Please Don't Let Jesus Into Law School

Dear Boo and Bubble,

My last blog about Great Granddaddy Schaefer had me thinking about all the lawyers in your lineage – your dad, Captain and Schaefer.  Combined, that adds up to about 90 years of “lawyering,” which calculates to some 180,000 hours of “billable time” – the stock and trade of any lawyer worth his or her salt. 

There is a mystique about the profession – that somehow when a lawyer says something, the words contain more gravity than those of common folk.  In fact, over the years, lawyers have elevated the constitution of words to a form of art for which clients seem to willingly pay a dear price.

In one of his editorials for The Greenville News, Granddaddy Schaefer confessed to this practice and I thought I would share it with you.

Lawyers Never See Phrases They Can’t Puff Up

Sunday, September 5, 1993

The bottom rung on lawyers’ ladder of affection for acronyms is KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid.  The top rung is MILC (pronounced MILK) – Make It Long and Complicated.

When you die you want to leave everything you own to your wife.  When the yeast of a lawyer’s lingo completes its work, the simple statement, “I leave everything I own to my wife” is puffed up to this:  “I give, devise and bequeath all of my estate, real, personal and mixed, of whatsoever nature and kind, and wheresoever situate, of which I may die seized and possessed, unto my beloved wife, to be hers absolutely in fee simple.”

The lawyer doesn’t trust the word “leave” so it becomes, “…give devise and bequeath.”  He doesn’t trust, “everything I own,” so it becomes, “…all of my estate, real, personal and mixed, of whatsoever nature and kind, and wheresoever situate, of which I may die seized and possessed.”  And, “…to be hers absolutely in fee simple” is a fee enhancer since it will require a professional explanation of “fee simple.”

Lawyers, it seems, are incapable of finding a contract in their form books that does not contain the phrase, “including but not limited to.”  Their fascination for this phrase is an abiding mystery.

All contracts, of course, are fee bearing trees, and the thing that shakes out the fruit is the pendulum on the lawyer’s time keeping clock.  The more ticks, the more fruit.  This generates a parade of redundancies and the drum major of this cavalcade of words is “whereas.”  Then comes (including but not limited to) “Notwithstanding,” “aforesaid,” “hereinafter,” “hereinabove,” “by and between,” “in hand paid,” “hereby,” “hereto,” “subject to,” “hereof,” “wherein” – this colorful parade of banalities goes on and on, as does the clock and its fee generating ticks.

It is a beneficent Jehovah who led King David to shun law school.  Had he been successful in passing the LSAT, made Phi Beta Kappa and the Law Review, that magnificent 121^st Psalm, in its opening proclamation, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.  My help cometh from The Lord, which made heaven and earth,” would have been buried under an avalanche of legalese, and would have come out something like this:

“I will lift up and elevate my gaze, my view, my optic perception unto (including but not limited to) the hills, ridges, knolls, mountains, and all other earthly convolutions that make up the topography, from whence cometh (including but not limited to) A) my help, B) my sustenance, C) my food, D) my clothing, E) my raiment, and all other material that covers my body to keep it warm and protect it from the elements.  My help does not come from those things enumerated hereinabove from A) through E), both inclusive.  No, my help does not come from one or any combination of these things so enumerated, but my help comes from Yahweh, a/k/a Jehovah, a/k/a God.”

Each day I thank the kind Heavenly Father that Jesus was not a lawyer.  I hate to think how the Lord’s Prayer would have fared, and how many volumes the Sermon on the Mount would have filled had he been a member of the Jerusalem Bar.

We lawyers don’t KISS, we MILC.