31 Hilariously Wrong Legal Takes That Had Actual Lawyers Cry-Laughing

"I'm not a lawyer but I'm fairly certain that I could frame a dog for m****r".

One of my clients was told by someone on the staff of the nursing home where her mother lives that if an Enduring Power of Attorney (basically a power of attorney made in contemplation of future mental incapacity that unlike most powers of attorney does not become invalid if the donor becomes incapacitated) is voided if the original staples that held the pages together are removed. I can see a tiny grain of truth to this in that if the validity of the document was contested the fact that it had been taken apart and stapled together again might be some evidence to support that but there is no way that evidence alone would determine the issue.

And don't even get me started about people who use the term "hearsay" but don't know what it means. This has become an epidemic.

This random guy at the deli told me, “I’m not a lawyer but I know for a fact my baby mama ain’t gonna get a dime of this child support money!” I asked him why he thought that and he said it was because she owed back taxes with the IRS and they were going to garnish the child support payments to pay it off. All I responded with was “wow that’s new!”.

Many years ago... a*****e former judge owned a company the owed my employer (I was controller) a bunch of money. He signed a "security agreement" for their receivables, meaning we could collect the company's receivables to recover our debt. The only problem was one of his employees was a friend of my boss and brought in a copy of exactly the same agreement, but with another company, dated a month before. Now, being a CPA candidate, I was studying business law and said, well, this looks like fraud and we can sue his a*s for the entire company. My boss calls our attorney (who hated the judge with a passion) and related the situation. Yep, fraud. We went to court, got summary judgement (the judge just laughed at the crooked judge) and we owned the company. It was fun.

Met someone who said they knew everything about the law and was studying to be a lawyer. Turns out she was temping as a paralegal for the better part of a week.

I'm in real estate, Over the last year or two I've seen a lot of people try to quote the law as if they are lawyers. No Karen, misinterpreting your lease contract and the law supporting it does not mean you get to do what ever you want. "Mitigate damages" is not a get out of jail free card.

A tale from back in my public defender-ing days:

Sovereign citizens are a special kind of stupid. Percentage-wise, I don’t know how many of them are true believers and how many think they’ve just found some clever loophole or another. At any rate, they were always the most interesting clients.

One of them was a young gent who decided to represent another buddy of his to spin his nonsense to the judge. Unfortunately, the fellow who would become my client was a regular defendant in that same courtroom—and everyone there knew he wasn’t a lawyer. When he was arrested—which is to say immediately—the judge was not swayed by his argument that he was “acting of counsel” rather than “practicing law without a license.”

The operating a motor vehicle charge which would follow was only semi-related.

My answer is actually basically all of the "I am not a lawyer, but..." claims.

The funny thing about being a lawyer is that the answer is almost always "it depends." Sure, the laws generally stay the same but the outcomes are so contingent upon the facts that you can never know with certainty how something will turn out. Thus, my answer for 90+% of my clients is it depends on (who the judge is, who shows up to testify, what the witnesses say, what theme opposing counsel goes with, etc...). More importantly, we are not allowed to guarantee results and for good reason - the simple fact of the matter is judges, juries, prosecutors, and opposing counsel can make different decisions based on identical facts and laws.

I think the only time "I am not a lawyer, but" would be appropriate is if someone is saying "I am not a lawyer, but you need to consult with an attorney.".

I once had a person claim that within there was no such thing as the adversarial system and that we were just trying to inflame a contested divorce.

Should mention we live in a common law system and both parties had retained separate counsel.

Absolutely the best IANAL arguments I saw on Reddit came during the "Deflate Gate" scandal in the NFL. For those who do not know, Tom Brady, the superstar quarterback for the very successful New England Patriots, was found to have deflated footballs in violation of league rules. That's kind of a minor thing, but it was against one of the best players in the league's history, and Brady fought it like crazy. The issue resulted in litigation in the Southern District of New York and, later, the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals.

Patriots fans vociferously defended Brady and, frankly, I would expect nothing less. But some of the legal arguments Patriots fans would make were astounding. It was some time ago, so I do not recall specifics, but it was as if every Patriots fan on Reddit suddenly got a law degree and had years of experience practicing law.

What I do remember, though, was their fans would often re-hash the legal arguments Brady's (very talented) attorneys made in court filings as if they were gospel. But attorneys are paid to be persuasive -- everything we write seems compelling at first blush. But even if we write it authoritatively, it could certainly be wrong and lose. And that's ultimately what happened to Brady. Although, credit to his attorneys, he had some success at the trial court level, which was mind-boggling to me. The 2d Circuit corrected that.

Charlie: Says the guy who knows nothing about the law!

Dennis: I can absolutely keep a hummingbird as a pet, bro. It's no different than having a parrot or a parakeet. It's a bird, bro.

Charlie: You really can't, and I'm not saying I agree with it. It's just that bird law in this country--it's not governed by reason.

Dennis: There's no such thing as "bird law".

Charlie: Yes, there is.

Dennis: You know what? I'm going to get a hummingbird and I'll show you.

Charlie: Hummingbirds...hummingbirds are illegal tender!

Dennis: I'm going to get one.

Charlie: You cannot.

Dennis: To spite you, I'm going to get one.

Mac: Where are we with gulls?

Charlie: You can keep a gull as a pet, but you don't want to live with a seabird, okay, 'cause the noise level alone on those things...have you ever heard a gull up close? It's going to blast your eardrums out, dude.