by Alan P. Bayham, Jr. PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Lawyer Jokes
I have a problem with lawyer jokes.
It seems that more often our profession is treated with disrespect and downright hostility in the media and by the
public. And that’s unfortunate.
I heard at a recent seminar that lawyer jokes are just a
rehash of the same jokes formerly told about racial and reli-
gious minorities. Though that is true, I think the problem
lies deeper. Lawyer advertising has put us before the pub-
lic regularly on bill-
boards and television,
a few aberrant ver-
dicts have been mis-
reported and widely
disseminated, and
when articles about
lawyers appear in the newspaper,
they are usually not flattering.
Good news does not sell papers.
I have been around lawyers all
of my life. My father was a
lawyer, and I have practiced in
Phoenix for more than 30 years.
The commitment to doing the
hard work of representing clients
and solving their problems with-
in the confines of the justice sys-
tem is still what we do best. Most
clients are satisfied with the work
done by their attorneys, and I
would go so far as to say that the
vast majority of clients are happy
with the job performed by their
lawyers, and are satisfied with the
fees charged. Only an extremely
small percentage of attorney–client relations end in fee dis-
putes or bar complaints.
I also have seen, on a regular basis, the amount of public
good performed by lawyers in all aspects of our world. I can
honestly say that our profession’s service to the public, large-
ly unpaid, is equal to that of any other profession.
I happened upon an article in the June issue of Smithsonian
Magazine that featured the 50th anniversary of To Kill a
Mockingbird, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee.
The author mentioned that this book regularly finishes second
in most surveys on the list of books that every civilized person
should read—second only to the Bible.
The book is set in 1935 and tells the story of a lawyer and
his family in the South, and the trial of a black man in their
of our world. Our
I have seen the amount
of public good performed
by lawyers in all aspects
profession’s service to
the public, largely
unpaid, is equal to that
of any other profession.
small town. The book’s
main character, Atticus
Finch, has been widely
perceived since the
book was published in
the 1960s as the model
of our profession.
The story revolves
around his courtroom
fight for the life of a
wrongfully charged
black man. But one of
the most profound
aspects of the story was
that he was a small-town lawyer who had served the common
people of his community for years, and was
respected by them. In his representation of
Tom Robinson, he was really just doing his
job. The author, (Nelle) Harper Lee, who
had studied law, and whose father and sister were lawyers, once described the character of Atticus Finch as a conglomeration
of many lawyers she had known.
Perry Mason was the other lawyer
widely viewed on television in the 1960s.
He represented mostly innocent people
charged with crimes they did not commit.
The public believed that in our court system, in which you had a right to a fair trial,
if you were innocent, your innocence
would prevail.
Even with lawyer advertising and
unflattering news stories about lawyers, the
public trust in our justice system and confidence in their lawyers still exists. It has
not changed.
I believe that the public should be told
the truth about lawyers, and the fact that
the legal system we have established in our
country works regularly and fairly. The
hard-won cases, the pro bono work done
for little or no compensation, and the time
devoted to volunteerism by our profession—these all are too little publicized.
They should be. Unfortunately, it is hard
to make a joke about those facts, and those
stories do not sell newspapers. AZ AT
