James Fuqua's Law Jokes

A Treatise on Legalese


The following was posted on rec.org.sca:

Unto all who read these words, greetings from Yaakov!

Ferret writes: "By the way there are legal documents in Modern English that require further translation by special interpreters into a form of English everyone can understand. That is what lawyers are for. Or is Legalese a non-English language?"

Actually, despite many cognates with English, Legalese is proof that lawyers are descended from the same wandering Asian tribes that eventually colonized the United States accross the Bering Strait land-bridge. Consider the following lingistic evidence, as documented from such authentic sources on Amerind culture as F-Troop and Bonanza (after all, they were only written approximately 75 years after the closing of the American frontier. Heck, many of the descendents of the original tribes portrayed were still alive, thus lending credence to the veracity of the text).

English Amerind Legalese

Person Someone-Come-Close Party-of-the-First-Part

Contract Paper-that-speak The-aforesaid-agreement

Gun Bang-stick Either of the following: Protected-Constitutional- Right or Dangerous-weapon

Note that both the dialects of the lawyers and of Amerinds use several words to describe what English does in one word, thus, the languages are related, Q.E.D. (Another legalese, but this looks like a loaner word from the math-geek tribe, which in fact did not originate in any known language group and may provide radical new proof of spontaneous generation.)

It is believed that the proto-Lawyers headed west instead of east like everyone else in the Universe, probably because they were engaged in litigation with the Scythians. The Scythians attempted to evade the proto-lawyers by using aliases like 'Sarmations' (which lead to the Samaritans accidently getting their junk mail due to a typo in the syro-aramaic) and building boats to flee to Finland.

This plan was ultimately foiled when the proto-lawyers (now going under the archaic name 'Barristers' from the Greek description of their talk: 'bar-bar' 'stir-stir') impounded their fleet (which had conveniently run aground in Crimea. Apparently, the Scythians were lousy navigators, but that is the subject of a different thread.) The Barristers followed the Scythians to Scotland and Ireland, but ultimately settled in England where they could do contingency fee work for the Vikings in their ongoing quit claim action against the Angles and the Saxons (the Jutes were originally named but were dismissed due to lack of personal jurisdiction).

Here they established a matriachal culture based on litigator-women who participated fully with men but, following their nurturing natures, tended to stay in mergers and acquisition work. This culture was ultimately repressed by militant Christianity, as can be demonstrated by the fact that a higher rank than Barrister was created, baring the typically militaristic title of Sergeant of Law.

The lawyers ultimately came to the North American continent on the Mayflower, having evicted a sufficient number of rats. Here they were at last reunited with their ethnic bretheren.

In case anybody hasn't guessed :-)

Yaakov (A lawyer)


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Added 8 September 1997