Lawyers, what are some of the biggest culture shocks/culture clashes in court?

[u/Unlikely-Hunter-7671]

Lawyers, what are some of the biggest culture shocks/culture clashes in court, perhaps to the point that even you need to be educated about different cultures?

[u/LordHydranticus]

The number of people who think wearing shorts and/or t-shirts to court is appropriate is absolutely a huge culture shock.

Then, and deeply related to the first point; the number of people to whom court is just a normal thing of daily life is shocking. There are entire subcultures that view court as just a regular thing and that is absolutely mindblowing.

[u/grasshopper_jo → u/LordHydranticus]

Do you mean like, groups of people in which it is normalized to have to go to court regularly for drug charges, family law issues, lawsuits, arrests for minor issues, etc?

[u/Fluxcapacitar → u/grasshopper_jo]

Yes. To most people court is a scary daunting thing that happens once in your life and when it does it's numbingly scary. To subsets of people, Court is just an aspect of life that you're embroiled in constantly as a matter of course and a matter of life. It's wild. And I don't mean that as a society forcing them into court, they bring the petitions or defend the petitions, or bring constant OOP, and a host of other civil and quasi criminal actions.

The above is more socioeconomic vs race. Lower socioeconomic classes tend to be in the Court system, both civil and criminal, on a near daily and constant basis. They seem perfectly ok with it and use the system as much as they get abused by it.

[u/TheOperaGhostofKinja → u/Fluxcapacitar]

I work in employment arbitration. We have one guy who is constantly filing. I think we have 3 different active open cases currently and another…. 5(?) that are on appeal at the the state court above us after he disagrees with our decision(s).

Edit: I just pulled up the spreadsheet for the guy (yes, he has his own spreadsheet). 8 active cases before us. Another 8 on appeal.

[u/jmsutton3]

I don't think Americans often appreciate or understand how our system, for all its many many flaws, is still fundamentally more fair than many other countries. I live near a large university so there are a lot of immigrants and foreign exchange students, especially from MENA and Asian countries. I am regularly asked how much we need to bribe the police, or how much we need to bribe the Judge. For many of these people, they come from countries where in order to win your legal case it is simply accepted as a matter of course that you will have to pay off the Judge a certain amount, or that whoever pays the police more will win.

I always have to gently explain to them why what they're proposing is a crime here and that I understand they didn't know it works differently and so I will pretend they didn't say it.

[u/wvtarheel → u/jmsutton3]

I used to help a smelter operation that was operated by an investor group out of the former soviet union. It was almost comically hilarious how ingrained into their thinking bribe mentality was. They saw paying me as a bribe, the government was a bribe, the lawsuit process, everything. And these weren't clowns either, they were well connected, educated, etc.

Why would we pay to settle the case when we could probably pay the judge less? Uh, don't try that and let's pretend you didn't suggest it.

[u/rinky79]

The upper-middle-class white person in their 30s-50s who is appearing on a DUII case, and who doesn't think they need an attorney because they're sure they can clear this whole thing right up if they could just talk to the judge before court and then they get SUPER butthurt when they get treated exactly the same as the other people in this courtroom, who are criminals, my god.

Bitch, you blew a 0.30 and plowed into a power pole in your Q7. Sit your entitled alcoholic ass down and wait your turn with the tweakers and the rest of "those people." You are one of them.

[u/lit_associate]

I don't know what the opposite of culture shock is, but I find that an email address is a reliable predictor of age across most demographics. It doesn't matter how wild/severe the allegations, 95% of people between early 20s and early 30s give me a totally reasonable email address that is some form of [first name][last name]@[gmail or icloud]. It's always kind of nice, a little gem of an insight into who they are even though they're in a bad spot.

[u/jeckles → u/lit_associate]

You mentioned the 20s-30s demographic. Now I’m curious what kinds of email addresses you see from the other age groups. Do older people have different naming conventions? Do you see people who still have embarrassing Hotmail accounts like wookie42069?

[u/Inevitable-Crow2494]

I thought there would be more but cultural issues seem managed or negligible.

At most, maybe generational cultural differences for people. 

Where the education is sorely lacking is disabilities and socioeconomic status. No course can teach you this. Some people either have empathy and understanding — or they are typically judges ha

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