Sharks & Vampires (The Good Kind)

As some of you know, despite my best efforts to keep this fact a secret, I am an attorney.  Therefore, any and all abuse that I heap on the legal field in this blog post should be considered lawyer-on-lawyer abuse and I may be labeled, appropriately, as a self-hating lawyer.  I am comfortable with that label, since I think it is one that many lawyers wear proudly.  Lawyers will usually laugh first and laugh loudest at jokes that label our brethren as either blood-sucking vampires (What is the difference between a lawyer and a vampire? – A vampire only sucks blood at night), sharks (What is the difference between a lawyer and a shark? – Ummmm… yeah, I can’t think of any differences, too) and, my favorite, catfish (What is the difference between a catfish and a lawyer? - One is a rabble sucking bottom dweller, the other is a fish).

However, it seems that every once in a while, people find reasons to love a lawyer.  Whether that love is a result of a lawyer getting them out of a speeding ticket, setting up a trust that saves them a bunch of money in taxes, saves them money on their property taxes (hint, hint), etc., people realize that not all lawyers are the personification of pure evil; well, at least that attorneys aren’t the personification of pure evil all the time. 

Well, now I have another reason for you to love a lawyer.  Don’t worry, you don’t have to love all lawyers, just a bunch of them, and you only have to love them for a second or two.

The law firm of Troutman Sanders LLP, a large, Atlanta, Georgia-based, international law firm, has generously donated over $15,000 to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, through LLS’s Team-In-Training program.  Now, I know that some cynics and skeptics out there might want to downplay the generosity of this donation or point to ulterior motives for the donation.  However, my simple response to any and all doubters/haters is (i) LLS is not the only worthy not-for profit organization that the firm supports, so this donation is not the total “give” from the firm; and (ii) Troutman could have easily given less money and still achieved any and all of its PR goals and/or ulterior motives – a $5,000 donation to LLS would have been more than generous.  As for me, I have no connection to Troutman Sanders LLP, other than the fact that I worked for a peer firm for two and a half years; the only potential benefit that I can see gaining from writing this blog post is that Troutman will continue to support LLS in future years, which I hope will be the case (as an aside, I probably didn’t have to tell you that I am an attorney at the beginning of this blog, since you would have figured it out based on the fact that I (i) used Roman numerals to delineate my points, now twice in a paragraph; (ii) placed a disclaimer at the end of this paragraph; and (iii) have used four semi-colons in single paragraph – and yes, each one is a good reason to hate me).

So, now that you have thought kindly of Troutman Sanders LLP and their attorneys for at least a second or two, you can go back to abhorring every single attorney in existence.  But, at least you should agree with the fact that, unlike vampires, the attorneys at Troutman Sanders have a heart and a soul… well, you’ll agree with that fact as long as you aren’t sitting on the opposite side of the table from them.