Some lawyers take cheap shots, some even work pro bono

Susan Harris Rimmer, The Australia National University

Abstract

In Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II, a pretender to the throne outlines the Utopia that will come when his unruly mob helps make him king. The unruliest of them all, Dick the Butcher, leers in an aside to the audience, ''The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.'' Wherever and whenever it is staged around the world, Dick always brings the house down.

Steven Spielberg uses much the same technique in the movie Jurassic Park, when the venal lawyer is eaten by the T Rex while on the toilet. Guffaws all round.

Now I'm not here to naysay lawyer jokes. Keep 'em coming, I say. I am just here to alert you to the reflex ex-NSW Premier Bob Carr is hitting when he calls any attempt to legally protect human rights in a piece of legislation as leading to a ''lawyer's picnic''.