"Are you a lawyer?"
"Yes."
"How much do you charge?"
"A hundred dollars for four questions."
"Isn't that awfully expensive?"
"Yes. What’s your fourth question?"
Joke Poo: The IT Helpdesk
I was struggling to connect to the Wi-Fi at the office cafe and flagged down the IT guy.
“Are you from IT?”
“Yes, I am.”
“How much do you charge for tech support?”
“Fifty dollars for three answers.”
“Isn’t that a bit steep?”
“Yep. Now, what’s answer number three?”
Alright, let’s dissect this lawyer joke.
Key Elements:
- The Setup: Casual encounter leading to a service transaction (legal advice).
- The Protagonist: A presumably uninformed pedestrian and an opportunistic lawyer.
- The Core Concept: The exorbitant cost of legal advice and the lawyer’s sharp, money-focused approach.
- The Punchline: The lawyer turns the complaint about the price into another chargeable question, highlighting the mercenary nature and creating a circular, inescapable financial trap.
- Humor Source: Irony, wordplay, and the familiar (and often negative) stereotype of lawyers as being primarily motivated by money.
Comedic Enrichment and a New Joke:
Let’s leverage the cost of legal advice and the perception of lawyers as detail-obsessed to create a new joke.
Tidbit: The American Bar Association (ABA) has a model rule of professional conduct that states lawyer fees should be reasonable. What constitutes “reasonable,” however, is famously ambiguous and highly situational.
New Joke:
I was talking to my accountant the other day, bemoaning my legal fees. “It’s outrageous!” I exclaimed. “I paid my lawyer five hundred dollars just for him to review a single clause in my contract!”
The accountant raised an eyebrow. “Five hundred dollars? Just for reviewing one clause?”
“I know!” I said. “He spent the entire time arguing over whether the comma after the word ‘notwithstanding’ was strictly necessary or just… strongly suggested.”
The accountant shook his head. “You got off light. My lawyer charges extra for suggested commas. He calls them ‘optional punctuation premiums.'”
Analysis of the New Joke:
- Builds on the Original: Extends the theme of high legal costs, but focuses on the excessive attention to detail often associated with legal work, especially contract law.
- Employs Exaggeration: The focus on a single comma is absurd, highlighting the perception that lawyers overcharge for even the smallest details.
- Adds a Layer of Absurdity: The “optional punctuation premium” is a ridiculous concept that satirizes the way lawyers can find ways to inflate their fees.
- Connects to the “Reasonable Fee” Concept: Indirectly mocks the “reasonable fee” standard. If lawyers can charge extra for optional commas, the definition of what’s “reasonable” becomes increasingly elastic.
Hopefully, this is a suitably humorous expansion of the original joke!