An Introduction to Lawyers for Those Who Have Not Yet Had the Pleasure of Being Introduced: An Essay in Four Parts

Part I: An Introduction to the Typical Lawyer

First and foremost, a lawyer is a professional, although probably not the kind you’re thinking. Take Smith. Smith was a lawyer, yet he could never be counted on to arrive on time. Usually, he was always at least ten minutes late. While ten minutes is in keeping with the standards of most professionals, Smith would also routinely show up at the wrong place. Frequently, that place was a bar. While it could have been any bar, and often it was, it was almost always a bar that was quite a distance from Smith’s scheduled meeting.

At this point in the essay, it might be appropriate to consider how far we have come. Unfortunately, we haven’t come far. What we have at this point in our “introduction to lawyers” is nothing but a lawyer named Smith—dressed in a sports coat and a stained red tie, loosened at the neck—who happens to be sitting in a bar. He’s having quite a time, too, winking at the waitresses, high-fiving all his buddies (many of whom he just met), and ordering another round “for the house.” He’s completely forgotten his meeting. But as is typical of most lawyers, it was only with the best of intentions. Smith, after all, always demands the best for his clients, just as he does for himself. That’s why for Smith, it’s nothing but single-malt Scotch or, in a pinch, Johnnie Walker Black Label.

Is it fair to other lawyers to dwell on Smith? If this were one of those essays meant to denigrate lawyers—that is, intended to mock, criticize, and disparage one of the highest callings our country has to offer its young citizens—it would be easy enough to kill Smith off in the next sentence of this essay. Having gorged himself on spicy chicken wings, we could have Smith suffer a sudden and unexpected heart attack. More gruesome still, we could have him reach around to pinch the backside of a cute female bar patron, but then lose his balance, fly backwards, and gash his head on the shiny gold clasp of a briefcase owned by Jones, another lawyer at the bar. In this scenario, which perhaps we should just run with for awhile, Smith would get bravely to his feet and announce he was “just fine.” Lawyers are nothing if not brave, especially when they’re a little looped. Next, Smith would stumble outside, where he would either trip on the curb and bleed to death in the gutter, or be run over and killed by a nearsighted bike messenger heading in a blind panic for the courthouse before it closes.

Although the courthouse option would be more ironic, the gutter scenario would be more bloody, which would increase the likelihood, however remote, that this essay will be purchased by a Hollywood movie studio. So we’ll go with the graphic first option—Smith will bleed to death.

Before you object that this ending to our story is unjustifiably cruel, you should understand that it is, in fact, the ending that would be most favored by those stuffy and uptight “associations” of lawyers like the American Bar Association, the National Association of Retail Collection Attorneys, or the National Association of College and University Attorneys. Known respectively as the ABA, the NARCA, and the NACUA, associations like these are notoriously out of keeping with the times. To use an analogy, such associations are to the typical lawyer what Patsy Cline is to the rap star Eminem. That is, they are much better dressed, always quick to smile, and so unstained by controversy that they obviously hail from another era. Above all else, associations like these don’t want anyone, particularly other lawyers, admitting in public that many “in the practice” really like their booze.

But most lawyers do like their booze. It’s as fine an introduction to lawyers as any that has ever been written, as long as you understand that it is only an introduction, and that the much more serious analysis is still to come.

Next: Part II How to Feed a Lawyer

[Like this post? It's one of many included in my book How to Feed a Lawyer (And Other Irreverent Oberservations from the Legal Underground). Details here.]

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[Law & Alcoholism]

I knew I was in the right profession.