Some lawyers are stand-up cartoons

Sometimes in the heat of battle I've been known to mutter under my breath "Is this guy for real?" referring, of course, to "my learned friend", an opposing counsel, who is behaving in a manner neither learned nor friendly.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the term, "my learned friend" is the mode of address legal etiquette requires us to adopt when referring to opposing counsel in court, just as we address the judge as "your lordship". So we might say, "M'lord, my learned friend is mistaken --" rather than "Yo, judge, that bozo doesn't know what he's talking about --". You get the picture.)

Well folks, my suspicions

have finally been confirmed, it turns out some of my "learned friends" really aren't for real. Take a look at this recent post from Legal Blog Watch, where the erstwhile law firm of Bitcher & Prickman has been revealed to consist only of cartoon characters! That's right, one of my colleagues with a sense of humour opened a Twitter account for the fictitious law firm, began peppering the blogosphere with outrageous posts and succeeded in fooling a fair number of people in the process.

So what lessons can we draw from this?

1. Don't believe everything you read on the web. (Except for this site, of course.)
2. Some lawyers really are cartoons.

Hmmm, maybe in addition to my "real" Twitter alias, I'll start my own fictitious law firm on Twitter; I could call it "Dewe, Cheatem, and Howe"...