Lawyer Jokes
Friday Nov 07, 2008
Some law students have asked me to comment on the topic of lawyer jokes. First of all, here are some of my favorites:
Q: How was copper wire invented?
A: Two lawyers fighting over a penny.
Q: What do you call a bus full of lawyers going over a cliff, with one empty seat?
A: A missed opportunity.
Q: What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A: A good start.
Q: How can you tell when a lawyer is lying?
A: His lips are moving.
Q: What's the difference between a lawyer and a carp?
A: One's a slime-sucking bottom dweller, and the other's a fish.
Q: What's the difference between a dead snake in the middle of the road, and a dead lawyer in the middle of the road?
A: The snake has skid marks in front of it.
Once you become a lawyer, you will start hearing every lawyer joke in the book. You could write the book. Friends, relatives, and everyone you know will email them to you, call you to tell them to you, and send you links to them. Ha-ha, very funny. ROTFL.
I figure, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I generally start my presentations to clients with a lawyer joke or two. This does two things. First, it helps me feel less anxious (I've always had stage fright). Second, it shows the client that I can laugh at myself, and that I don't take myself too seriously. This is a great icebreaker, and clients just LOVE it.
Note that these are always "lawyer" jokes. They are never "attorney" jokes. My husband is also a lawyer, and is a litigator. He calls himself a "lawyer." On the other hand, he always refers to me as an "attorney." He says that what I do is too sophisticated for me to be called a "lawyer."
So what's the fascination with lawyer jokes? I've thought about this a lot and haven't really settled on an answer, but have some theories. First of all, people generally don't trust lawyers - they've all heard horror stories about lawyers keeping clients' money, robbing them blind, being non-responsive and ignoring their clients, and not complying with all of the rules of ethics and professional responsibility that good lawyers need to comply with. In other words, doing all the things that get lawyers disciplined, disbarred, and plastered on the front of the Wall Street Journal, wearing handcuffs and orange jumpsuits.
In addition, the law is a mystery to most people. Even after going to law school and practicing law for many years, some laws are still incomprehensible. People fear what they don't understand. People also fear lawyers, because they generally only need one when something has gone drastically wrong.
How do you deal with something you don't like, trust or understand? Make fun of it! Laugh at it! Belittle it! This is just human nature - it helps bring things down to a more manageable level where you can feel more comfortable with it. It's sort of the same approach as the the playground bully who makes fun of everyone else so he can feel better about himself. Except there are so many bad lawyers that live up to the reputations that the jokes portray that it's fuel for even more jokes.
Take a look at the number and type of disciplinary matters the State Bar of California dealt with in 2007 to see what I'm talking about here. Click on the 2007 Annual Discipline Report under "Reports" on the left side. Astonishing.
So, I strive to be different. I love working at Sun because it's such an ethical company, as I've discussed before. It's easy to do the right thing here. I work on being perceived as an "attorney" rather than a "lawyer." I love it when my clients say, "Wow - you don't SEEM like a lawyer!" And I laugh at the jokes along with everyone else. 
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