It is actually pretty amusing to find lawyers claiming that this phrase was intended as a compliment! A very nice piece on its origins.<p>Dickens, who had his own scars from dealing with the law, said this about their environs:<p>"These sequestered nooks are the public offices of the legal profession, where writs are issued, judgments signed, declarations filed, and numerous other ingenious machines put in motion for the torture and torment of His Majesty's liege subjects, and the comfort and emolument of the practitioners of the law." (<i>Pickwick Papers</i>)<p>The unbroken line of criticism over the centuries probably is its own best evidence that there is something seriously broken with our profession - the guild system that renders the services over-priced, the maddening court procedures that just as often work to deny justice as to promote it, the shake-down artists who merely fly the flag of the law while engaging in basic extortion, and on and on.<p>There is much good in the law, and in many of those who practice it, and it all the sadder therefore that many would pervert that which might otherwise be so well-used.
Nice piece covering the origins there of the phrase. Lawyer jokes have fallen flat, to me, when they aren't clever... I guess because I know too many lawyers who work for good / not for profit / etc.
Next up, why Sandburg's "Tell me why a hearse-horse snickers/Carrying a lawyer's bones." is intended as a compliment.<p>But no, Shakespeare does not depict Jack Cade as a statesman, is he?
Does anyone remember the Marx Brothers? "The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part." And so on. Pretty much dead-on :)