Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture

by Marc Galanter

What do you call 600 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? Marc Galanter calls it an opportunity to investigate the meanings of a rich and time-honored genre of American lawyer jokes. Lowering the Bar analyzes hundreds of jokes from Mark Twain classics to contemporary anecdotes about Dan Quayle, Johnnie Cochran, and Kenneth Starr. Drawing on representations of law and lawyers in the mass media, political discourse, and public opinion surveys, Galanter finds that the increasing reliance on law has coexisted uneasily with anxiety about the “legalization” of society. Informative and always entertaining, his book explores the tensions between Americans’ deep-seated belief in the law and their ambivalence about lawyers.

429 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

Reviews

[Ajay Lad]

The law is a solemn profession but is fortunately lightened by legal anecdotes real or apocryphal. Here is a delightful addition to the lawyers bookshelf with stories drawn from all over (including the malicious one about "the Vakil and the Dancing Girl") The book even solves what is still a mystery to some lawyers as to why the lay public does not like them! And combined with cartoon this Indian edition is irrestible.