Readit Newsif you do not contribute capital, i dont think you can realistically become _this_ "important".
Consider that Boies makes more in a (long) day working for Weinstein than some public defenders stand to make in a year. Boies has plenty of other clients he could work for and be paid lucratively - public defenders don't have the luxury of choosing their cases (and aren't in it for the money).
I also tend to be skeptical of left-wing outrage fodder. We live in a media environment where outrage and stoking of controversy are king. Instead of "if it bleeds it leads," it's "if it offends it leads." It's this way because it gets clicks.
Consider that skilled developers might, on principle, prefer not to work at Facebook/Google or in the defense industry, etc. Maybe they just don't agree with the means and ends that a company uses to generate large profits (and salaries). So sure, a good attorney might prefer not to use his or her rare talents to support a business that gets paid millions of dollars to support/justify a cause/person/business/policy that the attorney doesn't personally agree with. Nothing wrong with that - and certainly not proof that the legal system (or tech industry) has been "taken over" by those who simply prefer to work at other firms with missions they believe in.
I'm just pointing out the obvious: there's an enormous difference between (i) an indigent defendant's right to a public defender in a murder trial and (ii) the "right" to be represented in a civil suit by one of the most successful, famous and expensive lawyers in the country. The first is a constitutional right - the second is a market transaction (on both sides).
Most legal bills are paid by large corporations. The U.S. is the leader in this respect--on average U.S. companies spend about 0.4% of their revenue on legal services, almost triple the rate in a civil law country like Germany. Effectively most lawyers (including me) work directly or indirectly for businesses. This means that the legal education system, and to a lesser extent, the court system, are shaped by and largely serve the needs of businesses.
And what are all of these businesses doing with their legal spending? Largely litigation defense, transactions (M&A, issuing securities, or buying/selling assets like real estate), and interacting with government and regulators.
Lawyers that don't work for large business organizations spend their time representing individuals or classes of plaintiffs in tort litigation or in matters like criminal defense, immigration assistance, family law, or estate planning. Things that may not involve the huge dollar amounts of business transactions but that matter a lot to the people affected.
For every law school class on critical race theory or other topics the writer criticizes, a law student will take dozens on administrative procedure, taxation, federal courts, etc. etc. etc.
There are many valid criticisms of the American legal system. For example, you might feel that it's too easy to file a frivolous lawsuit that will settle for nuisance value. Or you might observe that corporations have been able to cripple or stall regulation that the public demands. Or that mass incarceration is bad social policy. This kind of introspection, including CRT, has long been a part of the academy and the profession, and I think a useful one.
The situation depicted in this article, that everyone's suddenly gone out of control "woke," is just ridiculous and doesn't at all fit my own experience.
I became skeptical right off the bat when she compared Boies' civil representation of Weinstein (at ostensibly $2,000+ per hour) to the defense attorneys who volunteered to represent Guantanamo detainees.
Formal boards are not required for private companies.
This phenomenon appears to occur for LLM learning as well, though it is less remarkable due to the fact that LLMs likely have significant overlap in their training data.
I believe this is good news for Alignment, because, as Plato pointed out, one of the most important forms is the Form of the Good - a (theoretical) universal human ideal containing notions of justice, virtue, compassion, excellence, etc. If this Form truly exists, and LLMs can learn it, it may be possible to train them to pursue it (or refuse requests that are opposed to it).