On Friday, “Love Your Lawyer Day,” Why Are Lawyer Jokes So Vicious?

WASHINGTON - Nov. 6, 2015 - PRLog -- WASHINGTON, D.C. (November 6, 2015): Today is “Love Your Lawyer Day,” a holidays designed by lawyers to help overcome the very bad image attorneys have, especially as portrayed in lawyers jokes.

        But there a number of reasons why - compared to doctors, politicians, TV anchors, and others - lawyers are portrayed so badly, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.  Here’s what he says:

        There are jokes about many different professionals: e.g., doctors' high incomes and their golf, politicians who lie or duck issues, and TV journalists more at home with a blow dryer than a microphone.

        But many jokes about lawyers seem to be particularly vicious.

        So why is the public's image of lawyers so low that they gleefully compare lawyers to sharks, lab rats, skunks, manure, and toxic waste dumps, and even make joke after joke about literally killing them.

        Banzhaf suggests several reasons:

    1. People react with strong emotions because they generally gain their impressions of lawyers at stressful times: e.g., when arrested, or when getting sued, a divorce, etc.

    2. On the average, half of all people involved in law suits lose, and even many winners don't get what they want and expect.  In contrast, most medical patients recover.

    3. Surveys show that people generally like their own lawyers, but resent the tactics of the opposing lawyers, particularly when the clients are on the losing side.  By way of contrast, in medicine there are no opposing doctors.
[Imagine if every time you went into an operating room there was, in additional to your own doctor trying to save your life, another one also in the room trying just as hard to see that you didn’t make it.]

    4. Government is increasingly seen as intrusive and its rules incomprehensible, and lawyers are seen as both the cause and the beneficiaries.

    5. Many people believe that lawyers make nothing but money and trouble, build nothing but court records, and produce nothing but delays.

    6. Most laymen don't appreciate that fundamental constitutional and other legal rights often have to be protected by lawyers defending very bad people, and that even the worst criminals are entitled to legal representation.

    7. Doctors make more money than lawyers, but they also save lives.  The only lives people see lawyers saving are those of murderers.

        Of course there’s a fundamental problems with lawyer jokes: Lawyers don’t think they’re funny, and laymen don’t think they’re jokes.

        And Banzhaf admits that, yes, there are even jokes about law professors:

Q: What do you get when you cross a law professor with the Godfather?
A: An offer you can't refuse or understand!

Q: How many law professors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one.  He just holds onto the bulb -- and the universe revolves around him!

FOR A LIST OF LAWYER JOKES, SEE: http://banzhaf.net/LawyerJokes.html