in July of last year
Christie Baumer drove her Beemer that
sounded so much better in my head in a
parking garage in Austin and she climbed
to the seventh floor and she found a
parking spot and it she squeezed her car
into that parking spot instead of
pressing the brake she hit the
accelerator in her 300 horsepower BMW
loose through the cables and down to the
street she survived it which would
probably make this a good commercial for
BMW but she sued the operators of the
garage structure for a million dollars
in September of 92 Stella Liebeck
stopped at a drive-through window for
McDonald’s to order her coffee she got
her coffee she put it between her legs
she opened the leads to put sugar and
milk and that’s when she spilled it on
herself suffering third-degree burns she
sued McDonald’s for 3 million dollars
but my personal favorite in May 5th of
2005 Roy Pearson went to the local dry
cleaner to pick up his pants as it turns
out the dry cleaner lost his pants
that’s Pearson’s pants the pants were
part of a suit that was worth $1000 new
so Pearson sued them for 50 for not
$54,000 54 million dollars in fact he
started by suing for 67 million dollars
which he reduced to 54 million dollars
he lost that case but during that case
the dry cleaner offered him $3,000 to
settle it remember the suit only cost a
thousand he declined so he offered
$4,600 he still declined then the dry
cleaner offered $12,000 to settle that
loss
and Pearson still declined why would the
drycleaner offer $12,000 to settle the
suit over a $1,000 suit because it cost
him eighty-three thousand dollars to win
this case and get nothing the first step
in solving any problem is recognizing
there is one ladies and gentlemen we
live in a culture of litigation the u.s.
ranks 24th in reading 2014 signs 38 in
math 13 in problem solving of all the
things that we could lead the world in
we lead the world in the percentage of
our GDP that we spend on civil
litigation the u.s. spends 1.7 percent
of our GDP on civil litigation the next
country Canada spends 1.2 UK 1 percent
the European Union average is 0.63
percent in Japan spends point 3 percent
it gets even worse when you look at
dollars because we spend as much as
Canada the UK the entire European Union
and Japan spend on civil litigation
combined twice we spend 956 dollars per
person per year on civil litigation and
just to put this number in perspective
there are 28 countries in this world
that don’t make 956 dollars per person
in GDP but why does it matter
see last year at the beginning of the
school year the chief diversity officer
in Clark University in Massachusetts
told the freshmen in their orientation
meeting that this school will not
tolerate microaggressions when asked
what do you mean by microaggressions she
said for example you cannot use the
phrase you guys because obviously that’s
highly offensive to women they also
coined the terms trigger warnings and
safe spaces ladies and gentlemen we are
raising a generation that is not ready
to face life and why because our schools
are afraid of getting sued next time you
walk into a doctor’s office
or a hospital you should know that 79%
of doctors say that they order tests
they don’t need just to avoid lawsuits
45 percent of US hospitals don’t have
enough ER doctors because they are
afraid of lawsuits and as you go to get
employed somewhere remember that their
Equal Opportunity Employment laws that
make it so hard for you to fire a
substandard a bad employee if that
employee is a woman old or member of a
minority group and they make it so hard
to fire them that employers don’t want
to hire them but don’t worry that’s not
what they’re going to tell you they will
tell you that we decided to go in a
different route with this position
because they’re afraid of getting sued
so we do live in a culture of litigation
what if I could show you that this
culture of innovative litigation starts
with an event that happened one evening
almost 50 years ago it is based on
research that I’ve conducted using
credible sources such as the Census
Bureau World Bank the American Bar
Association in the CIA okay mostly
credible sources first of all could we
have too many lawyers and I know there
is a lawyer joke in here I just don’t
have it well as it turns out 80% of the
world lawyers live here in the u.s.
that’s one in 244 people one in 13 in
Washington DC in fact 41 percent of our
members of Congress hold the law degree
to understand why we have so many
lawyers I started tracking the growth in
the number of lawyers compared to the
growth in general population the graph
behind me will show you that between
nineteen hundred nineteen seventy the
growth in the number of lawyers pretty
much track the growth in general
population in fact for every 1% growth
in general population the
number of lawyers grew 1.1 percent but
something happened in the 1970 debt
growth in the number of lawyer surged in
starting in 1970 for every 1% growth in
general population the number of lawyers
grew 7% so he seemed it seems like we
have too many lawyers but what happened
in 1970 or before 1974 that kind of
surge to happen in 1970 something must
have happened in the 60s
well the sixties were crazy times JFK
was elected and then assassinated his
brother Robert was assassinated in Saudi
dr. Martin Luther King we went through
the ecology revolution the feminist
revolution black Power Revolution Human
Rights revolution sex revolution and
drug revolution on July of 1969 we put a
man on the moon and in August we had
Woodstock we didn’t trust the government
and we were fighting a war that we
didn’t want and what made it worse was
that during the Korean War only 3
million households here in the US had a
TV but by 1969 more than 60 million US
households were watching the Vietnam War
on TV that year 1968 reached the peak of
our involvement in Vietnam we had five
hundred and thirty six thousand soldiers
in Vietnam 300,000 were drafted that
year but the worst part was the 16,000
899 who came home in a casket covered
with the American flag so if you were a
draft aged man you did not know that the
next year those numbers are going to go
down in fact you had absolutely no
reason to believe that those numbers are
not going up and so you experienced a
lot of fear uncertainty in doubt and if
you don’t know what it feels like
uncertainty
ask yourselves how do you like the
uncertainty of the weather
how about financial uncertainty how
about the uncertainty of serving in a
war and even worse than that coming home
in a box
covered with the American flag most
countries have volunteer military 34
countries in the world actually have in
military of death drafted Israel is one
of them that’s me serving in the Israeli
Defense Forces 35th airborne
paratroopers brigade
I knew that my service was coming and I
enlisted when I was seventeen and a half
I joined the military one month after
the war in Lebanon in 1982 started I
know the fear that people would feel
before going to war but what made it
worse here was the uncertainty you see
you did not know if you’re going to
serve in Vietnam so I want to take you
to the evening of December 1st 1969 at
that point somebody was drawing blue
capsules out of a big drum corresponding
to dates birth dates in the numbers 1
through 366 the chart is what you see on
the right the columns are the months the
rows are the dates find your birth date
find your lottery number the first
number to be drawn was September 14th if
you are unlucky enough to be born on
September 14th you were the first to go
to Vietnam what was your number what we
found in the research was that every man
who had a draft number lower than let’s
say 200 remembers this night as if it
happened yesterday those with higher
numbers or those who enlisted may not
remember it and we did an experiment a
friend of mine asked a friend of his
just sent him a text
what was your lottery number nothing
else no content know what lottery are
you talking about
yet his friend knew exactly what we were
asking and he replied within less than a
minute with the number 27 and then he
said everybody knows their lottery
number it was actually pretty scary time
we watched that war on TV and we were
all worried so the event that changed
our culture is the draft lottery of
December 1st 1969 now don’t get me wrong
the sixties led to this there are a lot
of things that happen in the 60s that
led to this but that one event did
change our culture it created a fear
uncertainty in doubt but we still have
one box missing you see you could have
legally avoided the draft if you were a
true conscientious objector if you had a
real medical or psychological condition
that prevented you from serving if
you’re a homosexual or a woman neither
of which were drafted if you had an
essential civilian job or simply had
children those were all valid legal
reasons not to serve then of course came
to a legal reasons you could have faked
documents lied cheated fled to Canada
but that was illegal then of course you
could have simply been eligible you’re
at the right age with absolutely no
condition that prevents you from serving
in Vietnam in this case my friends you
are going to Vietnam unless you had a
high library number because in the
December 1st 1969 draft they only
reached number 195 you could have
enlisted 75% of our soldiers in Vietnam
were volunteers and the only deferment
that still existed in December of 1969
was the college deferment it was a
classification of 2s that’s a real
document and with that if you register
for college you could avoid being
drafted until the age of 35 and to put
it in perspective the war was over by
1973 so effectively you will not serve
so now we have the college deferment but
how does that link to having two men
lawyers so I did more research and
here’s what I found I looked at the
number of men enrolling into law schools
between 1947 and 1968 between 18,000 and
22,000 enrolled into law schools the
numbers actually peaked at 23,000 but
then declined to 22,000 by 1969 the
number of women that enrolled into law
schools by 1965 was the first year that
more than 8,000 women enrolled in law
schools nationwide but then came the
draft in the number of men enrolling
into law school spiked and we went from
22,000 to 32,000 in the span of two
years 45% we never reached that number
of men in the red line enrolling into
law school until today we’re still not
there in law schools there were a
hundred and ten law schools in 1947 200
today the single one year jump biggest
jump 1969 and in order to keep the
capacity filled they started reducing
admission requirements and more women
started applying just so that law
schools can keep themselves at full
capacity capable of delivering 45,000
new lawyers every year and that caused
the surge in the growth in the number of
lawyers which give us a culture of litigation thank you
Christie Baumer drove her Beemer that
sounded so much better in my head in a
parking garage in Austin and she climbed
to the seventh floor and she found a
parking spot and it she squeezed her car
into that parking spot instead of
pressing the brake she hit the
accelerator in her 300 horsepower BMW
loose through the cables and down to the
street she survived it which would
probably make this a good commercial for
BMW but she sued the operators of the
garage structure for a million dollars
in September of 92 Stella Liebeck
stopped at a drive-through window for
McDonald’s to order her coffee she got
her coffee she put it between her legs
she opened the leads to put sugar and
milk and that’s when she spilled it on
herself suffering third-degree burns she
sued McDonald’s for 3 million dollars
but my personal favorite in May 5th of
2005 Roy Pearson went to the local dry
cleaner to pick up his pants as it turns
out the dry cleaner lost his pants
that’s Pearson’s pants the pants were
part of a suit that was worth $1000 new
so Pearson sued them for 50 for not
$54,000 54 million dollars in fact he
started by suing for 67 million dollars
which he reduced to 54 million dollars
he lost that case but during that case
the dry cleaner offered him $3,000 to
settle it remember the suit only cost a
thousand he declined so he offered
$4,600 he still declined then the dry
cleaner offered $12,000 to settle that
loss
and Pearson still declined why would the
drycleaner offer $12,000 to settle the
suit over a $1,000 suit because it cost
him eighty-three thousand dollars to win
this case and get nothing the first step
in solving any problem is recognizing
there is one ladies and gentlemen we
live in a culture of litigation the u.s.
ranks 24th in reading 2014 signs 38 in
math 13 in problem solving of all the
things that we could lead the world in
we lead the world in the percentage of
our GDP that we spend on civil
litigation the u.s. spends 1.7 percent
of our GDP on civil litigation the next
country Canada spends 1.2 UK 1 percent
the European Union average is 0.63
percent in Japan spends point 3 percent
it gets even worse when you look at
dollars because we spend as much as
Canada the UK the entire European Union
and Japan spend on civil litigation
combined twice we spend 956 dollars per
person per year on civil litigation and
just to put this number in perspective
there are 28 countries in this world
that don’t make 956 dollars per person
in GDP but why does it matter
see last year at the beginning of the
school year the chief diversity officer
in Clark University in Massachusetts
told the freshmen in their orientation
meeting that this school will not
tolerate microaggressions when asked
what do you mean by microaggressions she
said for example you cannot use the
phrase you guys because obviously that’s
highly offensive to women they also
coined the terms trigger warnings and
safe spaces ladies and gentlemen we are
raising a generation that is not ready
to face life and why because our schools
are afraid of getting sued next time you
walk into a doctor’s office
or a hospital you should know that 79%
of doctors say that they order tests
they don’t need just to avoid lawsuits
45 percent of US hospitals don’t have
enough ER doctors because they are
afraid of lawsuits and as you go to get
employed somewhere remember that their
Equal Opportunity Employment laws that
make it so hard for you to fire a
substandard a bad employee if that
employee is a woman old or member of a
minority group and they make it so hard
to fire them that employers don’t want
to hire them but don’t worry that’s not
what they’re going to tell you they will
tell you that we decided to go in a
different route with this position
because they’re afraid of getting sued
so we do live in a culture of litigation
what if I could show you that this
culture of innovative litigation starts
with an event that happened one evening
almost 50 years ago it is based on
research that I’ve conducted using
credible sources such as the Census
Bureau World Bank the American Bar
Association in the CIA okay mostly
credible sources first of all could we
have too many lawyers and I know there
is a lawyer joke in here I just don’t
have it well as it turns out 80% of the
world lawyers live here in the u.s.
that’s one in 244 people one in 13 in
Washington DC in fact 41 percent of our
members of Congress hold the law degree
to understand why we have so many
lawyers I started tracking the growth in
the number of lawyers compared to the
growth in general population the graph
behind me will show you that between
nineteen hundred nineteen seventy the
growth in the number of lawyers pretty
much track the growth in general
population in fact for every 1% growth
in general population the
number of lawyers grew 1.1 percent but
something happened in the 1970 debt
growth in the number of lawyer surged in
starting in 1970 for every 1% growth in
general population the number of lawyers
grew 7% so he seemed it seems like we
have too many lawyers but what happened
in 1970 or before 1974 that kind of
surge to happen in 1970 something must
have happened in the 60s
well the sixties were crazy times JFK
was elected and then assassinated his
brother Robert was assassinated in Saudi
dr. Martin Luther King we went through
the ecology revolution the feminist
revolution black Power Revolution Human
Rights revolution sex revolution and
drug revolution on July of 1969 we put a
man on the moon and in August we had
Woodstock we didn’t trust the government
and we were fighting a war that we
didn’t want and what made it worse was
that during the Korean War only 3
million households here in the US had a
TV but by 1969 more than 60 million US
households were watching the Vietnam War
on TV that year 1968 reached the peak of
our involvement in Vietnam we had five
hundred and thirty six thousand soldiers
in Vietnam 300,000 were drafted that
year but the worst part was the 16,000
899 who came home in a casket covered
with the American flag so if you were a
draft aged man you did not know that the
next year those numbers are going to go
down in fact you had absolutely no
reason to believe that those numbers are
not going up and so you experienced a
lot of fear uncertainty in doubt and if
you don’t know what it feels like
uncertainty
ask yourselves how do you like the
uncertainty of the weather
how about financial uncertainty how
about the uncertainty of serving in a
war and even worse than that coming home
in a box
covered with the American flag most
countries have volunteer military 34
countries in the world actually have in
military of death drafted Israel is one
of them that’s me serving in the Israeli
Defense Forces 35th airborne
paratroopers brigade
I knew that my service was coming and I
enlisted when I was seventeen and a half
I joined the military one month after
the war in Lebanon in 1982 started I
know the fear that people would feel
before going to war but what made it
worse here was the uncertainty you see
you did not know if you’re going to
serve in Vietnam so I want to take you
to the evening of December 1st 1969 at
that point somebody was drawing blue
capsules out of a big drum corresponding
to dates birth dates in the numbers 1
through 366 the chart is what you see on
the right the columns are the months the
rows are the dates find your birth date
find your lottery number the first
number to be drawn was September 14th if
you are unlucky enough to be born on
September 14th you were the first to go
to Vietnam what was your number what we
found in the research was that every man
who had a draft number lower than let’s
say 200 remembers this night as if it
happened yesterday those with higher
numbers or those who enlisted may not
remember it and we did an experiment a
friend of mine asked a friend of his
just sent him a text
what was your lottery number nothing
else no content know what lottery are
you talking about
yet his friend knew exactly what we were
asking and he replied within less than a
minute with the number 27 and then he
said everybody knows their lottery
number it was actually pretty scary time
we watched that war on TV and we were
all worried so the event that changed
our culture is the draft lottery of
December 1st 1969 now don’t get me wrong
the sixties led to this there are a lot
of things that happen in the 60s that
led to this but that one event did
change our culture it created a fear
uncertainty in doubt but we still have
one box missing you see you could have
legally avoided the draft if you were a
true conscientious objector if you had a
real medical or psychological condition
that prevented you from serving if
you’re a homosexual or a woman neither
of which were drafted if you had an
essential civilian job or simply had
children those were all valid legal
reasons not to serve then of course came
to a legal reasons you could have faked
documents lied cheated fled to Canada
but that was illegal then of course you
could have simply been eligible you’re
at the right age with absolutely no
condition that prevents you from serving
in Vietnam in this case my friends you
are going to Vietnam unless you had a
high library number because in the
December 1st 1969 draft they only
reached number 195 you could have
enlisted 75% of our soldiers in Vietnam
were volunteers and the only deferment
that still existed in December of 1969
was the college deferment it was a
classification of 2s that’s a real
document and with that if you register
for college you could avoid being
drafted until the age of 35 and to put
it in perspective the war was over by
1973 so effectively you will not serve
so now we have the college deferment but
how does that link to having two men
lawyers so I did more research and
here’s what I found I looked at the
number of men enrolling into law schools
between 1947 and 1968 between 18,000 and
22,000 enrolled into law schools the
numbers actually peaked at 23,000 but
then declined to 22,000 by 1969 the
number of women that enrolled into law
schools by 1965 was the first year that
more than 8,000 women enrolled in law
schools nationwide but then came the
draft in the number of men enrolling
into law school spiked and we went from
22,000 to 32,000 in the span of two
years 45% we never reached that number
of men in the red line enrolling into
law school until today we’re still not
there in law schools there were a
hundred and ten law schools in 1947 200
today the single one year jump biggest
jump 1969 and in order to keep the
capacity filled they started reducing
admission requirements and more women
started applying just so that law
schools can keep themselves at full
capacity capable of delivering 45,000
new lawyers every year and that caused
the surge in the growth in the number of
lawyers which give us a culture of litigation thank you
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