The Law Institute --- "The Gist" [1997] LawIJV 38; (1997) 71(2) The Law Institute Journal 22

• Gist
• Beemer blue
• Joking around
• Logo lashback
• Great security
• Pick your target
• Close quarters

Gist

Beemer blue

American Lawyer reports that BMW offended the sensibilities of sensitive lawyers when it included a lawyer joke in a national ad campaign.

The original advert named "20 Things You Should Do in a Lifetime", with the ultimate being the ownership of a BMW 7-series.

Listed at number 16 (between "Take a balloon ride over the Serengeti" and "Kiss someone passionately in public") was "Hang up on a lawyer".

Hapless Dennis Helfman, general counsel of BMW of North America Inc, who reviewed the ad before it ran, admitted: "We didn't think it was offensive, but public opinion indicated

that we may have been a touch out of line".

Within two weeks of the ad's appear¬ance the company received about 30 written complaints from offended law¬yers. Numerous protest phone calls were also received by the American Bar Association.

So what was number 16 changed to? The insipid "Be able to recite three good toasts".

Joking around

Luckily, BMW's advertising copywriters hadn't yet dipped into their copy of The Joke's on ... Lawyers by Stan Ross (The Federation Press, $19.95).

They could have also feat¬ured such jokes as:

Q: What's the difference be¬tween a lawyer and a vulture?

I A: The lawyer gets frequent flyer points.

f you laid all the lawyers in the world . . . end to end, on the equator .. . it would be a good idea tojust leave them there.

Logo lashback

Australian Law Reform Commis¬sion president Alan Rose sent in this spirited reply to The Gist's nom¬ination of the ALRC logo for the Worst Logo in Law Award.

Great security

The Gist unearthed this handy tip in the recently released Life, Law and the Pursuit of Balance - A lawyer's guide to the quality of life, a book published by the Maricopa County Bar Association in partnership with the State Bar of Arizona Young Lawyers Division and the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division.*

Hints for security in a home-based

office.

"I have a Great Dane that lies at the door between my office and home. The animal cannot be missed by any visitor entering the office. The overwhelming size of this animal is an initial deterrent for anyone who may pierce my defences."

Available from P&S Quality Consulting Group for $120 plus $7 postage and handling, tel [phone].

Pick your target

A gang of Nigerian advance-fee fraud¬sters picked the wrong marks for their scam, according to an article in The Weekly Journal of the Law Society in the UK.

Number one target was the director of Britain's Serious Fraud Office, George Staple, who tries all major fraud in the UK. A second target was a Croydon firm, Taylor Willcocks, one of whose partners had just come across a case in which £75,000 was swindled in a similar scam.

Both targets received letters by putative representatives of the Nigerian government, asking them to facilitate the transfer of millions of dollars into a foreign account. Both would receive a percentage of the total amount trans¬ferred.

The sting in the tail was that both would be expected to make up-front payments to "off-set any expenses that would be incurred in the course of the transactions" - about $1 million.

Taylor Willcocks partner Sarah Add¬ison said: "It was so badly done, I thought it was some sort of joke".

However, the Metropolitan Police fraud squad said not all solicitors were so clued up. "A handful of solicitors have actually gone through with it and ended up losing a lot of money," a police spokesman said.

The Law Society's fraud intelligence officer, Barrie Mayne, recalled the case of a solicitor who followed up on one letter.

"He flew to Lagos and was chauffeur driven to the Sheraton Hotel, where he was put up for the night and eventually parted with £50,000."

Auld lang syne

English QC David Panick discovered a host of interesting cases when he looked back on the legal year for The Times.

Some of those cases included:

• Lytham St Anne's Magistrates' Court was told that when police officers stopped a barrister for drunken driv¬ing, he told them: "I am a High Court judge. Take me home".
• In Los Angeles a lawyer brought proceedings on behalf of his co-plaintiff, his poodle, claiming that its constitutional rights had been violat¬ed by a restaurant that required the animal to leave.
• The Italian Supreme Court over-turned a prison sentence on a man jailed for kissing a female office col-league on the neck because it was "non-lustful" kissing of a "non-erogenous zone".
• A man who threw a five inch spider at an arachnophobe who was having an affair with his wife was sentenced by magistrates at Salisbury, Wiltshire to twelve months probation.
• Lawyer Robert Litchfield, a candidate for election as a Superior Court judge in Nevada County, California, offered to wash the feet of every lawyer in the county as "a gesture of his desire to serve".
• An Israeli woman sued the country's leading weather forecaster in the Haifa Small Claims Court because of an inaccurate forecast which, she alleges, caused her to catch influenza by dressing without warm clothes.
• The legal headline of the year related to the case of the former police officer accused of growing cannabis who spent his trial on a bed in the courtroom because of his bad back. The South London Press reported: "Ex-copper lies in court". He was acquitted.
• Mr Justice French refused a request from the jury for a dictionary to look up the difference between a "fib" and a "lie" and the meaning of "in sub-stance" (as in "Is the allegation complained of by the plaintiff in substance true?") to help them decide the claim brought against the Sunday Times by Albert Reynolds, former Irish Prime Minister. Reynolds won damages of 1p.
• 

Disparaging references to the law in literature No. 11 in a series

"Don't waste time with undergraduates," Beverly Kern had advised. "Concentrate on the men in the professional school."

For a month or so, Karen had made a halfhearted effort to comply, ever conscious of her mother's social set, in which success was measured by the number of doctors or dentists, or at the very least, lawyers brought into the fold. It was the direction in which sons were pushed and the end to which every parent of a marriageable daughter aspired.

Susan R Sloan Guilt by Association, 1994

Close quarters

The UK Press Gazette reports that, ironically, after the libel case against the Sunday Times, Reynolds and his family booked into Ashford Castle in County Mayo for a much needed break.

Also booked into the castle was journ¬alist Alan Ruddock - formerly of the Sunday Times, who recently spent five weeks in the same libel court as Reynolds.