Maybe it is the general aversity to risk, or perhaps the tendency to take words as literally as possible (avoiding metaphor religiously and regarding similie with the suspicious gaze of a man being sold a laptop in the pub).
It could be that lawyers tend to be driven, focussed individuals with no mental space beyond that occupied by case and career, or, dare I say it, that imagination is not a highly regarded quality.
Whatever the reason, after a few abortive forays, Nearly Legal’s sense of humour and inbuilt verbal ebulliance has had to be kept under house arrest for many months now, on the basis that neither a blank stare nor a sidelong glance (with visible mental note-taking) are good responses to an attempt at wit.
Of course, my professional and social past has been littered with embarrassment and tumbleweed silences, these being wholly due to people not laughing when they really ought to. But rarely have I found myself, as I have done for some time, without at least one work-based co-conspirator, or partner to return the ball with spin.
There are obvious exceptions, and naturally, any returning reader of this blog is one of them, but I throw this open to the floor. Are lawyers wit averse?
Lawyer’s wit - a verse?
“One wit twits of his wit
And a wit twits of his too
Two wits twit of their wit
These Brits that twit a woo.”
Heh.
Corporate, I so nearly titled this post ‘no wit to sue?’, in homage to my favourite response to a news story on a damp spring causing a decline in the owl population - ‘too wet to woo’.
But, even if we accept the unlikely hypothesis that I lack wit, where is the tinkling laughter from and of others?