Some may get a sense of déjà vu while reading this. Yes, this is rewritten. But note the elegance of style and heightened drama. I am indebted to my editor at Simony and Shyster for the improvements.

Jewish, for better and worse, and lawyer are redundant. Jews instinctively know everything taught in law school before being admitted from just navigating the neighborhood. Law school’s only value is the sheepskin that permits them to sail through the bar examination.

That’s as far as I dare go along this line lest Alan Dershowitz accuse me of closet anti-Semitism. A person who writes the same book every year and still makes the New York Times Best Seller List for Fiction must be taken seriously no matter how far-fetched. After all, at seven he sued his father for entering his room without a valid search warrant. He got the ACLU to argue the brief against his father for violating his civil rights. He won an award huge enough to finance his own way through Harvard Law School, which he entered at nine and graduated at five while his family waited outside on the doorsteps.

There is an enormous gap before you hit "Catholic" except for those Catholics who need to navigate the tricky rapids of papal encyclicals. They must master Jesuit logic inside and out to live inside and outside the church at the same time. They also rely on the Jesuits to get papal annulments and to remarry without once so much as mentioning divorce. Mormons have begged them for years to share their secret. When Father Robert Drinan, Dean of Boston College Law School and visiting pettifogger at the distinguished Georgetown and Notre Dame Law Schools explained it, he lost them with the opening casuistry as if he was explaining dark holes. And so polygamy remains a federal crime. ²

Establishment Protestants, like Episcopalians treat their mothers as objects and v.v. To raise their voice in public risks wrinkling their handmade suit. Passion is too much like physical touching. They need self-control. That is why high-tone Protestants never join a practice with fewer than 250 lawyers and associates. ³ The Book of Common Prayer praises the unnecessary intercourse that results. ⁴

Calvinists, Congregationalists and Methodist-types fit in the middle. Just accept it on faith. So it is hardly surprising they fall into middle management. They have no theological objection to feeling. In fact, their sects, or the greater part of their sects, grew out of the need to let themselves go (except Quakers). It is just that they tend to take it out on themselves. The descend from the Pilgrims or at least that is family legend. Such observers do appear in court, although they get uneasy when the judge enters the courtroom. It reminds them too much of the Papacy and the Divine Right of Kings. They like to concentrate in areas like commercial law, but will represent clients charged with white collar crimes and divorces if the spouses can still hold hands.

There are some groups who have a high incidence of sterility. Sometime they will produce a lawyer by artificial insemination. They fall all over the place, from Seventh Day Adventists, Mennonites, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hari Krisha, Zen Buddhists, Shakers, Holy Rollers and Witches. Their beliefs are intolerable to otherwise tolerant liberals. They’d never get invited to a Harvard faculty tea. Tidal waves of them from the Third World keep the ACLU from litigating any issues but "what is religious practice and what is made up as an excuse to screw up the system." The Supreme Court dismisses them as cults. It will perform acrobatics not to hear such cases. Since millions of Americans loath lawyers one can look forward to the day when such grotesque imitations of religion will be the mainstream. That may create a real crisis. Where will we find enough lawyers to maintain the present 1 to 3 ratio?

Mormons are one of a kind. When you are ridden out of town on a rail with Methodists and Baptists in hot pursuit you take to lawyering as naturally as Jews. The Mormons tried to get Alan Dershowitz to convert. Had they succeeded they would have beaten the Jews last year in the Law School Graduate World Series for first time and moved up to first place in the Western Division of the ABA. ⁵

Jews, Italians, Irish and Blacks tend to concentrate in the shabbier state courts. They represent spouses with natural animal instincts as do the criminals and the poor. Such lawyers actually haggle over fees with their mad clients rather than send gold engraved bills through trust companies. ⁶

1. Ninety-five percent of this "religious structuralism" is concentrated in Boston. If your experience deviates from these findings, you probably don’t enjoy the unique disdain of living in "the city on the hill."

2. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, S.J achieved the highest equivocation ever recorded outside of Vatican City in the Annals of Evasion (published monthly or 14 times a year by ABA reckoning) on arguing abortion in the alternative. His life embodies the same easy juggling of principles critical to the politician, the ability to speak out of both sides of his mouth while looking like a ventriloquist. He comes closest to living Groucho Marx’s ideal: "These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others."

3. Quaker lawyers appear outwardly like Episcopalians. I would have to write a real book which nowadays is at least 15 pages to explain how Quakers fit this category. But they are really quiet. They equate sleep with spirituality, which leads to incredible longevity. Outwardly humble and without buttons, they always win obliquely. The famous quote from New York City’s infamous Boss Tweed "I seen my opportunity and I took it" seems to catch this elusive skill. Longevity is perfect for the federal bench with lifetime appointment. How there manage to be more Quakers on the bench than Quakers defied my two year study to resolve. Something smells rotten. Back to Boss Tweed’s copious notes made while he spent time in jail.

4. Their law firms also take depositions by renting whole floors at the Copley Hotel.

5. Mormons are totally absent from circuits east of Great American Desert. Thus they do not really belong in this scientific survey of the Boston legal establishment. So sue me.

6. Since such deplorable practice is not limited to Boston, I give it short shrift here. For a more detailed analysis of how their formative years influence Irish, Italian and Black legal practitioners see any issue of the National Inquirer.

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I made no disclaimer. Anyone so lacking in humor as to think this bilge would be taken seriously is welcome to sue the author. Do you think I’d have time to write this stuff if I had a deep pocket or a reputation to defend? Before you do anything impulse, read Mark Twain.

Andrew E. Carlan
Farmingdale, New York

You can e-mail your comments to Andrew at acarlan@optonline.net.

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