Lawyers are liars.
Untrue. Lawyers are not trained to lie. They are trained to twist the truth. There is a huge difference. You can be caught in a lie. When you twist the truth, you cannot be caught; it's just a matter of interpretation.
A friend who teaches tax law gives the same introductory speech at the beginning of every semester. He asks, "are there any accountants in the class?" Two or three hands go up. He says to them, "You're going to have trouble in this class. To you, numbers describe the truth. In tax law, there is no one truth. You push and pull on the numbers until they say what you want them to say."
If you can make numbers say what you want, are words any problem?
The distinction is important, because we normally decide if someone is lying by looking for psychological cues: shifty eyes, covering the mouth, or dodging questions. When someone is professionally trained to twist the truth, they don't give those signs.
When you speak to a lawyer, don't worry too much about lies - but always, always remember that you are in the reality distortion zone.
Lawyers are trained to think clearly.
Lawyers –in terms of coming to the right conclusion about the real world –are some of the worst thinkers on the planet Earth. Because of their tendancy to twist reality, they have a fantastic gift for sounding logical while missing the broad side of the barn.
It is more accurate to say lawyers are trained to think logically within the framework of law –as chess players think within the framework of chess. (There is a very old saying, "The law sharpens a mind by narrowing it.")
Would you go to a chess player for advice on your life? On business?
Somewhere, I can hear somebody answering, "Hmm, well, umm ... if he had a nice pinstripe suit ... if she drove a BMW ...
The main problem with lawyers is high bills.
Completely untrue. The main problem with lawyers is that most of what they do is useless, or actually harmful to their own client. U.S. President Thomas Jefferson –a lawyer himself –said in 1807 that, "It is the business of a lawyer to question everything, produce nothing, and bill by the hour."
Billing, you notice, comes last. And not much has changed with lawyers.
Of the 27,342 lawyer jokes out there, most deal with high bills, lies, and dishonesty.
There is a more accurate lawyer joke:
- What do lawyers and sperm have in common?
- Only one in a million does anything useful.
I hire lawyers, now and then. Usually for information; rarely for advice. When I hire them to do something, I make sure it is something I want done.
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