Advice to Law Firm Partners #1

Dear Mr. Schaeffer:

In two weeks, I’m scheduled to give a presentation to more than 500 lawyers. The title of my presentation is “You’re a Partner Who’s Fallen in Love With His Associate: What Should You Do Now?” In preparing my talk, I learned that it is often advisable to begin a presentation with a joke. Although I know an awful lot about love, I know very little about jokes. Can you help?

Signed, Humorless on the Hudson

Dear Humorless:

Something about your letter troubles me. Namely, you imply that all that’s needed to guarantee a successful presentation is a good joke to get it started. In fact, there’s much more to giving a successful presentation. One critical requirement, for example, is a mastery of the material you’ll be presenting.

Have you mastered your material? In your letter, you glibly state that you “know an awful lot about love.” But I’m skeptical. You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? See what I mean?

It’s obvious that you’ve fallen prey to a common misconception, to wit, that anyone over age twenty-five is qualified to give advice about love and sex. This week in St. Louis, for example, an elected school board official named Bill Hass was criticized for moonlighting as a sex columnist in the city’s alternative newspaper. The problem with that situation is obvious: What do elected school board officials know about sex? Not much, assuming they’ve been doing their elected job of keeping the kids from having it.

A similar line of reasoning applies to you. In your talk about the partner who's fallen in love with the associate, you’ll undoubtedly be complaining about the epidemic of love that's sweeping law firms across the nation. Partners falling in love with associates. Associates falling in love with secretaries. Secretaries trying to fall in love with the mail room guys. Lovemaking in the lunch room and in the toilet stalls. Lovemaking on the desk of every partner who isn't suffering from an incurable heart condition. You’ll be complaining about that, and you’ll be pointing out that all that lovemaking is a huge drain on the law firm’s profits. That's why you’ll insist that it must stop.

It’s an awfully cynical view for someone who claims to “know an awful lot about love.” And it’s no solution, either. Given a choice between sex and practicing law, why do you suppose that most are choosing sex? Not until you populate your law firm with robots are you going to solve your problem.

But I digress. As for a joke to begin your presentation, try this one: How many lawyers does it take to change a client’s lightbulb? For defense lawyers, ten or twenty, depending on the gullibility of the client. For plaintiffs’ lawyers, zero—they’d have a paralegal do it.

It’s guaranteed to leave your audience chuckling all day long.

Your friend, Evan Schaeffer

Comments

[David Giacalone]

Aren't you feeling well, today, Evan? You missed the opportunity to link to the lyrics of "Lawyers in Love" -- http://www.jrp-graphics.com/jb/lil.html.

By the way, I'm still waiting for country music headline week.

[Katherine]

ummm... in my little corner of NY State, a local principal and teacher (neither married to one another) were forced to resign by the school board for performing lewd acts in the middle of a school playground--in open daylight, no less!

So, some teachers are qualified to moonlight as sex columnists...