Fifteen Year Old Dispensing Legal Advice

from the but-it's-all-okay dept

A very interesting (though fairly long) article in the NY Times (yes, amazingly, they still want you to register) by Michael Lewis about a fifteen year old boy who made it to the top of the rankings in the "legal" category on an advice site. You can actually skip the first 3 sections of the article without missing much. Most of the story starts after that. For a while the kid lied about his age and his legal training, but he finally came clean. The people who were most upset were the real lawyers who were ranked lower than him. However, the advice takers didn't seem to care, and actually boosted his ranking. The scary part, though, is when Lewis asks him what law books he reads (he doesn't) and where he learned all this info (he says he just knows it all). On the internet, I guess your lawyer can be a fifteen-year-old kid who watches too much Court TV.
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