I am 8 years into practicing commercial litigation, and I feel like I have lost all hope. This system is broken, messy, outrageously expensive, needlessly combative, and absent rare MSJ victories, no one wins but us as the billing attorneys. Judges don’t award fees enough. Discovery is overly abusive and rarely aids matters. Motions take far too long to obtain a ruling. It takes years for cases to resolve on even the simplest of contractual issues.
In short, the American civil system is broken. It doesn’t seem to do anything other than create a zombie army of tasks that never end (with the not-so-infrequent blatant strategy to “bury” parties in discovery/motions/etc), no matter how hard you work a case.
I wonder why we think we have it right when the rest of the developed world awards fees to all victors, and at times SIGNIFICANTLY curtails discovery to get matters resolved ASAP.
What the hell are we doing?