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[Sensei]

Might as well have it snag people who are eating/drinking/partying if there aren't enough idlers- but, good idea.

[HastyLumbago]

Am I the only one imagining Urist McFenixrite shouting "Objection!" as he stalwartly parrys aside the first hammer blow?

[Granite26]

Not a rebellion.  The lawyer, of course, would be a noble in his own right, making demands for his room and mandating the construction of goods.  But unlike the baron/baronesss/tax collector, he'd be a noble that the player would actually WANT to keep happy.

So what happens when you fail a production order for him?

[Sensei]

I say he should just become less happy. TBH, criminal charges for production orders is insane in the first place.

[Granite26]

The ABA Journal has this interesting thought attributed to Justice Scalia.   Asked to comment on whether the quality of advocacy before the U.S. Supreme Court was too low,  Justice Scalia is quoted as saying:

“I used to have just the opposite reaction.  I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise.

“I mean there’d be a … public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?

“I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table, and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.”

Justice Scalia is at his provocative best here, forcing us to wonder whether our legal system now pervasively controls so many aspects of our society that too many of the best minds have to go into the profession.

The problem we're having is that all of our best fighters are now required for the legal profession, leaving far too few to man the gates of the fortress.

Wouldn't we be in a better position if we were to simplify the legal system, decriminalize sandlessness, and get back to the real business of dwarf fortress, which is building a dwarf fortress?

[Atarlost]

I would like dwarves to behave more rationally. 

If I have 80 friends in a fortress of 120 dwarfs I'm going to see about getting some of them together for a preemptive strike against Countess Greenglass because there's a 2/3 chance she's going to have one of my friends killed and nearly a 1% chance she's going to have *me* killed.  Everyone else should be looking at those same numbers and forming violent mobs.  Nobles with impossible tastes are like Dracula.  The only way to be safe is for them to stay dead. 

I'd love to have Urist Defarge presiding over the "trial" of the nobility for being nobles and sentencing them to death by something more dwarfy than a guillotine. 

[Saber Cherry]

The problem we're having is that all of our best fighters are now required for the legal profession, leaving far too few to man the gates of the fortress.

Wouldn't we be in a better position if we were to simplify the legal system, decriminalize sandlessness, and get back to the real business of dwarf fortress, which is building a dwarf fortress?

The key to making lawyers to fight, is in making them horrible fighters.  Who wants to see lawyers winning?  You don't take legendaries and cross-train them in law - no.  You take your up-and-coming fighter who got lower spine damage while still a novice hammerer, and make him a lawyer, soon to become fertilizer and free up CPU resources for a useful member of society.  That's another thing - corpses should be able to be recycled into ashes at a furnace.  Don't even get me started on nightsoil...  what a precious resource!  Wasting waste is wasteful.  But with effort, lawyers should be no less useful than an equal mass of dung.

[Hummingbird]

As dorfy as it may seem, I don't really get this "lawyer fights on behalf of accused" concept, from a logical standpoint.  How is it punishing Urist McCriminal if it's not him but some lawyer getting beat up instead? 

[Geb]

The key to making lawyers to fight, is in making them horrible fighters.  Who wants to see lawyers winning?  You don't take legendaries and cross-train them in law - no.  You take your up-and-coming fighter who got lower spine damage while still a novice hammerer, and make him a lawyer, soon to become fertilizer and free up CPU resources for a useful member of society.

As dorfy as it may seem, I don't really get this "lawyer fights on behalf of accused" concept, from a logical standpoint.  How is it punishing Urist McCriminal if it's not him but some lawyer getting beat up instead?

The way I imagined it happening was that if the lawyer loses, that's a a trial lost, a decision made that the accused is guilty and needs to be punished. With the lawyer out of action, the hammerer is then free to go about his business.

You really would want to see the lawyer win, because if he doesn't your legendary armoursmith who was accused of not making the mandated quota of wooden buckets is going to have his head broken.

It would be best if there was a scale of allowed combat types to go with various crimes, so that fights to the death are only considered if there is a death sentence to be decided. Crimes like disorderly conduct or building destruction might only need a trial to first hit, or to first blood.. Of course that could still lead to a death or two...