Steven D. Price - The Worlds Funniest Lawyer Jokes: A Caseload of Jurisprudential Jest

CHAPTER ONE
HOW ABOUT A LAWYER FOR MY GATOR?

CHAPTER TWO
ASKED AND ANSWERED

CHAPTER THREE
HERE COMES THE JUDGE...

CHAPTER FOUR
WOE UNTO YE ALSO, YE LAWYERS

CHAPTER FIVE
TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS 191

CHAPTER SIX
SLIDING DOWN A BARRISTER 221

W ITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION of Yo Mama, no identifiable group has been the butt of more jokes than lawyers, so lets begin this compendium of forensic funniness with an inquiry about why that is so.

The most convincing explanation came from a lawyer chum who pointed out that most peoples only lifetime contact with the law is with regard to a divorce, a contested will, a minor (or perhaps a major) criminal charge or violation, a personal injury case, and/or a mortgage foreclosure. Those sorts of contacts will not leave you with a favorable impression of lawyers, especially where contingency fees strike the client as astronomical. Moreover, most people see lawyers as benefiting from others misery.

Another friends explanation deserves to be repeated verbatim: The best lawyerly comment I can remember came from our East Tennessee towns Spit-and-Whittle Corner, where countrymen like my grandfather and my great-uncle Flea sat on benches producing cedar shavings, tobacco juice, and a vast array of opinions, one of which was about lawyers. (Im paraphrasing now, as the eavesdropped commentary dates back 50 years to a time when I lacked the context for identifying countrymens commentary as folklore, and not as pearls of wisdom from deep-thinking philosophers. Though, on reflection, maybe I identified it correctly on the first go-round.)

Lawyers is just people paid to lie, is all. You go into any schoolroom, and you figure out who the biggest liar is, and ten to one hell grow up to be a lawyer.

Or a politician.

Thells the difference?

Politicians is lawyers who dont lie good enough, and so have to sell at a discount.

Well Ill tell you what I know about lawyers, and thats there aint never one around unless you dont need one.

Yonder goes one now.

Hell, he aint no lawyer. Hes a judge.

Thells the difference?

Judges is lawyers whove heard so much lying they got sos they can spy out the truth.

Cobbling together this collection, I came across a wide variety of anti-lawyer jokes. Some are admittedly pretty dopey, although enough people thought them worth passing along or else they would have disappeared; hence, why they appear here. Others, and many more so, display a scintilla or more of cleverness and originality. And lots more are laugh-out-loud funny. In addition to anti-lawyer jokes, I included examples of forensic wit and, in rarer instances, wisdom.

Divided into six chapters the book begins with How About A Lawyer For My gator?the punchline of one of the jokesand contains what the world has come to think ofand swapas lawyer jokes. Asked And Answered are in question-and-answer or one-liner form. Here Comes The Judge focuses on adjudicators and others on the bench. Woe Unto Ye Also, Ye Lawyers (the chapter titles comes from the New Testaments Luke, Chapter 11) contains quotations from literature and other sources. Trials And Tribulations describe farfetched-but-true lawsuits, while Sliding Down A Barrister (a line by Dorothy Parker) concludes with an assortment of lawyerly anecdotes.

As happened after I finished my other books of quotations and pre-told tales, people asked which entry is my favorite. Far and away, the cleverest item that I came across was this exchange:

Joseph Choate once opposed an attorney from Westchester County (a wealthy residential area north of New York City) in a lawsuit in New York. The attorney, in a feeble attempt to belittle Choate, warned the jury not to be taken in by his colleagues Chesterfieldian urbanity.

Choate, summing up his own arguments, in turn urged the jury not to be taken in by his opponents Westchesterfieldian suburbanity.

Not far behind is:

A junior partner in a law firm was sent to the state capital to represent a long-term client accused of robbery. After days of trial, the case was won, the client acquitted and released.

Excited about his success, the attorney e-mailed the firm: Justice prevailed.

The senior partner sent his reply one second later, Appeal immediately.

Although its largely irrelevant, I might admit in the interest of full disclosure that Im a law school graduate, so I had something of a vested (as in three-piece lawyer suit) interest in taking on this project. I restrained myself however, from including any of my law school or bar exam answers, even though those who graded my papers most likely looked at what I wrote and exclaimed, he must be joking!

Ladies and gentlemen of the reading jury, enjoy!

Steven D. Price
September, 2010

A LOW BOW IN THE direction of lawyer friends Bob Abraham, Tony Ard, Neal Goldman, John Sands, Joan Fine, Lee Weisel, and Jack Hagele, and civilians Jim Babb, Norman Fine, Mike Cohen, Richard Liebmann-Smith, and Rich Goldman for their counsel, enthusiasm, and humor.

Thanks too to publisher-lawyer Tony Lyons for the chance to do this book.

The Worlds Funniest