Remember when you were a kid.  Younger.  A little younger.  There!  You were in the backyard and they were picking up sides for the family football game.  Everybody played.  Boys, girls, even old people like teenagers.  And those teens were a font of information.  They would tell the youngsters. “If you want to get picked you have to look mean.  Meaner.  Meaner!”  And mean you looked.  You looked like a cross between a WWE Wannabe and a mountain lion with indigestion.  Very mean.  Some of those young ones, maybe even you, grew up to be a lawyer, but never gave up that face.

We bring this up because lawyers are on TV a lot right now.  Locally there are quite a few high profile cases being tried.  Between the “no comments” from the trial lawyers and prosecutors and the comments from the station commentators there are legal faces all over the television.  All trying to be “serious.”

It’s getting close to general election time and all of the local news outlets are starting to trot out their analysts to analyze the candidates and the candidates’ comments and/or no comments depending on, well, usually just depending because they are, after all, politicians.  Most of these analysts themselves are also politicians (just the ones who lost last time around) and, because you can never have enough of them, lawyers, too.  All trying to be “sincere.”

And because the law schools are pumping out so many lawyers it’s time for some of them to stand out from the crowd.  That means television ads.  For some, YouTube videos even.  (Those are the really scary ones but we digress.)  In these commercials, all the while trying to convince you that he or she is the perfect advocate to get money for you, they put on their not-so-happy face because you want someone not so happy to handle your personal injury claim.  All trying to be “compassionate.”  (Except for the guy with the pony tail who will file your bankruptcy with a smile, with a smile.)

Whether serious, sincere, or compassionate, they all look the same (except that pony tailed guy).  Somewhat like a mountain lion with indigestion.  Someone somewhere has told these lawyers that the law is a noble professional and should be held in reverence.  “So when you’re on TV, don’t look happy at somebody else’s misery!”  Unfortunately, the only non-happy look these guys can muster is wildlife with tummy troubles.

The next time you see a lawyer with some contorted facial expression and with what he thinks are penetrating eyes, don’t rush out to the office with a bottle of Pepto.  His pain will pass.  Faster than his clients’ will.

Now that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you.