For Law Dopers only. Law Students welcome
The pretty girl you smiled at turned out to be a triple murderess.
You wonder what are these things called “weekends” that everyone gets excited over.
A brief is something which is 500 pages long.
You vaguely wonder what exactly is an “esquire”.
You hate ties, but argue in favour of wigs and gowns.
everyone knows more law than you.
come on Counsel, what do you have to add.
…you use words like “escheat” and “usufruct” in conversation.
…you actually have a response to, “How about that last legislative session, huh?”
…you feel a sense of accomplishment upon plotting out an argument as to why Billy Bob’s latest wife beating escapade wasn’t really that bad after all.
…you realize that every criminal defense is one of two things. “This is some bullshit,” or in the alternative, “They lyin’ on me.”
… when you dread talking to your neighbors, because you will hear “your’e a lawyer, what happens when…”
Do have to disagree with the OP on the weekends though. I am required to work only 40 hours a week. Sure, the pay is lower than average, but everyday at 5:01 and all day on weekends it is plenty for me.
You start telling people you meet in bars who ask your profession that you sell term life insurance, due to multiple hour long conversation/kidnappings with hardcore alcoholics on their tenth DWI and/or psychos who want some legal advice about some bizzare and implausible fact pattern a full blown schizophrenic couldn’t dream up.
You smile politely on hearing a hilarious “lawyer joke” which, like all other lawyer jokes, you’ve already heard 5000 times before.
You have casual, friendly work related conversations at restaurants which make those nearby grow pale, complain to the manager, or call the police.
Sombody asks you "so, what happened at work today?’, and becomes visibly ill when you tell them.
You start looking forward to your daily mail delivery of incoherent rants from the county jail from your client who is livid that you won’t file the 20 motions he wants you to merely because they make no sense.
Somebody makes some mention about how all lawyers are rich and you stifle an urge to punch them in the face, as well as the guy who told you that before law school.
Despite all of the above, you enjoy and are proud of what you do.
Your client tells you she suffered permanent disfigurement, dismemberment and paralysis in an entirely preventable accident caused by a wealthy corporation’s reckless disregard for safety codes, and your response is “That’s awesome!!!”
In the middle of a heated argument, your spouse has been known to shout, “we’re not in court, damnit!”
Two mothers pray about you on the same night. One asks God to bless you for keeping her child out of prison. The other asks God to send you straight to Hell for defending the one that harmed her child. Your client was actually guilty, and you know it.
You’ve actually read an End-User License Agreement and spun out the worst-case scenarios of its privacy policy.
^
…You are sure that the felons mother is the one who will get relief in that case
…You know more about Human Sexual preferances and tastes than most perverts. In graphic detail.
…The only time yiu feelk guilty is when you see the children in a divorce case.
Who brings their children to divorce court??
For starters, people whose children are old enough to be asked to express their preference about custody. Few things in this world can get uglier than divorce without involving an ER room.
Your client is sure you are wrong (after college, law school and 10+ years of practice because):
a) his buddy at the bar told him about his buddy’s cousin in another state who “really knows the law”.
b) he saw it on Matlock, CSI, Numb3rs, or Law and Order.
c) he read it in an e-mail.
d) his crackhead cellmate told him.
Wins the thread! I was once engaged in one such conversation, re-hashing a trial involving child abuse and involving terms like “sigmoidascope” and “anal gaping”. We gradually realised that all the near-by tables in the bar had emptied out…
Not intended as a hijack, but some of these apply to working in the ER as well.
Wanders off to open another thread unless he gets distracted first.
…The lowest paying jobs are almost as competitive as the highest paying ones.
…You own a mug paid for entirely by Westlaw points.
Best. Post I’ve read. All. Day. 
You know when you are a lawyer…
I’d like to note that 85% of these (with a little tweaking)could also apply to teachers. 
You forgot to add:
You don’t bat an eye when the caller tells you, in all seriousness, that he wants to sue Barack Obama, Hugo Chavez, Queen Elizabeth, Kim Jong-Il, and God; because they’re conspiring to prevent the alien takeover of Earth, which would usher in a few thousand years of peace and prosperity under the guidance of our alien overlords.
And you continue not to bat an eye when, in an effort to get the caller off the line, you tell the caller that regretfully, all of the above are your clients already, so taking his case would put you in a conflict of interest situation; and that’s why you cannot take his case.
(I’m thinking that our firm’s phone number is written on the wall by the payphone in the psych ward of the local hospital–we get some pretty strange calls from there.)
Another vote for being told you’re wrong because your client received an e-mail from his buddy at the bar about something kind of like this that he saw on a court show on TV once… :rolleyes: