
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" - it's a lawyer joke - SlyShy
http://www.spectacle.org/797/finkel.html
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grellas
It is actually pretty amusing to find lawyers claiming that this phrase was
intended as a compliment! A very nice piece on its origins.

Dickens, who had his own scars from dealing with the law, said this about
their environs:

"These sequestered nooks are the public offices of the legal profession, where
writs are issued, judgments signed, declarations filed, and numerous other
ingenious machines put in motion for the torture and torment of His Majesty's
liege subjects, and the comfort and emolument of the practitioners of the
law." ( _Pickwick Papers_ )

The unbroken line of criticism over the centuries probably is its own best
evidence that there is something seriously broken with our profession - the
guild system that renders the services over-priced, the maddening court
procedures that just as often work to deny justice as to promote it, the
shake-down artists who merely fly the flag of the law while engaging in basic
extortion, and on and on.

There is much good in the law, and in many of those who practice it, and it
all the sadder therefore that many would pervert that which might otherwise be
so well-used.

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megablast
I wouldn't be surprised to see a lawyer or solicitor pull out some quote from
Kafka's The Trial, and try to spin that. Just another reason why people do not
trust lawyers, on top of the fact that they are the ultimate middle men.

Of course, what you finish with is true, they are very necessary for our
current way of life. Of course, they also ensure that they are more and more
necessary, as all good middle men do.

~~~
nroach
There would be no lawyers without clients. Where do divorce lawyers get their
business? From people who were unable to solve a relationship problem on their
own. Where do criminal defense lawyers get their business? From people who
chose not to abide by the rules set by the society in which they live. Where
do business lawyers get their business? From clients who are unable to resolve
a dispute about an agreement they signed.

Sure, it's convenient to blame the intermediary, but at the end of the day if
people were better at solving their own problems, the attorney's role would be
only that of a counselor. (a role that good attorneys embrace.)

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sabj
Nice piece covering the origins there of the phrase. Lawyer jokes have fallen
flat, to me, when they aren't clever... I guess because I know too many
lawyers who work for good / not for profit / etc.

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balding_n_tired
Next up, why Sandburg's "Tell me why a hearse-horse snickers/Carrying a
lawyer's bones." is intended as a compliment.

But no, Shakespeare does not depict Jack Cade as a statesman, is he?

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kleiba
Does anyone remember the Marx Brothers? "The party of the first part shall be
known in this contract as the party of the first part." And so on. Pretty much
dead-on :)

