The US Supreme Court

[crazy canuck]

This is exactly what we DO NOT want a judge to do. A lawyer starts from the perspective that they need to figure out how to present and interpret the law to achieve a desired outcome. While we expect judges to reverse that completely.

You watch too much tv.

[Malthus]

I was thinking today that lawyers are uniquely ill suited to become judges.

They've spent their entire professional careers with an mission of almost exactly the opposite of what a judge is supposed to think about in regards to the law. A judge should respect the law first and foremost, but a lawyer's job is to figure out how to use the law to serve their clients interests.

This is exactly what we DO NOT want a judge to do. A lawyer starts from the perspective that they need to figure out how to present and interpret the law to achieve a desired outcome. While we expect judges to reverse that completely.

That isn't always how it works for judges. That's why when it comes to litigation, the ability to create a convincing story out of the facts is often more important than knowing the minutae of the law. The idea is to convince the judge you are 'in the right' and this makes him or her more likely to FIND a way that your desired outcome is reached.

Quite often the laws can be interpreted in more than one way, given a certain factual matrix. Some interpretations lead to unpleasant results. Convince the judge that your opponent's interpretation leads to a bad result and your case is more than half won. It is unusual to have a situation in which binding precedent absolutely compells a judge to adopt what he or she considers an inequitable result, with no wriggle room possible.

This is why "bad facts make bad law" - a judge, wanting to achieve a certain result in an odd factual matrix, creates a precedent that other judges have to deal with in quite different situations. Collect enough such inconsistencies, and you are off to an appellate court to have the whole matter dealt with one way or another. A supreme court's job is to 'set the pattern' for potential future cases - to attempt to create precedent that is unlikely to be "bad law" in wildly different situations.

Hence, wide litigation experience is going to be desireable.