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Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,230
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2003
Posts: 3,230 |
>Why is it that they are so vilified in the U.S.?
It could be connected with the number of them there. No country in the world is more litigious than than the U.S., and the U.S. breeds lawyers faster than Brazil breeds great soccer players. With at least 60,000 new lawyers graduating annually in the States, that's a whole lot of targets for scorn and contempt.
TEd's passionate defence of the profession notwithstanding, in a country that lives to sue, and with myriads of lawyers who must sue to live, the depth of the anti-lawyer sentiment in the States seems unsurprising.
I also wonder if there isn't a significant component of self-loathing in that anti-lawyer sentiment. Perhaps there would n't be so many greedy, unscrupulous, manipulative lawyers if there weren't so many greedy, unscrupulous, manipulative clients. I actually quite enjoyed Grisham's King of torts for its examination of this side of legal ethics (or the lack thereof).
Finally, just to provide another target for spleen, a friend who spent his entire working life in the oil industry (another increasingly reviled sector) told me recently that the only professional group he views with universal distrust and disgust is real estate vendors. He said that in 35 years, in both the US and here, he has yet to deal with a vendor with ethics.
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Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 247
enthusiast
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OP
enthusiast
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 247 |
re Why is it that they are so vilified in the U.S.? ... Oh, they're vilified the world over.
All over, and in all centuries it would seem.
Here is a famous quotation which I always knew as "Why does a hearse horse snicker hauling a lawyer's bones?"
QUOTATION: Why is there always a secret singing when a lawyer cashes in? Why does a hearse horse snicker hauling a lawyer away?
ATTRIBUTION: Quoted in NY Times 13 Jan 85
Source:
Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, compiled by James B. Simpson. 1988.
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Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 3
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 3 |
I sleep with my lawyer, too. She's a wonderful wife. And my mom slept with her lawyer. He was a great Dad. But still we tell the old one:
Me (to my daughter): Sweetie, what's your mommy do for a living?
Kid: Oh, she's an attorney.
Me: Honest?
Kid: No, the regular kind.
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
I have two favourite lawyer jokes. Can't distinguish between 'em when it comes to laughs. Here's one:
Pope John Paul dies and with very little further ado finds himself in Heaven, waiting in a short queue for St Peter to escort him to his Heavenly home. In due course, St Pete turns up in a vehicle that looks like a cross between a tour bus and a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, but with a kicker: It can fly. He invites the four people waiting in the queue to board, and they clamber on. John Paul is feeling really good, because all of a sudden he can move freely again; no aches and pains and he seemed to have regained his youthful vigour.
The RR bus takes off and heads out across Heaven. Within 20 minutes, it had dropped off everyone but John Paul and one other passenger at houses that looked like those typically owned by prosperous professionals: large multi-storey bungalows with swimming pools set in woods full of deer but with no predators. Think of the Sopranos' house in Jersey. In each case the recently deceased was met by relatives and friends in joyful reunions. JP was deeply touched and satisfied by this. Truly, you had your reward in Heaven. He could hardly wait.
Then the RR bus started travelling across much richer pickings: large estates, really fancy houses (think Posh and Mr Spice's Beckingham Palace), servants, stables, biz jets and helicopters on private airfields: You name it. Eventually it put down at a place on a hill that appeared to be an exact replica of a Rhenish castle. It had massive limestone walls, fanciful turrets on fantastically-ornamented towers with stained glass windows and orange-tiled rooves. It even had a moat. Two lines of people wearing livery formed a guard of honour at the point that the RR bus was to touch down and a group of people waiting to greet the new owner milled about. JP started to get up, but then he realised that he didn't know any of the group of people waiting by the landing spot. This one clearly wasn't for him. His fellow passenger, tears in his eyes, got out of the bus and was greeted loudly and joyfully by the party and the guard of honour bowed low as he descended from the RR bus. The sound of champagne corks popping was to be heard just as the RR bus doors shut again.
The shuttle took off again with JP in a state of high excitement. What was his reward to be? It must be something extra special. His reverie was such that he didn't notice that the quality of the accommodation that the RR bus was passing over was deteriorating a bit. In fact, quite a lot. It was only when the RR bus started to descend again that he took any real notice of his surroundings and the first harbingers of disappointment began to set in. That he was right to worry was confimed when the RR bus finally set down in a street which wasn't really all that, um, nice. Kids in rags chased each other around, shouting and swearing at each other. Women wearing curlers leaned in doorways which opened directly on to the street, smoking and shouting at each other across the hubbub created by the children. Men stood on the corner of the street drinking out of bottles wrapped in brown paper bags and watching the bus descend with suspicion. The houses were delapidated terraces, grimy and uncared for, windows boarded up in some cases, dirty in all. The bus door opened, and through it JP could see what was undoubtedly to be his Eternal Home: It had "Welcome, John Paul!" written in crayon on a piece of cardboard fixed to the door with drawing pins.
He tried to swallow his bitterness, reflecting that God always did the right thing and that he must somehow have deserved this fate. He was going to leave uncomplainingly, but found he couldn't quite managed to suppress his disappointment.
"St Peter," he said to the archangel at the wheel, "I accept that the Lord giveth and taketh away. I know that I have sinned from time to time, but by and large I have always tried to do the right thing and to encourage others to do so, too. What have I done which is so bad that I rate this hovel when that last passenger received a castle and servants?"
"Well, Your Holiness," St Peter said, "Popes up here are a dime a dozen. But that last chappie was the first lawyer we have ever had in through the Pearly Gates!"
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891 |
>>in a country that lives to sue, and with myriads of lawyers who must sue to live, the depth of the anti-lawyer sentiment in the States seems unsurprising.
Funny how there are often different mind-sets depending on where you live. If you ask anybody here about the U.S. people and their great need to sue, no-one will ever blame/discuss the lawyers. It is usually the people doing the suing that get the eye-roll. The lawyers are only doing a job that they were hired to do.
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