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Legal Needs
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| Nov 29, 2008 7:58 pm |
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Sharks & Lawyers--A study in the similarities |
Ritu
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Sharks & Lawyers--A study in the similarities
Shark comes from the German ÷schurke, meaning greedy parasite.
While no brave soul has gotten close enough to determine where
lawyers come from, logic and common sense dictate a similar
derivation.
Sharks, unlike most fish, have no bones; their skeletons are made
entirely of cartilage. Lawyers, too, are spineless à as willing to
argue one side of a case as the other. For the right price.
Best known as scavengers of the dead and dying, sharks have well-
honed sensors with which they can track the sounds of other injured
and struggling beings. They are also equipped with fine sense of
smell that allow them to detect minute dilutions of blood
(one part blood to one million parts water)
up to one-quarter mile away.
Precisely the distance a hopeful personal injury lawyer will run
behind an ambulance to toss a business card.
From the moment of birth, shark skin is tough and rough covered with
thousands of tiny hard teeth call denticles that abrade any passerby
made of softer stuff. Lawyers are also thick-skinned. Easily
identified by their humorlessness and abrasive personalities, they
are the bane of many social gatherings.
A shark will swallow anything à up to half its own size in one gulp.
Several hundred years ago, a naturalist wrote that the headless body
of a knight in armor was found in a white shark's stomach. Inside
another was more recently found a sea lion, a horse and the body of
another seven-foot-long shark. Lawyers, too, will swallow anything à
even their pride à as increasing numbers of lawyer hopefuls trudge to
law school each year for three years of browbeating in the hopes of
financing their Porsches.
Some sharks even prey on their own kind. The smell and taste of
blood in the water can trigger them into an obsessed feeding frenzy,
in which they often eat their own bodies while twisting and turning
to get more food. This is not unlike the litigation frenzy, where
lawyers are pitted against other lawyers, and ultimately themselves,
to waste reams of paper while losing sight of a fair resolution for
their clients.
Ichthyologists à scientists who study fish à contend that sharks,
dreaded carnivores of the deep, have simply been given a bad rap.
They may stalk, snap at and swallow their prey alive, but, after all,
they have to eat. So far, no one has successfully defended lawyers
for preying on an unwitting public. Beyond that, the similarities
between the two species make them well-nigh indistinguishable.
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