"Only a Lawyer Would Call a 50-Page Document a 'Brief'"

Origin unknown; I've seen it credited to Franz Kafka, but I'm skeptical about that.

Comments

[Chip Watkins]

About 40 years ago, I bought a yellow mug festooned with witty sayings about lawyers. One of them says, "Only a lawyer would write a 10,000 word document and call it a brief." Another says, "Any town that cannot support one lawyer can aways support two." I still have that mug, (The same artwork was also produced as a poster, which I did not buy.)

[Bored Lawyer]

The word "brief" is actually an historic anachronism. In Britain, the practice was (and I believe still is) to provide the Court with a short written summary of the argument with citations, and then to spend a long time, sometimes days, in oral argument on the legal issues. The written submission got the name "brief" because it was brief relative to the oral argument.
Today that practice has reversed itself -- most of the argument is in the written submission, oral argument is short, and often dispensed with. But the name "brief" still sticks.
Same thing is happening with the term "papers." Lawyers often say they are submitting "papers" on a motion, which include a memorandum of law and affidavits or declarations, sometimes lengthy. With the advent of the digital age, most "papers" are served and filed electronically, and many judges don't want papers courtesy copies. The "papers" are really electronic files (PDFs), but the term still sticks.

[NvEric]

Likewise, some still reefer to "dialing" a phone number, when, of course, there're very, very, very few in use. It's somewhat sad since the Bell rotary phone was built like a tank and had better sound consistency than today's cell.

[Bored Lawyer]

Ditto the term "dial tone."

[Frank Drackman]

Some where in Med School I had a patient tell me he was "on Papers" had no idea what it meant, until the next morning on rounds, presenting the case, "Social History, unemployed 22yo single Black Male, says he's "on Papers" not really sure what that means...."
In Med School, never say you don't know what something means or haven't heard of something, just nod confidently.
For you Poindexters, it means on Probation or has Warrants, and this was 1985 before "COPS" when every other suspect is "On Papers"

Frank "Not on Papers"

[Dr. Ed 2]

I would have thought it meant committed.

[gVOR08]

Several years ago I asked my allergist a question, I think about a possible drug interaction. He replied he didn't know. Only time I ever heard a doctor say that. Then he looked it up. Endeared the man to me. I hated it when he retired.

[Mr. Bumble]

I wonder if determining drug interactions is something AI might be good for?

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

AI would probably be excellent at looking good at it, but the repercussions of all those hallucinations would be much worse.

[Bwaaah]

Good old heuristic algorithms should do just fine. No need to fuzzify it with a so-called "large language model." And it's OK for the program to spit out the same answer over again when given the same input conditions (e.g. "There's an elevated risk of A because patient is taking B and C").

LLMs are designed to give original answers every time so people can copy and paste them into their work as if they wrote it themselves. (No need to assist in production of fraudulent material when tackling drug interactions.)

[Bwaaah]

With the help of a service like ChatGPT, Claudine Gay should be able to reduce her writing labor without compromising her standards.

[Longtobefree]

In a world when men are called women, and women are called men, anything is possible.

I mean, the sun does not "rise", the horizon falls as the earth rotates.
(but it is still pretty enough to get up early for)

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Let's check your credibility. Where do you stand on adult-onset superstition? Do you respect people who claim fairy tales are true and that society should be based on the teachings of illusory voices? Do proponents of sacred ignorance or dogmatic intolerance have a legitimate role in reasoned debate among competent adults?

[John F. Carr]

On the subject of Kafka: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEyFH-a-XoQ

[JohnSteed]

Only a judge with three law clerks would call a 250 page document an opinion.