Thursday, April 8, is Be Kind to Lawyers Day. The following guide will help ensure you and your lawyer experience maximum enjoyment on this very special day.
Claim: Lawyers love International Be Kind to Lawyers Day.
Foundation? Lack of foundation. This may surprise you, but lawyers hate this day. It suggests, based on rules of construction, that one should be unkind to lawyers on all other 355 days of the year, and 356 days in leap years.
Claim: Lawyers are doctors.
Foundation? Foundation, yes! Lawyers have a J.D., which means Juris Doctor, which means doctor of law. Hence lawyers technically are doctors but, like Dr. Pepper, cannot deliver babies on airplanes when the call arises.
Claim: Lawyers use big words and yell to hide their vulnerabilities.
Foundation? Lack of foundation. Lawyers hide their vulnerabilities by misusing small, Latin words that include, without limitation: ipso, facto, quid, quo, et cetera, and fee fi fo fum.
Claim: Lawyers are sociopaths and never establish strong human bonds
Foundation? Not all lawyers are sociopaths but all sociopaths are lawyers, and they can learn to act and socialize like normal humans.
Claim: Lawyers as children never played well in the sandbox.
Foundation? Lack of foundation. Lawyers don't like to get their hands dirty, or puns, which made this one especially hard to write.
Claim: Lawyers as toddlers take longer to potty train than other toddlers.
Foundation? Lack of foundation. This is a misconception, spread by substandard clinics in Bulgaria and Florida. The confusion might arise because lawyers do go to the bathroom less as toddlers, making for abnormal bowel movements, and nervous parents often take them to the doctor, mistaking constipation for a condition known as “strenuous objection.” (This came up in A Few Good Men).
Claim: If your child has a fight on a playground with the children of a lawyer, they will sue you.
Foundation? No foundation whatsoever. The children of lawyers are not barred by any State, and are not automatically barred because their parents are barred. This is not like Irish citizenship. Moreover, practicing law without a license is a misdemeanor, punishable by $500 and six months in jail. These practicalities make it highly unlikely you’ll be sued by children.
Claim: Most lawyers find that cilantro tastes like soap.
Foundation? Foundation, but most things taste like soap to lawyers. Their mothers spend a good deal of their childhood washing their mouths out with soap. This is also observed with long-haul truckers and Sarah Silverman.
Claim: Lawyers despise their parents for bringing them into this world.
Foundation? Lawyers despise all human beings, but most of all actors who play lawyers on network television.
Claim: Lawyers despise Colin Jost too.
Foundation? This is true.
Claim: Most lawyers think Tim Allen is a dipshit.
Foundation? Also true.
Claim: Most lawyers are embarrassed by Elle Woods.
Foundation? Whoever claims this is an imbecile. This is borderline defamatory. The same person who claims this is the same person who talks shit about Atticus Finch.
Claim: Why wasn’t Marisa Tomei impeached on the stand in My Cousin Vinny when she said there were two cars made in the 1960s with independent rear suspension, when in fact there was a third car (the Chevy Corvair, infamous for not being safe at any speed).
Foundation? Objection, relevance. This is not a claim, it is a question, but I will answer it anyway. In movies, some things are make-believe and, in this instance, the screenplay writer went and made-believe there were two such cars. Only an asshole would ask this question.
Claim: Lawyers have nowhere to be on holidays, including without limitation Thanksgiving, Christmas, Purim, and Saint Patrick’s day, and yearn to be invited into a warm household for a HoneyBaked® Ham meal and a yuletide log or some comforting equivalent.
Foundation? This is not not true.
Claim: On Valentine’s Day, lawyers sit at a desk with a bag of Arby’s and spend time stacking coins and then counting them, wondering what went wrong in their lives.
Foundation? Arby’s is closed on Valentine’s Day.
Just kidding, it is open 6:30 am to midnight.
This joke is funny to lawyers.
Claim: When a lawyer is beheaded, the lawyer is still conscious and perceptive for approximately 15 seconds.
Foundation? Foundation. However, this is true for all humans. The only distinction is that lawyers still can, and will, talk for these 15 seconds. Then they will bill you for it.
Claim: It is easy to tell a Harvard-educated lawyer from other lawyers.
Foundation? Foundation. Harvard-educated lawyers will reveal themselves within 45 seconds by telling you they went to Harvard, if you’re able to stand them for that long. Pregnant women should not attempt this, per the Surgeon General’s warning, though this is not an obligatory directive, but a noncompulsory admonition. Despite recent Supreme Court musings, telling pregnant women what to do is unconstitutional.
Claim: Lawyers are extremely creative, and always willing to try new things.
Foundation? Lawyers are bound, as a matter of law, to follow precedent, which is why there is widespread industry resistance to giving up the combover and learning all the functions of the shift key.
