, I treat the SINless like undocumented immigrants. Sure they have civil/human rights, but (and this is a huge but) once they are in the immigration adjudication system they don't have the same rights or protections as criminal defendants and suspects and so cops can't just shoot them in the head with impunity (Though...)

There are people who have been locked up for civil contempt for years (One man for over 13) and they have no right to counsel, to appeal (except to the judge who found them in contempt), no right to a whole host of things. It's so much worse than being charged with a crime. That's the one thing I like about criminalizing immigration violations; it affords the suspects/defendants the same rights and protections as serial killers for once.

Bah, I could have sworn a stuck a "for the sake of argument" line in that post. Thanks for posting this though, it's been more than a few years since I was in law school, and I never got to actually practice (yay for the wife serving me divorce papers in the middle of my second year...)

Oh hell I hope not! Jack Thompson might get the right to be a lawyer in every State then! (Yes folks, he's back and practicing... Well, I wouldn't exactly call it Law. And has outright dared the Florida Bar to stop him.).

What's next, he gets to practice in Mexico and Canada with International Bar Exams?

Well, he's threatened to start practicing again, but aside from volunteering to drive up to Montana to give testimony on the effects of the "murder simulator" that the defendant played, I haven't heard of him actually going near the legal system.