Question: What do you have when there are 10 lawyers buried up to their necks in sand?

Answer: Not enough sand.

Are you laughing? If so, you’re probably not presently in a bind. You haven’t been accused of a crime, slapped with a divorce or injured in a fall. You know how it goes. It stops being funny when it starts being you.

Of all the professions in all the world, it’s hard to think of any that draw more scorn than the practice of law. Attorneys are accused of helping bad guys go free, of charging obscene fees, of chasing ambulances to make a buck.

And along come the jokes.

What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the Androscoggin River?

A good start.

Most lawyers who have been around a while have heard them all.

“If you do not have a thick skin in our profession, you will not last long,” says Lewiston lawyer James Howaniec. “I find that it helps, if you actually have to laugh at some lame lawyer joke, to just bill for the time under miscellaneous expenses. He who laughs last . . .”

“For some reason, people can’t wait to tell them to me and they think I will find them delightful,” says Auburn lawyer Bryan Dench. “On occasion they are truly funny and I laugh. But mostly I am just polite in the face of something pretty insulting. It hurts my family more than me.”

Like most things, lawyer jokes are all about context. If you’re an attorney on a winning streak, you can laugh like hell at a joke about how many lawyers it takes to change a light bulb. If your client has just been convicted and sent screaming off to prison, probably not so much.

“Some of the best advice I received as a lawyer was not to let them see you sweat,” says Jamie Belleau, like Dench also of Skelton, Taintor & Abbott. “That’s kind of how I feel when I hear a joke. Plus, everyone can joke about lawyers, but sooner or later you might need one.”

“I hear lawyer jokes all the time, and if they are funny I laugh,” says Deborah Cashman, once a defense lawyer, now a prosecutor. “I recognize that there are jokes about this profession for a reason.”

It’s not a new thing, lawyer bashing. The profession has been around since the BC years, and the disdain for the practice has been around almost as long.

“The first thing we do,” said a character in William Shakespeare’s “Henry VI,” “let’s kill all the lawyers.”

Sure, the line was actually spoken by one of Shakespeare’s ne’er-do-wells, who wished lawyers and other upholders of the law would disappear so he could take over. So it was really a compliment to attorneys. But goes to show even bad guys who will probably need a lawyer don’t like them.

But is it warranted, all this guffawing over lawyers and what happens when they walk into a bar with a minister and a rabbi?

Maybe, says Lenny Sharon, a local lawyer with a reputation for taking on some of the more high-profile cases the area has to offer.

“I love lawyer jokes. Jokes that offend lawyers are usually the funniest jokes because they usually have a grain or more of truth underlying the punch line,” Sharon says. “In fact I often joke with my clients that they have the biggest Jewish lawyer in Maine. Nah, these jokes don’t offend me. The real reason I represent folks charged with a crime is that I enjoy it. I enjoy helping people whose lives have been placed on hold because they are facing the possible after effects of a conviction.”

Enough with the lawyer jokes.

Except for this one.

How can you tell when a lawyer is lying?

His lips are moving.

It’s criminal

More insidious than the jokes, most lawyers agree, is the suggestion that they are soul-less human beings who aid and abet the villains of our society. Hang around a courthouse long enough and, sooner or later, you will hear somebody on the victim’s side screeching at a criminal defense lawyer, asking how he or she can sleep at night?

Most people agree that without lawyers to defend even the most heinous criminals, the legal system doesn’t work. The 6th Amendment promises that every human being accused of a crime is entitled to legal representation. That includes even the most vilified of criminal suspects.

Perhaps Sharon knows this as well as anybody. Since 1970 when he graduated law school, he has defended some of the most notorious accused criminals to come along.

In 2007, Sharon defended Danny Roberts, a biker accused of gunning down his ex-girlfriend in cold blood. While the trial was under way, there was plenty of screeching and most of it was flung in Sharon’s direction.

This lawyer is not one to run from that kind of emotional outburst.

“I cannot tell you how much crap I took when the picture appeared in your paper with Danny Roberts kissing me on my cheek at his bail hearing,” Sharon says. “I loved it. I have it framed. Great photo journalism.

“The question most frequently asked me,” Sharon says, “is, ‘How can you represent those people?’ Folks’ eyes glaze over when you explain that the Constitution guarantees everyone an aggressive defense. This is usually met with ‘Yeah . . . I know . . . but.'”

If there were no lawyers (it sounds like the start of another joke, but it’s not), innocent people would be sent to prison or to the electric chair. Rights would be trampled all over the place. Accountability would disintegrate. An accused man would be forced to defend himself whether or not he had the skills to do so. As Abe Lincoln warned, “He who represents himself has a fool for a client.”

The American way depends on a person’s right to a defense should he need one. If that person cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided.

“In all seriousness, I can think of few jobs more important than being a criminal defense lawyer,” Howaniec says. “As one right after another has been eroded in recent decades, the rights of poor people to legal representation and the presumption of innocence are what make us different from the typical banana republic. I roll my eyes when I hear the obligatory complaints about why taxpayers should pay for representation of a person charged with a serious crime . . . until they or a loved one find themselves in trouble, of course.”

You’ve been injured in an accident

So, we’re agreed. We need lawyers in case we are accused of a crime and need to prove our innocence. But what about the other areas of law?

If you try to handle your divorce by yourself, chances are good you’ll end up losing the car, the boat, the house and, yes, the shirt off your back.

Try managing the process of declaring bankruptcy without an expert along and you might inadvertently buy a shopping mall and end up in deeper trouble.

Then there is the matter of personal injury. We all know what that is because everywhere we turn, there is a commercial for some firm or individual attorney looking to represent you in a slip-and-fall claim. Or to file suit on your behalf due to your exposure to asbestos. Or cigarette smoke. Or something that frightened you badly as a child and which is now causing you potentially lucrative distress.

“The personal injury lawyers that advertise on TV,” says a 47-year-old Sabattus woman, “are nothing but ambulance chasers playing on people’s greed.”

It’s a comment that makes ol’ Bill Shakespeare’s remark seem tame.

There’s a convention of 3,000 lawyers at a hotel in New York City. The hotel is taken over by terrorists and all the lawyers are taken hostage. The terrorists issue their demands. “If our demands are not met within 24 hours we are going to start releasing one lawyer per day until our demands are met.”

It might be tempting for a criminal defense attorney to look down upon the personal injury litigators with their expensive ad campaigns. But few of them do. Most lawyers do their share of work on tort lawsuits. They may not be as glamorous as criminal defense, but they can be lucrative.

In 1994, when a woman sued McDonald’s after spilling hot coffee in her lap, most of us rolled our eyes. Frivolous, we said. Only a vulture would take on that case.

But somebody did take on that litigation. The woman won the suit and was originally awarded nearly $3 million. A judge later reduced the award to a paltry $640,000. Still, another person glad there are lawyers.

It’s not just serial killers, thieves and drunk drivers who need legal representation. The world is full of people who feel they’ve been wronged, and those on the other side who don’t feel like the wrong was their responsibility.

“My practice is not limited to the Charles Mansons of the world,” says Sharon. “I represented the Plowshares folks who spilled blood on an Aegis guided missile destroyer at Bath Iron Works to protest our policy in Iraq. I represented folks who had been involved in the siege at Attica and Wounded Knee, etc. I represented guys who fixed Boston College basketball games with Henry Hill, the star of ‘Goodfellas.’ So I get to meet and represent people they make movies and write books about.”

They can’t all be Atticus Finch

Lawyers jokes aren’t going anywhere. The work lawyers do is too controversial. The average person’s perception of the profession is likely based on his or her favorite movie or television show. It’s just more fun to portray an attorney as a corrupt, money-grubbing shyster rather than as an honest, hard-working idealist.

“What I do hate,” says Sharon, “is the portrayal of criminal defense lawyers on TV. We invariably lose our cases and are portrayed as sleazy lawyers who are indeed grouped with their clients.”

Even author John Grisham, a lawyer himself, creates five vile attorneys for every good one he invents. His job is to sell books, not to salvage a reputation.

There are plenty of people in other professions who get a bad rap, too. Police, for instance. News reporters, used car salesmen, the tax man. There just aren’t as many good jokes about those occupations.

So, if you’re a lawyer, is there anyone you can look upon with the same kind of derision that’s been flung your way since you launched your career? Is there any profession considered more loathsome than lawyering?

“Maybe corporate raiders,” says Cashman, the prosecutor. “i.e. Michael Douglas in ‘Wall Street.’ They are definitely more loathsome.”

I haven’t heard any good jokes about Gordon Gekko lately, but it seems he should be good for at least a dirty limerick.

Robert Vaughn’s Joe Bornstein ad changed personal injury law’s schtick

About 15 years ago, actor Robert Vaughn (yes, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”) began to appear in a series of commercials. In them, a sneering Vaughn cautioned – nay, warned – unscrupulous lawyers that one man was ready to take them on. That man? Joe Bornstein.

In those wildly popular commercials, pasty-faced, fat-cat lawyers could be seen stricken with fear at the very mention of the Portland attorney’s name.

“Joe Bornstein?” they muttered, with a degree of awe and regret. “Let’s settle this one.”

Vaughn never stopped sneering. At the end of the commercial, he advised that if you’ve been in an accident, you need a fighter in your corner. Hire Joe Bornstein, he somewhat seethed, “and tell them you mean business.”

The Bornstein ads changed everything about personal injury law. He didn’t invent the field by any means. Personal injury lawyers have been around since a caveman invented the wheel and subsequently crashed with it.

But as the Bornstein script became a part of the popular lexicon, other law firms struggled to keep up. They are tough, too. They wanted the world of hobbling victims to know.

The firm of Hardy, Wolf & Downing, for example, quickly got out an ad campaign of their own. In it, scowling attorneys glared into the camera, clutching baseball bats and suggesting great mayhem for those who don’t play fair in the legal arena.

Frightening stuff. The personal injury guys were no longer hiding. Instead, they were touting their ability to fight hard and help you settle your claim.

Bornstein broke ground. And apparently, he’s still very busy fighting bad guys over settlements. Attempts to get comment from the lawyer were only partially successful. An assistant called this reporter to ask questions of his own, to get a feel for what type of story was being written. Maybe Joe would call back, he said. Maybe.

Joe Bornstein did not respond. Clearly we should have told him that we mean business.

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