Jan 15 2009
Legalese
I was having a pleasant conversation with some associates. We were gossiping and talking about our plans for the weekend. Then, one said that she has to write a brief but doesn’t have enough time to do it so that her “work product” will be poor. As soon as she said it, I had a flash back to an incident that occurred at my prior firm. I was working on a case with a girl and our task was to help prepare the partners to take depositions. She would constantly talk about “dep prep.” Sometimes I will be out with my friends and one of them will mention the “leverage” of their law firm. Ugh, or this one time, I went to a bar associate happy hour and got stuck talking to some total douche who talked about all the “unique opportunities” available at his law firm and he went on to list them all: pro bono, mentoring, substantive experience, blah blah - like he was an ad for his crappy firm. I know for a fact that all but one or two of my friends, all my other friends who practice law, truly hate the practice of law (I should preface this by saying that we all work at law firms). There are numerous statistics about how young associates are disenchanted with their law firms. And, if you ever meet an attorney and ask him or her about his/her job you will undoubtedly be told that it sucks. So, given the fact that no one likes working at a law firm (with the exception of the major gunners and the partners who make a lot of money and boss you around and some who are super fat and nasty and get to be mean to women to compensate for his failure to find a woman who would touch him), why do associates use these legal words? There are many possible explanations. The most simple explanation probably applies to the majority of these unhappy associates: they are douches. I mean using the word “work product” is the ultimate in douchey behavior. But, some of my non-douchey friends use these words. What’s their excuse? They are trying to sound smart? No, because then they fall within the first group - the douches. They secretly enjoy their job? Well, I mean maybe that is true but I just cannot conceive of how it is possible. The answer, I believe, is referred to by psychologists as “Stockholm Syndrome.” It refers to kidnap victims who identify with their kidnappers, regardless of the danger they were forced to endure. And with that, I am going to go ping some people (note: if you didn’t know what that meant, fear not because I didn’t either but my friend who is a much better attorney told me it is what douchey people say to mean email/im/call/text/or otherwise contact someone - you know like the ping sound the computer makes when you send a g).
