What do you call 1,000 lawyers chained to the bottom of the ocean? A good start.
Everybody has heard lawyer jokes, where they are continually seen as ambulance chasing, business card toting, spare-change vacuums. They are good for a quick chuckle, but few stop to think about their origins and how they act as commentary about society's legal system.
Late last year, UW-Madison emeritus law professor Marc Galanter wrote a new book entitled 'Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture.'
After many years of searching, Galanter compiled an expansive collection of over 300 lawyer jokes and came to some interesting conclusions about legal culture. Galanter's assertion is that lawyer jokes reflect the evolving public sentiment toward our legal system. More importantly, Americans have come to see lawyers not with passive restraint like in the past, but rather with vulgar and violent disregard.
To understand how the jokes have changed, Galanter noted that there are two broad categories of lawyer jokes: those that are switchable, allowing for many sorts of people to be inserted into the context of the joke, and those that are strictly limited to the legal system's domain. Galanter placed much importance on the switchable jokes because one can observe, over time, which groups are socially acceptable to mock. For example, in the early 1900s, blacks were sometimes made the punchline of a joke, whereas now these jokes are socially unacceptable.
'Jokes never really point at a specific misdeed,' Galanter said.
According to Galanter, lawyer jokes have been around for ages and continue to change, but not until recently have they been so hostile toward the legal system. In his analysis, Galanter gives many reasons for this change'the high price of lawyers, civil rights movements and heightened media coverage of law.
Law is so embedded and visible in American culture that it is unlikely they will ever disappear, Galanter said. Just like the government, lawyers are criticized but remain a necessity.
'The lawyers and the government are closely allied ... what bothers people is the legalization of life,' Galanter said. 'People feel they are caught in a web of regulation that they cannot escape from.'
It is interesting to note that lawyer jokes tend to focus on those people that are remote from us. Galanter said most people appreciate their own lawyers, but tend to be very critical of those figures present in the media and popular culture. According to UW-Madison sociology professor Mark Suchman, there is truth in this statement comparing lawyer jokes to American's view of the French.
'Most people haven't met a French person, but they still pass judgment,' Suchman said.
Due to litigation's adversarial nature, these jokes may seem inevitable.
'Somebody always loses, so there is going to be an unhappy party,' Suchman said.
Galanter's hobby-turned-scholarly-discourse can be interesting for just about anyone. Galanter's book has received much praise from his peers and the public. For those interested in a career in law, Galanter's book is an informative tool about the changing legal culture and what one should come to expect in the field. For those not wishing to dabble in the gavel, this book remains intriguing and funny, unearthing jokes focused on one of our favorite subjects of ridicule.
