Tag Archives: lawyer

Meaning Behind The Proverb “Hope For The Best, Prepare For The Worst”

Nationality: American
Age: 67
Occupation: retired physician
Performance Date: 4/22/20
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: 

Original Proverb: “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.” 

Meaning as told by my informant: 

“It’s honestly pretty self explanatory. It’s good to be an optimist… you should always root for what you want and have faith. However, you can’t be naive about it. You should always have some kind of plan B or safety net if things don’t go as planned. The idea of this line is that you have to balance those two things. Offence and defense. Feet on the ground, head in the clouds… dream big, but be okay if things don’t work out.” 

Background:

My informant is my father, who is a retired doctor. Although he was a surgeon, his work mainly consisted of him doing expert witness work in legal cases. He first heard this proverb while preparing for a case, and he still primarily associates the saying with attorneys. However, he believes it applies to all contexts of life. While he’s a big fan of proverbs and jokes in general, this one is likely his favorite. As his child, I can vouch that he says this all the time. 

Context: 

While I’m not in quarantine with my informant/father, I do call him every day, and this piece was collected during a routine call. 

Thoughts: 

To me, this proverb will always be my father’s best advice. Having been involved in the performing arts since a young age, I have countless distinct memories of my father reciting this proverb to me as he picked me up from auditions. He said it before I opened every college admission letter. No matter what I was doing, I could always count on him telling me to “hope for the best, prepare for the worst.” I don’t think of it as being optimistic or skeptical, it’s just real. One of the things I love about this proverb is that it can apply to not just any situation, but any culture. I briefly Googled this proverb after my interview, and found that there really is no origin to it. There are countless articles with countless nationalities. I think this saying speaks to the human experience in general: we’re all just trying to live life the best we can. We want to see the beauty in the world, but not be hurt by life’s struggles. It’s theater’s drama and comedy, or Chinese mythology’s Yin and Yang. We are all trying to find a balance. 

Office Folk Speech for Being Busy

Nationality: US
Age: 55
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Columbia, South Carolina
Performance Date: 25 April 2018
Primary Language: English

Context:

Leighton Lord is my father. Given this relation to me, I was interested in procuring some folklore that both of us participated in, but obviously from his perspective as he and my mother were the ones who set the traditions that we followed. Another unique perspective he has is being instilled in Southern traditions after twenty two years spent in Columbia, South Carolina following his marriage to my mother, a native South Carolinian. He grew up in Delaware, and was fascinated upon arriving in the South and witnessing the obsession with tradition and particularly talk about ancestors. I collected several pieces of folklore from him during a recent trip he made to Los Angeles. He currently practices law.

Transcript:

Owen: Can you give me some lawyer folklore? Like some water cooler kind of talk? Lingo, that kind of thing.

Leighton: Well there’s kind of this competition to always be the busiest. Like it’s embarrassing to not have anything to do. So you run into someone, elevator, whatever, and you ask how they’re day’s going. And in the office it’s usually something like “I can’t breathe with all this work” or “client’s got me in the weeds.” Stuff like that. Just complaining about how busy you are all the time. But I think most lawyers would go crazy if they weren’t. I think it’s American.

Interpretation:

I have also noticed this folk speech in college. Often, even if I am having an enjoyable week, I’ll catch my self complaining about work to someone merely to relate to them. It sort of feels like a ‘we’re in this together’ sort of mentality. Also, I find it interesting that my father included the bit about his particular work experience being a more general American thing. There could be truth to this, as laziness is looked down upon in the US.

 

Lawyer Hunting

Age: 50
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Oakland, CA
Performance Date: March 17, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant: So, a man runs into his buddy, and he sees that his friend’s car is totaled. Just—[makes face to indicate car is not in great shape]  leaves and dirt and branches all over the front. The windshield is shattered. There’s some blood.

And so he asks his friend, “What on earth happened to your car?”

“Well,” the friend says, “I ran over a lawyer.”

“A lawyer?” [informant alternates tone to indicate change in speaker]

“A lawyer.” [solemn nod of head]

“I guess that explains all the blood,” the man says. “But, I mean, what about the leaves and dirt and branches?”

And his friend goes, “Well, I had to chase him through the park.”

The informant (my dad) is a particularly self-deprecating lawyer. While he does take pride in his work, he often admits that he only went to law school because his father had been a lawyer, and the informant had “no idea what to do with [his] life” after he graduated from college. The informant currently works at a law firm in San Francisco (he recently changed firms, after his former firm became too large and very corrupt. I suspect the series of lawyer jokes he told me were told with some of his old colleagues in mind.) This joke was told to my family over the dinner table, and was very much enjoyed by my mom (also an attorney).

This joke, which the informant picked up from another lawyer, plays on the idea that every hates—or at least distrusts—attorneys, enough to get a laugh out of the idea that someone would go to such an extent to run one down with his car.

“Skeet”

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Oakland, CA
Performance Date: March 17, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant: What do you call twenty skydiving lawyers?

Me: I don’t know. What?

Informant: Skeet.

 

The informant (my dad) is a particularly self-deprecating lawyer. While he does take pride in his work, he often admits that he only went to law school because his father had been a lawyer, and the informant had “no idea what to do with [his] life” after he graduated from college. The informant currently works at a law firm in San Francisco (he recently changed firms, after his former firm became too large and very corrupt. I suspect the series of lawyer jokes he told me were told with some of his old colleagues in mind.) This joke was told to my family over the dinner table, and was very much enjoyed by my mom (also an attorney).

This joke, of course, plays on the negative stereotypes surrounding lawyers. Nobody really likes lawyers; at least, nobody trusts them. Skeet, for those who are unfamiliar, is a recreational and often competitive form of shooting. Participants use shotguns to take down clay disks (or “clay pigeons”). The informant, despite having many lawyer jokes in his arsenal, is especially fond of this one, and likes to end the performance of it by pantomiming the act of aiming a shotgun at the sky and then making a pt, pt, pt sound (shooting) followed by mock wailing (from the lawyers).

Lawyers in the Ocean

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Oakland, CA
Performance Date: March 17, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant: What do you call a group of a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?

Informant: A good start.

The informant (my dad) is a particularly self-deprecating lawyer. While he does take pride in his work, he often admits that he only went to law school because his father had been a lawyer, and the informant had “no idea what to do with [his] life” after he graduated from college. The informant currently works at a law firm in San Francisco, CA (he recently changed firms, after his former firm became too large and very corrupt. I suspect the series of lawyer jokes he told me were told with some of his old colleagues in mind.) This joke was told to my family over the dinner table, and was very much enjoyed by my mom (also an attorney).

The informant told me that this joke was relayed to him “a couple weeks ago” by a close friend and colleague. Given how often the informant complains about other lawyers being “assholes” and the stereotype of the conniving and greedy attorney being true, I suspect that this joke was aimed mainly at those in the profession who reflect this kind of negative image. It’s probably very important to note that the informant and the friend who told him this joke both left the firm they worked together at a handful of months before this joke was passed on to my family.