If you are honest with yourself, you may discover you do not like the law. You are not quite sure why. You would never think of breaking it. You will call the police without hesitation an emergency. You will contact a lawyer if you need legal help. But still, there is a nagging feeling at the back of your mind. You feel a sense of wary unease when you hear sirens. For the briefest moment, you wonder if they are travelling to your house. Why is that? Why are we nervous about something that protects us.


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Media Coverage

The fact is that the media coverage of any recent legal issue does not fill us with confidence when it comes to the lawyers and police. If it is not police in America using excess force on criminals, then it is big corporations wriggling out of legal binds. But this is because negative news sells. Think about it. We know that most police do their job and do it well. But we will never hear about it. Someone doing their job correctly is not news. If a person is failing a job that affects society, then you have a story. Now, you think we should blame the media. But you should not be so quick to judge. We are the ones that buy the paper. We are the ones they are selling to. It is our own morbid curiosity that makes us slow down when we pass car accidents.

Stereotypes

We have all heard the joke. You are in an elevator. You have a gun with two bullets. With you there is a poisonous snake, a lion and a lawyer. What do you do? You Shoot the lawyer twice to make sure they are dead. Okay, it does have comedic value but where does it come from. There are cases of lawyers being ambulance chasers. But mostly stereotypes are born and strengthened in the media. Think of all the films and tv shows where people in the system of the law are morally corrupt. You can say this is art replicating life but the truth is it is an exaggerated version of the facts. If you want an example of this look no further than a tv show like Scandal that audiences eat up.

Scientific Stuff

Studies have shown that we remember bad memories better than good. Our memory is connected to emotional value, and negative issues affect us more. That is why you remember cases like the OJ Simpson murder trial more than lawyers fighting for justice. For instance, Shrader & Associates help people who are suffering from cancer. Do we hear about things like that in the news? Very rarely. Would we remember it for years if we did? Probably not.

A Secret Club

It is a journalistic rite of passage to go and try and take shorthand notes in a court of law. It takes journalists a while to master. You suddenly realise lawyers speak a completely different language. A language of terms that will you not comprehend unless you study it. In that way, it is kind of like peering through a window at a secret club. Even when we are brought into it, we do not understand what they are talking about. The same is true for the police. Unless you wear the uniform, you do not know what it is like to be one of them.

The law is not a source of all the negative things in the world. It keeps society in place. But we fear what we do not understand. That is the reason for small alarm in the back of your mind whenever you hear sirens.