Well guys...

[Raubvogel]

Unless I'm interpreting this wrong, he isn't a judge in the sense that you all are thinking. It sound like he is something along the lines of a "Justice of the Peace" like we have in the boondocks ofsome states. They are elected for a term and handle misdemeanor type crimes to avoid having to travel forever to get to a real court.

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Kratzer
How old are you, Steve?

I had the impression you were a young man (like me!), but if you are a judge, you might very well be a geezer...  Of course, who knows what the hell you all do up there in the snow.

I'm 28 (well, 27 actually, but my birthday is on the 21st of March)
How old are you?

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Oldman731


"Thirty days additional."

"But, judge, what the heck for?"

"Contempt of court.  Next case."

"But, what do you mean, contempt of court?  All I said was that you looked too young to be a judge.  That's just the plain truth!  You look like a peach-fuzz-faced kid straight out of junior bjorgschool.  Lookit, you're even wearing sneakers under that robe!  You ARE to young to be a judge!"

"Make that forty days.  Bailiff, I said next case.  Let's be quick about it, shall we?"

- Oldman

Alas...Im not allowed to sentence people to jail sentences (yet). For now I'll have to settle with fining them huge amounts of cash should they dare to question me

woaahAHAHAhahaah <-- evil laughter

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Raubvogel
Unless I'm interpreting this wrong, he isn't a judge in the sense that you all are thinking. It sound like he is something along the lines of a "Justice of the Peace" like we have in the boondocks ofsome states. They are elected for a term and handle misdemeanor type crimes to avoid having to travel forever to get to a real court.

Allow me to try to explain exactly what I do.

After lawschool (5 yrs) you recieve a masters of law-degree.
You can then either opt to work for a private firm, or work for the government.

I choose government (long term goal is to be a prosecuter (sp) and put bad guys in jail).

About 500 lawyers (or people with a masters of law degree rather) get accepted by teh various courts in Sweden each year. About 15 000 apply, so I was pretty lucky to get this spot.

Once accepted, you serve for 2 years. Here, the fun begins.
For the first 6 months you get to sit in on all "your" judge's proceedings. But all you get to do is take notes, and prepare all the cases (that means, go through all the paperwork in advance).

After those initial 6 months you are "promoted", now you are allowed to handle simple civil law cases, such as divorces, companies suing for bankruptcy etc etc. You still work with "your" judge, sit in on all his trials. Now you have more responsibility though and you get to write the verdicts (you would not believe how lazy most judges are).

After 1 year (here is where I am now) you are promoted again to something that has no (at least to my knowledge) counterpart in the anglo-american court systems, I'll call it junior-judge, or judge in training, for lack of a better word.

I function exactly as a judge, but only in cases where the defendant does not risk inprisonment. So Im qualified to handle speeding cases, but not drunk driving, Im qualified to handle some drug offences, but no drug dealers. etc etc. I also become a part of the court (that means, I get to sit in and decide on legal matters) in private-law or civil-law proceedings. In that aspect I am a fully qualified judge.

After an aditional 6 months, I get to decide in cases where the offendant does not risk a more severe punishment than 6 months in jail. So in about 6 months guys..Ill be able to lock people up
heheheh

Then, after two years, I will be able to either proceed down the judge-career, or (as I have planned) switch to the prosecuter-side.

Now, Im not sure this short essay on how the swedish legal system works has made it any clearer exactly what I work with.
But at least I tried.
 
And thanks for all the words of encouragement.

(and it was cool to be in total control of that courtroom this morning, bossing people around )

[Curval]

Hortund..I have seen some pretty complicated civil cases.

I have also seen some very simple ones go horribly wrong.

Seems like they slam alot of responsibility on you guys early in your careers.

I guess that is good for the profession in the long run...you end up with some very experienced judges....but it could also end the careers of some guys, surely?

Gotta smile though....in the US the money is all in defending cases...in Sweden the cherished jobs are with the government prosecuting the bad guys.   I suppose that all has to do with benefits though...'cause if you earn too much in Sweden the govt takes it all away anyway.

[Hortlund]

Oh, we have people chasing money over here too. We are very far from the US though. Here the best lawyers earns SEK 4 000 per hour (about USD 400). Compare that to the prosecuters that make 2000 USD a MONTH when they start. A "normal" salary for a prosecuter is between 3400 -4500 USD a month, depending on how long they have worked.

And yeah, there is alot of pressure on ones shoulders from day one. There are no safety nets either. And if you screw up bad enough, its one strike and your out.  No worries here though, I drink lots of coffee (good for stress ) and I play AH alot to vent all the frustrations of work

[edit] IMO the worst cases are the custody cases where the parents loose it and do everything to get custody over the kids.

That and the child molestors. I'm gonna spare you the details here, but the worst case I've been involved in was a rape case. The victim was 12 yrs old, the perp was her uncle. I actually threw up in a break during that trial.

I cannot understand the lawyers in those cases. I mean, I would rather shoot myself in both kneecaps than defend a guy like that.  

[Kratzer]

Originally posted by Hortlund


I'm 28 (well, 27 actually, but my birthday is on the 21st of March)
How old are you?

I'm 25.

28? I guess I was in the right ballpark afterall!  I was picturing the judge from the simpsons ("I move this sketch be stricken from the record!")

[Curval]

Okay....but I need a bit of clarification here man.  The accountant in me is intrigued by this stuff.

You say a good lawyer earns $400/hr...but that is what the firm charges...not what the lawyer actually makes right?  Out of that $400 the firm must pay all its overheads, including the salary of the lawyer.

Assume one of these good lawyers makes say $200,000 a year...what is the tax rate on this in Sweden?  Probably like 75%...this means that lawyer takes home about $50,000 a year.
(I could be wrong about 75%, correct me if so)

The start-up prosecutor makes about $50,000...what is his/her tax rate?  Significantly lower I would imagine.  Let's assume 35%...this gives a take home pay of $32,500!

But...what are the government benefits for the prosecutor?  From what I know about Sweden they are pretty sweeeeeeeeeeeet.

Seems like it all equals out in the end potentially, which explains 15,000 applicants for 500 positions.

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Curval
Okay....but I need a bit of clarification here man.  The accountant in me is intrigued by this stuff.

You say a good lawyer earns $400/hr...but that is what the firm charges...not what the lawyer actually makes right?  Out of that $400 the firm must pay all its overheads, including the salary of the lawyer.

Assume one of these good lawyers makes say $200,000 a year...what is the tax rate on this in Sweden?  Probably like 75%...this means that lawyer takes home about $50,000 a year.
(I could be wrong about 75%, correct me if so)

The start-up prosecutor makes about $50,000...what is his/her tax rate?  Significantly lower I would imagine.  Let's assume 35%...this gives a take home pay of $32,500!

But...what are the government benefits for the prosecutor?  From what I know about Sweden they are pretty sweeeeeeeeeeeet.

Seems like it all equals out in the end potentially, which explains 15,000 applicants for 500 positions.

Ok, lets see.

The good lawyer I was talking about. Generally he would have his own firm, chargning his clients $400/hour. The large firms on the other hand play by other rules. Those niched against the major corporations, such as Ericson, Volvo or ABB charge them unreal amounts of money. I have a couple of friends who work for the largest law firm in sweden. The firm has 50 co-owners (you know what I mean right?) Each makes roughly $50 000 a month. But as I said, that is due to their unreal client base. That firm has something like 1500 lawyers working for them.

Swedish tax rates.

You have two levels of income tax. First you pay 30-35% income tax (varies depending on where you live in the country). This is drawn from your total income per year. So in the $200 000/year example, you can subtract $60 000 right away.

Then you have another tax level that hits when you have an income above a certain level. In this level you pay 25% income tax. This second level kicks in at $25 000/year. That means that in our example $175 000 (200 000 - 25 000) would be taxed at 25 %, for a total of $43 750.

We now add the two income taxes. 60 000 + 43 750 leaves a total tax of $103 750. Subtract that from the original 200 000, and we find that out of a yearly income of $200 000, the individual gets to keep $96 250.

[Curval]

Okay...well my assumptions were way off..

Essentially you are saying there is an effective rate of about 50% for high income earners.

That is about the same as Canada.

I thought tax rates were higher than that in Sweden.


Maybe I'm thinking of Denmark...

[Sikboy]

Originally posted by Hortlund


I'm 28 (well, 27 actually, but my birthday is on the 21st of March)
How old are you?

Wow, this is depressing lol. I'll be 30 by the time I even get to Law school in 2003. And Hortlund is a judge at 27. Even taking into consideration the differences between the American and Swedish Judicial systems this is depressing.  Guess that's what I get for taking the long road lol.

-Sikboy

[Curval]

Originally posted by Sikboy


Wow, this is depressing lol. I'll be 30 by the time I even get to Law school in 2003. And Hortlund is a judge at 27. Even taking into consideration the differences between the American and Swedish Judicial systems this is depressing.  Guess that's what I get for taking the long road lol.

-Sikboy

Well, you'll probably make your first million before him though...

[StSanta]

Curval, that'd be DK you're talking about.

taxes for a nromal income would be income tacxes at around 43-45%, and then on top of that 25% sales tax. On top of that ahre million of fees the previous governments have dreamed up to avoid having them as  normal taxes, since the Eu wouldn't be too pleased about it )nor would the average Dane if he took the time to investigate just how much we pay in tax). One example: there's a 'fee' On cars. It's 180% of the cars value. Fee on water: 250% of the price.

And, as you move up in income, taxes get progressively higher. My father is a doc and works a lot overtime because of shortage of docs here. It's meaningless for him to work overtime for money, since he'll pay like 90% of what he earns in tax. And he cannot take it out as spare time, because there's too few docs to go around.

Fortunately, we got a new government that have implemented a tax *stop*, i.e no more taxes or fees. Financing whatever is needed will b e done by cutting public spending instead. Easy to see who I voted for . The social democrats wanted to up the taxes, which already are the highest in the world, to finance more non essential pointless things.

Hortlund: congrats bud! There are some wrecks in Sweden you're not allowed to dive on. If I get taken diving one of 'um, I hope I get you as a judge .

I'll tell you everything about the difference between the A5 and A8

[Curval]

StSanta...I was just talking income tax, and did not consider sales tax, gas tax, etc, etc...complicates the issue, because Sweden would have similar "other" and buried taxes.  But, your point is well made, because if the cash is paid to govt. in any way it isn't in your pocket.....bottom line.


Just spoke to a Danish friend of mine....

He confirmed an "effective" rate of income tax of 50% for someone making $200,000.  But, this is because the taxes are graduated, as Hortund points out.   However, the final rate applied to earning over a certain threashold, or "level", is 72% or 73%.  He couldn't tell me the dollar amount of the threashold, but it is probably for income levels over $500,000 or something. If you make millions your effective rate would gradually approach 72% or 73%, logically.

Anyway...my friend also suggested that Hortund is actually not simply putting criminals away for the "good of society".
Prosecutors are highly respected in the Scandavian countries and as lawyers/judges start so early in life they actually wait until they hit 40-45 years old and THEN hit the private sector.  When they do so they command respect....and BIG BUCKS.  

[Charon]

Good Luck

Your system sounds far more sane than ours, where if a judge is appointed he/she can practically die on the bench unless removed by some of his or her best buddies, which doesn't happen all that often for any reason. Or, judges are politicians who have to run for office, with all of the obvious problems that suggests. Prosecutors also have a free reign, as far as I know, fully immune from malpractice issues. The fact that the often have political ambitions (both inside and outside the profession) makes it even harder to admit mistakes, even if something like reviewing DNA evidence based on some real concerns would save someone's life.

Charon