Question:  My best friend here on campus is planning to go to law school after graduation. I think that’s great–she’s a talented and smart person, and I’m sure she’ll make a fantastic lawyer. But I have to say that I was a little put off when I found out that she is planning to join her father’s law firm, a personal injury firm. I don’t like the idea of getting money from other people in the way that personal injury lawyers do. I don’t think it’s right the way lawyers can sue other people over their clients’ mistakes, like that lady who spilled her coffee on herself and sued McDonald’s. I remember my parents telling me when I was a kid that we couldn’t get a pool because of the “liability issues.” It all just seems really selfish and sleazy to me.

I feel terrible thinking this way about my friend and her father, so I try to pretend to be as excited about her future as she is. But the truth is that I want something better for her! What should I do?

Answer: What you should do is take a closer look at the way you think of some types of lawyers.

Like any other group, lawyers have their fair share of questionable characters. But the broad strokes with which you’re painting personal injury lawyers are doing them a disservice and giving you a warped view of the world.

For instance, there’s no merit to the type of lawsuit you’re talking about when you say that attorneys sue others over mistakes their own clients make. If you are injured through a mistake of your own, then you are highly unlikely to be successful in suing anyone else, because the law is simply not on your side. We need personal injury attorneys, say lawyers at Alabama’s Moore Law Firm, for instances when we are injured through no fault of our own. That’s when someone else is liable (responsible), and we are entitled to compensation. It’s about fairness, not greed: if someone else’s malice or negligence puts you in the hospital, then you shouldn’t have to pay those hospital bills.

Of course, sometimes the wrong people win lawsuits (and anyone can try to sue anyone, which is part of why only 4% of personal injury lawsuits make it to court). But bad judgments don’t happen as often as many of us believe, and some of the most famous examples–such as the “hot coffee” lawsuit you referred to–did not happen the way they are remembered in the popular culture. For instance, the hot coffee case really did involve coffee heated to extremely unsafe temperatures, and the victim suffered grisly burns.

And it’s not as if liability is all that easy to come by. Sure, your parents would have had certain responsibilities if they had installed a pool on their property–but the installation consultants at Monarch Pools and Spas told us that it’s easy to fulfill your legal obligations to keep a pool safe. Fencing off the pool to keep it out of the way of wandering neighborhood kids is both a common-sense measure and a legal obligation, and only those who recklessly ignore such obligations should reasonably fear personal injury and wrongful death suits.

Of course, there are some unscrupulous personal injury attorneys. But if you believe your friend to be as moral as she is intelligent, then you should rest assured that she’s on her way to a career of helping injured parties–and there’s nothing wrong with that.

“Hate lawyers all you want. Unlike you, we’ll never be replaced with robots! Case closed!” — Natalya Vorobyova