A Real Good Start

There's an old, old joke that goes,

Q: what do you call it when a ship with 800 lawyers aboard sinks?

A: A good start.

Here's why people tell jokes like that:

CNN.com – Pair arrested for telling lawyer jokes – Jan 12, 2005

Did you hear the one about the two guys arrested for telling lawyer jokes?

It happened this week to the founders of a group called Americans for Legal Reform, who were waiting in line to get into a Long Island courthouse.

“How do you tell when a lawyer is lying?” Harvey Kash reportedly asked Carl Lanzisera.

“His lips are moving,” they said in unison.

While some waiting to get into the courthouse giggled, a lawyer farther up the line Monday was not laughing.

He told them to pipe down, and when they did not, the lawyer reported the pair to court personnel, who charged them with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor.

“They just can't take it,” Kash said of lawyers in general. “This violates our First Amendment rights.”

Reading between the lines of the rest of the story, it sounds as if they might indeed have been somewhat overloud and disorderly for a courthouse. But even so…