Lawyer paradox (5TH CENTURY BC).
Ascribed to the sophist philosopher Protagoras (c.490-420 BC).
A lawyer teaches law to a student without fee on condition that the student will pay him when he qualifies and wins his first case.
However, when the student qualifies he takes up another profession. The lawyer sues him for his fees, on the grounds that if he wins, he is paid and if he loses, the student has won and so must pay by the agreement.
The student is unperturbed because if he wins he need not pay the fees, and if he loses he does not owe them. There is some confusion concerning the agreement here, but logical rules preventing the application of a condition to itself certainly resolve the paradox.
Table of Contents
- 1 Videos
- 2 Related Products
- 2.1 True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World (Veritas Books)
- 2.2 The Paradox of Professionalism: Lawyers and the Possibility of Justice
- 2.3 Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer
- 2.4 The Good Lawyer Bad Lawyer Paradox and Other Paradoxes of Bureaucratic Bloat
- 2.5 The Asian American Achievement Paradox
- 2.6 The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World
- 2.7 Beyond Winning: Negotiating to Create Value in Deals and Disputes
- 2.8 The Part-time Paradox: Time Norms, Professional Life, Family and Gender
- 2.9 On Moral Ends
- 2.10 The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
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