I Am Completely Serious

Here is a story about his abilities that I think is pretty interesting! And also depressing. Also that.

( Warning for death. )

This was basically just spell-checking pleadings and asking me if his “wording made sense.” He didn’t actually usually change his wording if I said it didn’t, he just enjoyed it when I tried to tell him he was lawyering wrong.

When I was thirteen, though, he had a case in which someone had been found to have some illegal material on his work computer. This guy assured Dad that he’d just gotten said illegal material as attachments to spam, and that he hadn’t wanted any of it.

The prosecution gave us copies of the emails in question with full headers, and the headers obviously rendered these documents far too intimidating for Dad. He got home, handed them to me, and asked me to look over them and explain them to me.

I hope that the information which I have presented here has instilled in you an appropriate sense of dread.

The actual illegal stuff had been redacted out, but the “benign” files had not. These included a photo of a woman posing suggestively next to her horse. This image formed an important part of a long-running conversation that Dad’s client had been having with her!

I have never stopped telling my dad that he is lawyering wrong.

Me: You're watching criminals again, Mom.

Mom: Yep.

Me: Don't you get enough of that at work?

Mom: No... How could they possibly have shown that video of the woman with Alzheimers to a jury?! There's no way to cross-examine her! I've seen a death penalty case get thrown out over that, and they couldn't re-prosecute! Ugh.

I don't really get into internet arguments over the morality of murder, rape, domestic abuse, and so on. Not even when it happens in the relatively "safe" context of fictional narratives involving cake battles and clown hammers! And should you choose to "step to" me with regard to these topics, I am unlikely to respond.

Because, here's the thing. If I don't know you, you don't have a "right" to my time (or indeed to anyone's, of course) if you're defending things like that to me (or indeed ever, of course) and you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

(Or indeed, even if you do. But you probably don't, or you wouldn't be trying to debate the definition of "sexual assault" with a literally brain-damaged person ostensibly named "Snarp.")

This doesn't constitute cowardice on my part. The reason that I am not going to discuss this subject matter with you is twofold: First, you're probably an asshole.

Second,  I worked for two years at a law firm whose caseload was about half criminal defense work. This means that persons accused of having committed crimes paid us money to get them out of trouble. Some were innocent, but more were guilty. Real-life legal practice is not much like Phoenix Wright.

Now, I personally worked mainly on civil cases, but it was, on occasion, part of my actual job to think and write about violent crime, rape, and sexual assault! To communicate with dangerous people, sometimes in person! Though the best part was when I had to read through sexual predators' online communications, because I was the only one in the office who understood how email headers and IP addresses worked. This was sufficiently scarring to my libido that I think that I am now physically attracted only to "brainships."

What I'm trying to convey is that this job was emotionally tiring at best, and at worst legitimately frightening. At times people showed up in the office angry/intoxicated and apparently desirous of a physical altercation. Once a guy who'd come to beat up the secretary asked to borrow my scissors.

So, because debating the causes and consequences of human evil used to be an activity in which I had no choice but to engage, it's not something I always choose to do in my leisure time. And I am the one who gets to decide how I spend that time! Not you. So, instead of trying to engage me in a tussle about whether your favorite character is "legitimately" a rapist (or whatever it is you're going on about), I ask that you respect my boundaries, step away from the keyboard, and accept that you are just totally wrong.

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Kankri and Aranea are psychiatrists who are frequently called as expert witnesses. Kankri does only defense work because, when prompted correctly, he's willing to say that just about everyone is unfit for something, or that they will definitely not do whatever it was again because s9mething s9mething unprecedented special circumstances triggers s9mething. He's very cheap, so DB&D use him a lot.

But you really don’t want him in front of a jury, because he causes mistrials.

AG: All twelve jurors were wearing earb8uds for the whole third day!!!!!!!! And Judge, you read Anne 8ishop’s Dark Jewels series in its entirety over the course of Dr. Vantas’s two-day cross-examin8ion. That’s got spiders in it, right, is it any good?”

TT: It’s terrible.

AG: 8oooooooo.

On the other hand, it can take three days to depose him, so sometimes he ends up taking the stand anyway because no one can take the time out of their schedules to deal with that shit. His written reports can go more than fifty pages without conveying any actual information. Slick has to go through them and highlight the important parts if he can find them. Sometimes he walks wordlessly out of his office, stabs Karkat, and goes back in.

Aranea does mostly prosecution work and is capable, when presented with any form of extreme or apparently irrational behavior, of rationalizing it as 8eing the product of free will and entirely under the accused’s control. Latula beat her over the head with her skateboard the time she testified that Mituna understood the consequences of his actions when he blew up the Breaded Fried Nutbeast Thinkpan Festival because Cronus was there.

Aranea expends just as many words on this as does Kankri, but Terezi and Vriska have talked her down to a five-sentence limit on her answers when being cross-examined, and she’s reluctantly agreed to put her diagnosis on the first page of the report, even though that “leaves out important context. ::::(” Because of this, she is able to charge eight times as much as Kankri.

She can’t be in the courtroom while he’s testifying; she’s been picking up some bad habits from Vriska and will start mind-controlling him when she gets annoyed. That is grounds for a mistrial in the Commonwealth of Homestuck, as Judge Lalonde is surprised that she needs to remind Dr. Serket. Put him to sleep if you must, but no altering his testimony to insert a “Bel-Air.”

Calliope is for some reason the only court reporter in the county. When depositions go badly certain parties tend to whisper "Caliborn" in her earhole, and the transcript turns into just keyboard mashing and the word "BITCHES." Vriska and Slick once ended up stretching Aranea and Kankri's depositions to nine days like this. Addiction is a powerful thing.

Caliborn's stated profession is "ABOuT A ZILLION SOCKPuPPETS ON TOPIX LOCAL," though it may be that Calliope was the one who stated that. He does have about a zillion sockpuppets on Topix Local, though. State Representative Equius, an example of the genus of state representative who is always sweating and stammering, and whose suits are exclusively rumpled and blue, retains Roxy once a week or so to send off C&Ds about slanderous remarks made about him online.

Caliborn's not the only one on Topix Local who has things to say about him, there's an Equius Is Awful thread that never dies. He only proposes legislation that 1) requires lowbloods to show their ID in more places (movie theaters, the Cullmart dressing rooms), or 2) involves horses. The single popular thing he's done while in office was make it a culling offense to mutilate Tennessee walking horses so they walk prettier. No one's really sure sure how he got elected. Like was this his actual stated platform, what even happened.

He's a horse breeder, of course, and was in constant conniptions over the state in which the pony at Kurloz's horrorfarm was kept. When Nepeta moved in he paid for a complete overhaul of the stable, but not for any repairs to the house. (Its second story is unusable because it's completely overgrown with Gamzee's mushrooms. They're eating through the floors.)

The Midnight Crew is the worst criminal defense firm in history, Droog, Boxcars & Deuce. Slick used to be a partner but is now a paralegal because he got disbarred the third time he stabbed a client. (The first couple times were fine because the Homestuck Bar has a "three strikes" rule there.) Scratch is the county attorney, and Terezi and Vriska are Ace Prosecutors.

Aradia's also a paralegal, and she has to go over Slick's stuff to make sure he didn't physically threaten anybody in it. She doesn't really mind threats of emotional harm. Slick has to go over hers and remove any prophecies of doom or stray attempts to sic ghosts on the firm of ENGLISH, BITCH & GNOMES, LLC. She just really hates those guys.

Karkat's the secretary and Sollux is the IT guy, and they are both permanently enraged and drink all the coffee by 10:00 AM every day. Sometimes Jack stabs Karkat for this. Cronus, the crooked contractor and repeat-offender sexual assailant who's always got at least two active cases, thinks Karkat's explosions every time he shows up without an appointment are an adorable come-on.

CD's Gmail password is always just his fucking name with a fucking two-digit number at the end and Sollux is going to set that little shit on fire the next time Terezi correctly guesses the number he swears to Jegus he is 2o done.

When she's not doing something too demanding, Terezi keeps Gmail open in one tab, and every few minutes tries a new combination of numbers. She doesn't actually read his stuff, of course! That would be 4 GROSS V1OL4T1ON OF L3G4L 3TH1CS, and she never commits gross violations. She just emails Karkat requesting "the papers i gave you!!! the BLUE ones they were blue i think" until he catches on.

( Nepeta handles accounting and writes all demand letters in-character as Pounce de Leon. )

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He created a macro! I also like how, when the Department of Justice dude couldn't resize an image, House offered to help, in his capacity as the nerd in the room.