With All Due Respect, Your Honor, Math Is Really Hard

Lawyer math: 1 + 1 = 3.

Innumerable are the lawyers who explain that they picked law over a technical field because they have a “math block” — “law students as a group, seem peculiarly averse to math and science.” But it’s increasingly concerning, because of the extraordinary rate of scientific and other technological advances that figure increasingly in litigation.

— Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit, lamenting lawyers’ aversion to math and science in a recent opinion where he admonished both the attorneys and lower court judges for their failure to cite medical evidence in their briefs.

Sponsored