Responding to Mr. Smartass

If you teach legal ethics long enough, you will eventually meet Mr. Smartass.  He's the guy at a wedding, bar mitzvah, or some other social gathering who is, put simply, a smart ass.  You're introduced to him, and he quickly moves to the dreaded question.

"What do you do for a living?," he asks. 

Sensing danger, you offer cautiously, "I'm, uh, a law professor."

"Oh really?," he says.  "What do you teach?"

You have a moment to decide between honesty and diversion. At a recent wedding, you mentioned your econometrics approach to 19th century Malaysian corporate securities law.  Nobody talked to you, so this time you opt for honesty.

"I teach legal ethics."

Mr. Smartass chuckles, and the stink of alcohol tells you that you just made a mistake.

"Legal ethics?," he asks. "That must be a short course."

You offer a goofy grin and think to yourself,  "I knew it. Next time just say that I'm an accountant!" 

Mr. Smartass, smelling blood, asks, "Do you use a book in that course, or is it just a pamphlet?" 

He finds this very funny, and the stench of alcohol is now erupting from him.

"That's good," you say.  "I haven't heard that one before."  Of course, you have heard that one before, far too many times, but you're hoping to change the subject before Mr. Smartass realizes that he has overlooked the most obvious joke. The joke.

You see it in his eyes.  He has figured it out, albeit a little later than most.

"Isn't legal ethics some kind of oxymoron?" He thinks this is brilliant and looks around to see if anyone else has discovered his genius.

You retort, "It takes an oxymoron to know one, Mr. 'Smart...ass.'"

Mr. Smartass, no longer smiling, looks as if he has just been struck with an unexpected left to the head.

Sensing a possible verbal escalation, you move quickly to more mundane matters. "Uh, didn't Jacob do a great job with his Torah portion?"

...

Let's face it, folks.  If you teach legal ethics, you've probably had a conversation like this one.  Well, maybe not exactly like this one, but you know what I mean.  So tell me, what legal ethics putdowns have you heard from Mr. or Ms. Smartass?  And do you have any better ripostes than mine? 

Comments

[Eric Goldman]

I'm never defensive about lay perceptions of legal ethics. We have a lot of work to do to restore trust in the legal profession. Eric.

[Alice Woolley]

This post made my day, although it does put my response of smile-politely-and-drink-more-beer to shame.

[Andrew Perlman]

Eric, I'm just having a little fun with a situation that many of us have faced. Of course, you're right that there are serious issues here about how defensive we should be about our field of expertise. But with a stack of exams on my floor, humor seemed the most useful diversion!

And Alice, for what it's worth, I always opt for the smile-politely-and-drink-more-beer approach in real life. But it's fun to dream!

[Monroe Freedman]

Although I have much the same resentful feelings as others, I agree with Eric that we should treat this as an opening for a teaching moment.

[Andrew Perlman]

Monroe, I agree. Depending on the context, I have found that an exchange of this sort can lead to some valuable conversations and useful teaching moments. To the extent that there is such an opportunity, I really do opt for it, my imagined storyline notwithstanding.

[john steele]

I may have this problem less often than some of you. From my grandfather down, we have 18 lawyers in my family and more on the way, plus lots of our family friends are lawyers.

My reaction depends somewhat on the tone of the other person. If the person is dead serious, self-righteous, and accusatory, and if there is an audience around us, I sometimes tell him that it’s a very important, very difficult field. Then I go absolute deadpan and launch into “extra $100 bill” joke as if it’s a real ethical dilemma about which I need his views. Invariably, the only person who doesn’t get the joke is the self-righteous guy—and the other people around him laugh. It's a reverse putdown that deflates the moment.

The one thing I won’t do is to seriously put down lawyers just to save myself an awkward moment.

If the person is open to a serious discussion (contra Andy's all-too-real hypo), I often start with, “who do you think lies more often in a typical day: a lawyer or a non-lawyer?”

[Andrew Perlman]

John,

If someone is interested in a serious conversation, I often compare the ethics rules of lawyers to those of doctors and journalists. Lawyers compare quite favorably. I will, for example, note the differences in the conflicts of interest rules for doctors and lawyers or describe investigative tactics by journalists that would be clearly improper for attorneys.

Andy

[Monroe Freedman]

The difference between doctors and lawyers in responding to Spaulding v. Zimmrmerman is useful. Lawyers have agonized over the lawyers' silence, while I'm unaware of doctors or medical schools expressing any concern over the doctor's silence.

It might be interesting to have an informal mini-conference to discuss ways to answer the question.

[Andrew Perlman]

Monroe, I really like your idea of discussing how we should respond to the typical lay criticisms that we (as legal ethicists) often hear. Perhaps the organizers of the ABA NCPR could include a panel next year that tries to tackle it. I could imagine something like this: "Legal ethics is not an oxymoron: how to respond to lay critics" That would make for an interesting panel, because as the comments here point out, it can be a serious topic. Indeed, we are often put in the position of having to defend our profession, both publicly and privately. It would be useful to talk through the various ways in which we should do so.

And here I thought I was just trying to add some humor while many of us grade exams...

[Tom Wilkinson]

I don't mind people suggesting in jest that legal ethics is a contradiction in terms because it does provide an opportunity to discuss how lawyers self police, actively consult ethics committees for guidance and in many states like mine have mandatory ethics CLE credit. Nonlawyers invariably do not realize how much focus there is in the profession on following the right/ethical approach to a problem.

[Monroe Freedman]

The following is part of a comparison of lawyers and journalists in a discussion of solicitation of clients at a disaster site, ULE 380-382:

Consider, for example, a story in The New York Times relating to an accident in which twenty-one children drowned and sixty others were injured when a school bus plunged into a water-filled gravel pit in Alton, Texas. Fully four months after the accident, the Times ran a front-page story with a three column headline: “Where 21 Youths Died, Lawyers Wage a War.” The story tells of a “parade of lawyers” that began almost immediately after the accident, and of “fierce competition” among the lawyers to represent the families. On page one, the Times identifies “one benefit, if that is what it is: a poor and undereducated community, made up largely of Hispanic field laborers, has acquired a new kind of sophistication.” This questionable benefit, according to the Times, is that people who wanted to grieve without the intrusion of lawyers are now saying, “When this happens to you, you hire a lawyer and you get money.”

The important part of the story is on an inside page, at the very end, and is written in a way that makes it appear to be unrelated to the main story that preceded it. There we learn that the 3,000 people who live in Alton have returned to “the anonymous, poverty-stricken lives they led before the bus crashed into the water.” Because the students who died were among the poorest in the high school, the response among the other students was “much less than if it was the star quarterback.”

With the filing of that story, the last of the reporters also left Alton. Although the Times’ prominent and lengthy critique of the “parade of lawyers” did not mention the fact, only the lawyers remained, to serve the members of this “poor, undereducated community, made up largely of Hispanic field laborers.” Subsequently, in a brief item buried on an inside page, the Times reported that the lawyers for sixteen of the families whose children had been killed had obtained a settlement of $67.5 million for their clients.

In short, the legal system succeeded in providing equal protection and due process of law to poverty-stricken people whom all others were content to abandon. That is the story that deserved, but never received, a front-page headline.

[Judge Roy Bean]

Directly to the legal ethics/oxymoron joke: "No, it's more like perpetual childhood with a little sister who tattles."

More snarky responses might be:

"Let me guess, the suit went badly?"

"(He/she) got everything in the divorce, eh?"

"You have attorneys in your family, too?"

"Those DUI's are a bitch, aren't they?"

Enjoy!