By chance, I stumbled on a weblog post at Metafilter titled "Doctors refuse lawyers," which was triggered by reports that some doctors are refusing to treat plaintiffs' lawyers. At the time I noticed the post, there were 35 comments by various readers. Some of the commenters seemed to understand the basic issues, some didn't. The post and comments can be found here.
In reading the comments, it occurred to me that a thread like this might be very helpful to a lawyer preparing for jury selection in a medical malpractice case. For example, one commenter writes:
Lets just make it illegal for a lawyer's compensation to be a percentage of the settlement. The problem will go away.
Another writes:
I agree with the doctors.This is a stand, the doctoring equivalant of going on strike, and I'm all for it. When you can be sued after doing your job competently (which is what we're talking about here), and not only is this is something that is happening more & more, but it's also an issue which society / government is refusing to do anything about, then it's time to go on strike.
As far as I can tell, the American legal system allows the most ridiculous settlements for the most minor (& sometimes none existant injuries). If I were a doctor, I'd be refusing to treat lawyers too.
These commenters raise some points a careful lawyer would want to address in jury selection. But the idea of using weblogs to prepare for jury selection isn't limited to medical malpractice cases: blogs might open a window on the thinking of typical jurors on many other issues. I'll think about this some more and report back later.
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