I don’t know if the Teeming Millions are into this, but I sure find that a great many people seem to hate lawyers and find reasons to put them down. I guess most of these aren’t people who needed a lawyer’s help–and in a situation that is no laughing matter. (I am a paralegal.)
A paralegal… I always thought that was a crippled lawyer! OHHHH that ought to get me some flames!
I like a lawyer joke as much as any other joke but I don’t hate lawyers. My family needed and found a great one when we went after the man (I really wanted to put in “fucker” or “asshole” but I refrained) who killed my brother. To me it’s just about like any other job.
The moon looks on many flowers, the flowers on but one moon.
<flameexempt> My dad is a lawyer. </flameexempt>
I’ve found that the humor in lawyer jokes stem from the infomercials (“We don’t get paid unless your case is settled or won!”) or the sheer number of these guys that contact you if you’re injured. Dad is a corporate lawyer and is usually the defense lawyer (and BOY I could tell you stories about some stupid sexual harassment lawsuits… including the person who lied about serving jail time on her resume, got fired for it, and sued sexual harassment because she was fired - just to get $$).
I think any profession that resorts to infomercials deserves some mocking. 
lovelee
I do not hate lawyers but I think people hate lawyers because of the stupid suits like Phen-Fen, Ford, and against Dow Corning. They are absolutely right, these lawyers are greedy bastards, but are not most people? If we are that dissatisfied with the awards that these lawyers and their clients are getting, remember that jurys voted their way. If you think lawyers are really overpriced, become a lawyer yourself and bring some competition into the market.
There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men.
–Edmund Burke
Damn! Pseudo-HTML didn’t work!
Shoulda said flameexempt etc… I suppose the joke isn’t quite the same now.
D’oh!
lovelee
I agree abvout frivolous lawsuits–hey, just look at some of the stuff Ed Koch and Judge Judy must deal with.
Would you believe someone actually took the * Devil * to court–and lost?
Dougie: Somebody here tried to blame God in the criminal case against them. They were being tried on charges of sending threatening letters to judges and other officials. They claimed they weren’t making the threats – they were just passing along what God had told them, after correcting grammar and spelling errors. Yes, that’s right, apparently, English isn’t God’s first language.
The headline said something to the effect that the court cleared God of all charges.
But as to lawyer-bashing, well, I have a corner of my cube (outside) plastered with lawyer cartoons. Meanwhile, some of my best friends are lawyers. No, really. But sometimes, they really do deserve bashing.
-Orioles owner Peter Angelos.
-Personal injury lawyers advertising on TV.
-Class action lawsuits where the lawyers become rich and all the plaintiffs (is that the right word for this type of suit?) get a $50 rebate towards the next purchase of a Ford.
-OJ Simpson.
And before you jump to any conclusions, both my parents are lawyers.
Perhaps it’s the nature of the adversarial system in which they operate. You might love the lawyer who’s suing the man who killed your brother, but it’s hard to even respect the one defending the killer, especially when he scores a point in court.
I think they’re just easy targets, since there’s one on both sides, so there’s always one to hate.
David B comments:
Of course not, David. We all know that Hebrew is God’s first language; why else would He have written the Tanakh in it?
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
I think people hate lawyers because they work for the good of their clients rather than for the good of society as a whole, for example, if someone is proven to be a murderer, but manages to get off because his lawyer caught the fact that the police forgot to read him his Miranda rights or something like that.
No doubt the lawyers here will respond that by vigorously defending the rights of the guilty, they’re helping all of society maintain those rights. I’m certainly not going to dispute that there are many wonderful attorneys who do it for that very reason. However, the public perception (not necessarily my own opinion) after such a hypothetical case as I described above is that a) the lawyer doesn’t care if there’s a murderer on the streets, as long as he gets a paycheck, and b) no way are we safer with this guy on the streets, even if our rights are a bit less defended, since we’re not criminals and we’re never going to need to exercise those rights anyway.
And so, hatred of lawyers came to be.
Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
I can’t completely agree about the lawyers who advertise on TV but I agree about how so many of them have abused their profression.
I used to work with a guy from Nigeria who was almost crushed in his car at a university in Long Beach, CA. (He had earlier suffered people pouring strange stuff in his gas tank.) He went to one of those attorneys who advertise on television and won a $15,000 settlement. For a while he had a neck brace. I shudder to think why he needed it.
“but it’s hard to even respect the one defending the killer, especially when he scores a point in court.”
IMHO: No, it’s not. He’s entitled to representation too. I didn’t like what this man had done (the killer) but he has rights too. His lawyer was a good man doing his job and I can respect that. BTW the killer ended up in jail and the company he worked for (who tried to cover everything up) lost out big time.
Would I feel differently if this jerk would have walked away? Yep, you bet. But still, not all lawyers are the greedy bottom feeders “as seen on T.V.”.
The moon looks on many flowers, the flowers on but one moon.
True. Nonetheless, the zealous defense of someone whom you’re certain is guilty isn’t an act calculated to charm. Neither is attacking the victim, a common defense tactic. Nor is a prosecutor a particularly admirable figure when the people he’s sent to prison (or death row) are later proven innocent by DNA; or when the prosecutor fails to convict someone who’s “obviously” guilty.
Right or wrong, the system will always make a lawyer hated by someone.
Ambulance chasers are just the beginning. A friend in law school studied a case where a geology student was on a summer work program with Hydro Quebec. Walking behind the helicopter he was supposed to board, his head was cut off by the tail rotor. Hydro Quebec’s insurance carrier immediately filed a pre-emptive lawsuit against the kid’s estate (his parents) for damage to the helicopter. That’s a standard tactic for lawyers, to take the offensive and intimidate people who would sue their clients, all justifiable under the lawyer’s oath to be zealous in the defense of a client. I wouldn’t do away with that, but no lawyer should ever wonder why her profession isn’t always well regarded.
What’s the difference between a lawyer and a sperm?
A sperm has a one in a million chance to become a human being…
Zank you, I be here all ze week!
Brian O’Neill
CMC International Records
rockuniverse.com/cmc/cmc.html
ICQ 35294890
AIM Scrabble1
Yahoo Messenger Brian_ONeill
My experience is that most lawyers are simply incompetent; a former atty. general of the US said that at least 40% were and “represented a menace to the public”.
In my divorce, the guy I picked did’nt return phone calls, and kept me waiting at the court house for 2 hours. Then, he presented me with a big bill!
It turned out later that he had made numerous mistakes, which took 6 months to correct. When I complained to the Bar association, they in essence told me “tough luck”.
All lawyers are assholes, except mine of course.
As veteran defendant of 3 civil suits, I’ve had contact with (too) many lawyers. An awful lot of them really are jerks, but there are also many that are very nice people. I guess they’re just like the people in any profession; there’s good and bad.
I’ve also found that most of them really enjoy a good lawyer joke.
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
- Ambrose Bierce
My first and only experience with a lawyer was this:
My husband called his laywers office and a woman answered the phone. My husband asked to speak to his lawyer and the woman said that he was not there and what was this in rerence to. My husband briefly explained and then she had some comments and more questions and kept him on the phone for about 10 minutes. Later that week we got a bill in the mail for $125 for a lawyers consultation fee. The woman on the phone was another lawyer in the office, but NEVER identified herself as such on the phone with my husband. He just assumed that she was an admin asst or something similar for the office. What a crock!!
Two words: Johnnie Cochran.
Being an attorney myself, I can safely say that my job would be a heck of a lot easier if I didn’t have to deal with other attorneys.
As for the case where “Satan” as named as a defendant, I heard that the case was being tried in Arkansas, and the judge dismissed the case (at least as to Satan) by claiming that the court did not have jurisdiction over Satan because there was no proof of service of the complaint.
As for frivolous civil suits, what about the class action filed recently to recover for damage caused by the over-brushing of teeth?
SoxFan59
“Its fiction, but all the facts are true!”