As both a fan and purveyor of justice, perhaps there is some sort of substantive/normative conclusion that I should be drawing from reading this article in the New York Times about a tsunami of lawsuits brought against consumers by debt-collection law firms.  Perhaps I'll just leave it at, "If they truly are your debts, you should pay them back."  I don't really see the nuance there.

What interests me more is the "automated" nature of these lawsuits.  According to the article:

Collection law firms are able to handle such large volumes of cases because computer software automates much of their work. Typically, a debt buyer sends a law firm an electronic database that contains various data about consumers, including name, home address, the outstanding balance, the date of default and whether interest is still accruing on the account.

Once the data is obtained by a law firm, software like Collection-Master from a company called Commercial Legal Software can “take a file and run it through the entire legal system automatically,” including sending out collection letters, summonses and lawsuits…

Let me tell you what is fantastic about that: everything. This assembly line, which allows one lawyer to file 5,700 lawsuits per year (equaling about 22 each business day), couldn't be further from the workflow in almost every other area of litigation.  I just really get a kick out of this extremely pure combination of my backgrounds in law and technology, particularly information management.  I love me some data!

On a side note, I've recently been reading/trolling the comments section on Web sites, something I hadn't done before in 15 years or so on the Web.  I've realized that 12-year-old Marc was right to ignore them, but at the same time, I'm seeing a lot of hate for Wall Street out there from people who benefitted for years from the capital the banks helped distribute.  Then again, Quinn Emanuel regularly exercises its "unique freedom to sue big banks" (pdf link). No comment.