How well could you pretend to be a lawyer, or other profession, on this message board?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here at the Dope we’ve had the perennial spectacle of posters trying to pass themselves off as lawyers, and doing a stupendously piss-poor job at it.

That got me thinking, if I wanted to pretend to be a lawyer, how good would I be? I mean, I’ve watched Law and Order, so I’ve got the basic training. I like to think I’d be one of those subtle law-talking-pretending-guys, not the obvious ones. Heck maybe some of our resident lawyers are really just paralegals or filing clerks but they do a good enough job at pretending, and stay away from specifics, and so no one ever questions their credentials.

See, I could pretend to be an attorney, but only if I never ever posted in threads about legal controversies or made any sort of legal comments. If I kept it to “As a lawyer, I think Allyson Hannigan is waaaay hotter than Amy Acker”, I’d probably be fine. Arguing about collateral estoppel, I’d better stay clear. But at least I’ve got enough pretend lawyer knowledge that I know enough to stay out of threads about collateral estoppel, or whatever it is you lawyers talk about when you think we’re not listening.

So I’d be a pretty horrible excuse for a fake lawyer. So I got to thinking again about what I could do a pretty good job pretending to be. I work as a software tester, so I could pretend to be a software developer, and I’d probably fool everyone except anyone who’s an actual developer. I don’t have the development background, but I do have the industry experience. So I could fake the day to day gripes and situations of being in the software industry easily, just not the actual, you know, programming. So maybe I’d be better off claiming to be a project manager, but then someone would ask me about Power Point and that would be the end.

I could try faking being a biologist or paleontologist. I mean, I can shoot the shit about dinosaurs and evolution and cladistics and island biogeography and the Permian extinction all day. And things I didn’t remember, well, there’s this thing called “Google” and also another thing called “Wikipedia”. But what I’d fail at is the life in academia part. I never went to grad school, despite being close a couple of times, I never put myself through the grind of getting an advanced degree, I’ve never taught classes. I’d kind of suck at pretending that stuff. I guess “High School biology teacher” would be more my speed, but where’s the glamor in that? If I can’t pretend to be a PhD, forget it, I’m not gonna play your stupid pretending game.

So how about you all? How well could you pretend to be a lawyer on the internet? If you’d suck at fake lawyering, what could you succeed at faking? Fake doctor? Fake MBA? Fake quadriplegic? Fake construction worker? Fake lion tamer? Remember, faking credentials on the internet is no time for fake modesty, so dream big.

2

It might be easy if you’re careful. Because on any message board, you get to select what you answer. It’s easy to trip someone up in real life, because you can put them on the spot. If a fake lawyer or whatever, sees a question, s/he can’t answer s/he simply ignores it.

3

Trivial:

[QUOTE=Pepe Silvia]
I’m a licensed attorney, but I don’t feel comfortable offering legal advice on the forums.
[/QUOTE]

4

I couldn’t pull off anything related to law, medicine, or lion-taming. I used to fly, but I’m not sure I could pass as an airline pilot. I was in the Navy, so I might be able to get away with pretending to be on active duty. I taught a couple of algebra classes in a junior college, but that might not be enough to fake being in academia.

In reality, I’m a lousy liar and I get nothing out of pretending, so I doubt I could fake much of anything. Altho I’ve head it said that on the internet, no one knows if your a dog…

5

I spend a good bit of time kayaking, but also do some sailing and pontooning.

I could probably pass myself off as a canoe aficionado, but if push came to shove I’d end up getting paddled.:):):slight_smile:

6

I might be able to impersonate a doctor if I take the time to research a topic before every post. Basically, I have a good foundational knowledge of biology, plus an acquaintance with the molecular biology side of certain disease pathways. I also have the research chops to dive into reputable medical references and extract potentially useful and relevant information – Medline Plus, Pubmed health summaries, primary literature, and references I can access through my institution’s medical school.

It would be a lot of work though, probably a few hours’ research for any thread I post in.

I would be shit at diagnosis though, since I don’t have the experience or breadth of knowledge to connect symptoms with diseases. But it seems to me that the actual doctors on this board avoid giving an actual diagnosis, except in extremely obvious cases.

7

Before I became a nurse, I could probably have pulled off pretending to be a nurse. There were a few cringe inducingly wrong posts that I’ve found in hindsight, but not all that many. (I’m sure there are *still *a few cringe inducingly wrong posts, only because nursing is so vast and constantly changing that I will always be learning more than I know now.) I knew a lot about biology and health stuff before nursing school; there’s not a whole lot I learned in nursing school itself.

I couldn’t have pulled it off on a nursing message board where people talk in jargon. I couldn’t have intelligently discussed NANDA or titrating or Droplet vs. Airborne Precautions in any sort of depth. But since here the audience is laypeople, most of my posts are translated into layspeak anyhow.

If I tried really hard and did a lot of googling, I might be able to pretend to be a respiratory therapist or physical therapist, but I’d have to be very careful to keep my responses basic and superficial.

I could probably pull off pretending to be an elementary school teacher, because I was raised by one, spent a lot of time helping her behind the scenes, and have several friends who are teachers and we talk about their work a lot. But I’m pretty sure an actual teacher would find the holes in my secondhand knowledge without too much trouble.

Pretty much any other profession? Nah. Not a chance.

8

As a cop I am pretty well informed about criminal law, at least in this state. But in law school you learn a much wider range of subjects. And all aspects of the law are not easily found on the Internet. That’s why there are pay research services and researchers on staff at large law firms. Hell, in my state the public website which lists all the statutes is so awful it’s practically impossible to find what you need. It should be easily accessible to the public. And that’s just the letter of the law, not how courts have ruled on it.

So bottom line, I could probably get away with it if I kept to a narrow range of topics. I could never talk convincingly about torts or filing motions or legal theory.

9

I tried pretending to be a baseball player but I got caught out pretty quickly.

So then I pretended to be a street-gang member but I was soon rumbled.

I’ll get my coat.

10

I pretended to be a racquetball player but that got squashed.

11

My education is in physics, and although I’ve done my share of research, it’s been many years since I’ve been active. I can usually get my way through physics questions, but not always. Same with math. When you study physics, you study a lot of math. And I worked in the semiconductor industry for many years, so I can tell you all about integrated circuits and IC fabrication.

I could probably fake my way through paleontolgy, like Lemur.

I wouldn’t pretend to be a doctor or a lawyer (or an Indian Chief).

I do a lot of consulting in the building industry these days, so I might be able to fake my way as an architect.

And I do a lot of cycling and rowing, so I could fake my way as a bike shop owner or crew specialist.

12

I have enough problems pretending to be an organic human person.

I mean a human person.

I mean a person.

You know what? Never mind.

13

I graduated law school and passed the NY Bar (I went to school with another Doper, so I have legitimate backup there). I got sidetracked into the policy realm and never joined the Bar (actually, have you ever seen the amount of paperwork required to join? It’s horrendous!). Had the MPRE not scarred the crap out of me vis-à-vis practising without a licence, I could attempt it, particularly on general concepts and basic statutory law. However, almost any in-depth discussion would quickly expose my lack of access to WestLaw or L/N. If I was OCD with the disguise maybe I could spend time in a law library, but for the most part there is such a vast body of knowledge and information that exists outside law school and dependant on close reading/understanding/experience with case law that minor scrutiny would quickly expose a pretender.

Now excuse me, I need to get back to surgery. Mrs. Hufnagel’s appendix isn’t going to remove itself!

14

Just FYI–the cladistics thing could give you away. Almost all systematists working now use Bayesian (or at least maximum likelihood) methods, rather than parsimony. (Well, there are some holdouts who stick with parsimony, and, for whatever reason, people in Latin America and Brazil often use it, but the rest of us think parsimony-based approaches can lead to crappy phylogenies.)

People in evolutionary biology tend to get pretty passionate about which methods they use, since different methods correspond to rather different concepts of how evolution works. Bringing up your use of cladistic approaches could lead to a lively discussion in which you’d be asked lots of questions.

15

I have worked for many law firms and attorneys.

It would be really easy to fake being a lawyer! Of course, you would all think I was the crappiest lawyer in the entire USA, but that wouldn’t mean I wasn’t a real lawyer in real life - lots of “real” lawyers are crappy lawyers too! Oh, the stories I can tell of real life idiot lawyers…

I don’t think I could pull off being a doctor - biology was not my strong suit in college and at some point you might all notice I am uncertain which side of the body the heart is in.

16

Ten years and still going strong! :smiley:

17

It’d be a balancing act in choosing a profession you’re fairly certain is “easy” content-wise (or at least accessible via google) and a profession where you’re fairly certain there wouldn’t be anyone to call you out on your shit. And also a dash of your actual training/hobbies/etc all enveloped in an ambiguity that allows you benefit of the doubt.

Teacher? Lobbiest?

18

ruff ruff

19

I’ve been pretending to be a grouchy, slovenly, lunatic on this board for years. It’s getting to be burdensome though, because I’m not really that slovenly.

20

I attempted to pretend to be a sufferer of erectile dysfunction, but it was too hard.