It's Getting Rough Out There

Question:  How many lawyer jokes are there?
Answer:    Three.  The rest are true stories.

The New York Law Journal on August 23, 2012 gives a little bit of credibility to a lot of the jokes we hear about lawyers.  Clients going through the legal system for do, in fact, have a lot of things to justly criticize.  However, without sounding too much like a cheerleader for the profession of law, for the most part attorneys are pretty great people. They get the job done in workman-like manner; are professional and caring people and quite often are intensely involved in community organizations. But there is that handful of jerks out there that make the rest of all attorneys cringe and become frustrated at how just one idiot attorney can wreck the reputation of the entire profession.

So, here's a brief summary of why I SHOULD NOT have picked up the law journal on August 23rd:

First story:  "A Family Court judge who abruptly resigned in April should be prohibited from holding judicial office again in New York after he acknowledged having sexual contact 40 years ago with his 5 year old deaf niece, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct recommended in a determination released yesterday."  It actually is a bizarre story if you get to read it.  Apparently this sexual contact is alleged to have happened in 1972.  The girl is now 45.  Apparently, the mother of the girl is the sister of the Judge's wife.  The mother of the girl was wired by the DA in Onandoga County, (NY) but recorded in Boulder, Colorado where the mother of the 45 year old victim lives. 

Second Story:  "A State Judge who says he was assaulted by a police officer is accusing the Queens district attorney of orchestrating a cover-up after the prosecutor announced yesterday he will not file criminal charges against the officer who allegedly hit the judge and assaulted a homeless man.  'Everything they say is a lie," Queens Supreme Court Justice Thomas Raffaele said...".

Third Story:  "Employment attorney Matthew Bilt has filed a defamation suit against an adversary who claimed in open court that Bilt files frivolous suits against high-profile figures to extract money from them in a 'shakedown'. "

I am glad that I practice law in St. Lawrence County, Franklin County and Clinton County.  The population of jerks per attorneys is, for some reason, quite lower than downstate.  We do, however, have our share, and you know who you are, but for the most part the attorneys that we deal with, by and large, want to get a great job done for their clients and conclude the matter with the least trauma to the client.

Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and honest lawyer, and an old drunk were walking along when they simultaneously spotted a hundred-dollar bill laying in the street. Who gets it?
        The old drunk, of course, the other three are mythological creatures!

See...  I love lawyer jokes.

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