When he was an army lawyer, he was addressed by his rank, which I assume to be better than buck private. Now that he’s been mustered into the ranks of civilians, he questioned what to call himself:
I’ve never fully understood placing “Esq.” or “Esquire” after one’s name as a lawyer.
Someone told me that it is our version of a doctor calling themselves Dr. as a prefix.
Someone else told me that you should never refer to yourself as an Esq., but that it is reserved for others to use when referring to you. I.e. Improper to use Esq. on outgoing correspondence, but it is acceptable for individuals to address correspondence to you with Esq. added.
Someone else told me that Esq. is something used to demonstrate the awarding of a Juris Doctor degree, but it did not denote bar membership or the active practice of law.
Someone else told me that Esq. was commonly used by people who finished law school but were not yet a member of the bar, just to feel spiffy.
And yet someone else told me that placing the term Esq. behind your own name is a fantastic way to demonstrate that you are a self-absorbed prick.
What this tells me is that Eric Mayer talks to too many people. The nuance of using “Esq.” has never been high on my list of issues, though if pressed, I think that’s the way I address formal letters to other lawyers. I would never sign my name with “Esq.” at the end, just as I would never call myself “Attorney Greenfield,” as some lawyers typically do in other parts of the country. It gives me the willies.
But the American Bar Association is concerned about what we call ourselves, It’s sufficiently concerned that it’s issued a policy statement :
J.D. Degree – Ph.D. Degree Equivalency
WHEREAS, the acquisition of a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree requires from 84 to 90 semester hours of post baccalaureate study and the Doctor of Philosophy degree usually requires 60 semester hours of post baccalaureate study along with the writing of a dissertation, the two degrees shall be considered as equivalent degrees for educational employment purposes;
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that all appropriate persons be requested to eliminate any policy, or practice, existing within their jurisdiction which disparages legal education or promotes discriminatory employment practices against J.D. degree-holders who hold academic appointment in education institutions.
So we’re every bit as doctor-y as, say, doctors? Yeah.
At Above the Law, Elie Mystal expresses his thoughts on lawyers who call themselves “doctor.”
I know J.D. stand for Juris Doctor. I get that at commencement somebody probably proclaimed that law school graduates were “doctors of laws.” All that said, the lawyer who refers to himself as “Dr.” So-and-So has got to be the biggest douchebag on the planet. Bigger even than the tool who runs around calling himself So-and-So, Esquire.
Don’t you want to punch that person in the mouth?
Aside from Elie’s violent tendencies (not to be stereotypical or anything), any lawyer who calls himself doctor is indeed “the biggest douchebag on the planet.” The ABA’s nonsensical equivalency statement completely misses the point, that we are lawyers, not physicians, not astro-physicists, not chiropractors. The whole “Esq.” thing is nothing more than a silly vanity used to note, based on modern practice, that we’re lawyers.
What’s disturbing about all of this isn’t just the excess promoted by the ABA’s needless and mindless policy statement, the inherent fake grandiosity and pomposity of any lawyer claiming the title Doctor, but that it’s happening simultaneously with the diminishing of the profession to the level of puss-encrusted streetwalker. As the spiral into the gutter picks up speed, new means of branding ourselves are embraced by the forward-thinking marketers at the ABA.
No, it’s not just official permission to call ourselves doctor even though we’ve never wielded a proctoscope and learned the true meaning of myopia. It’s the websites that self-proclaim someone to be the nation’s leading trial lawyer, an outrageous affront to humility, not to mention an outright lie. Lawyers are lying through their teeth to manufacture undeserved self-promotion and the ABA is busy providing new lies to spew.
In response to Eric’s question about whether to use “Esq.”, former disco queen Dan Hull offered his thoughts:
But my 2 cents: No. Don’t use it. Anyone can now become a lawyer in America. And everyone does become one. The attorney world is now like a big bowling alley in a crappy part of Cleveland. Distinguish yourself some other way within our world.
Being a good lawyer is a lot of work. Calling yourself “Esq.” or doctor is easy. But if you do, you are “the biggest douchebag on the planet.” I might not punch you in the face, but I won’t think well of you. And no, squeezing you fat butt into your “doctor” hot pants isn’t going to make you look any better as you strut down the boulevard.
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Dear Attorney Greenfield, Esq., Sorcerer:
Thanks for the clarification.
Sincerely yours,
Supreme Imperial Grand Legal Potentate Mayer
Imperial? Seriously?
If it’s good enough for the Shriners, then, doggone it, it’s good enough for me.
Heh. At least you guys down there don’t have to deal with the foppish douchbaggery of the “learned Q.C.” strutting into court making constant reference to the “silks that I wear”.
Like jockeys, or metrosexuals with new boxers.
During the course of my practice of immigration law, I am told by my clients from central and south america that it is common practice to call lawyers “Doctor.” Some of them call me Doctor, and I tell them that the American Medical Association doesn’t like it when lawyers are called Doctors in the U.S. I do use Esq when I am writing a letter to antoher lawyer, but never use it when referring to myself, unless I signing something on behalf of client (usually change of address forms that the immigration court uses, where there is a certificate of service, but no place for the lawyer to sign otherwise.) I understand that in South Asian countries (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) it is common practice to list your degrees after your name in correspondence, but I don’t live or practice in South Asia, so I don’t do that either.
Most of the time, I’m just trying not to look like an idiot. I figure good work that more often than not leads to good results speak more about me that anything else. To quote a line from Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma: “I’m not saying that I’m better than someone else, but I’ll be damned if I’m not just as good.”
Like you, I’ve been called “doctor” by some South American clients. It’s grates on me, and I explain that it’s not the way we refer to lawyers here. I’m not a doctor. I’m a lawyer. I’m good with that.
The older use of “doctor” is to refer to people who have achieved the highest academic degree in certain disciplines. You’d think lawyers would know the term is derived from Latin “to teach.”
[Edit. Note: link deleted per rules.]
Obviously, since all lawyers are fluent in Latin.
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief,
Or Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.
Or what about a cowboy, policeman, jailer, engine driver, or a pirate chief?
Or what about a ploughman or a keeper at the zoo,
Or what about a circus man who lets the people through?
Or the man who takes the pennies on the roundabouts and swings,
Or the man who plays the organ or the other man who sings?
Or What about the rabbit man with rabbits in his pockets
And what about a rocket man who’s always making rockets?
Oh it’s such a lot of things there are and such a lot to be
That there’s always lots of cherries on my little cherry tree.
A. A. Milne, Now We are Six (London: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1927), pp. 19-21.
The law degree, of course, used to be the LLB, which was a bachelor’s degree. Since nearly every law student now already has a bachelor’s, the law schools decided that they had to offer something more, er, graduate schooly. The problem is that the JD is not equivalent to a doctorate in any coherent way. (Nor is the MD, really, but that’s a different issue.) If there’s any sort of equivalence, it would be to the master’s degree, but if they tried to switch to JM it would just be silly. And the LLM – as an advanced law degree, wasn’t going anywhere.
So law became the only field in which the doctor’s degree was inferior to the master’s.
Of course, some law schools then started offering an SJD, which typically requires presenting an academic/scholarly publication and really is the closest law comes to a PhD.
“What’s in a name?” Juliet wondered. To which Gertrude Stein didn’t really respond, “There’s no there, there.”
Thanks, professor.
Queen, Scott? Queen? Jesus. I’ll remember that. And do you still want to wear my Blue Nile diamond tiara to Henry IV, Part 1 tonight?
Oddly, I hadn’t even considered that connotation. Would diva be better?
Fine. Diva is perfect. Thank you. What about the diamond tiara? Both Raphael and Little Sammy want to wear it tonight, too.
Let them fight over it.
First of all, what? The ABA is issuing policy statements on inanities like this?
Secondly, a lawyer referring to himself as “doctor” would indeed be in rarefied airs of douchebaggery. But PhDs and holders of honorary degrees (hello, “Dr” Bill Cosby) are a close second.
Only a medical doctor (ok, podiatrists and optometrists, too) is “doctor” to me. And even then, it’s more fun to just call them “doc.”
We have ‘silks’ down here in Australia too.. The wigs at least hide the bald spots I guess and the silks are great to wash your hands on 😉
Me, I have a humble LLB, don’t practice, and spend my time annoying QC’s, Barristers, and Solicitors in the field of Digital Forensics. Though I have been known to include CBW&AK at the end of my name sometimes
What’s it mean you ask? well “Chief Bottle Washer & Arse Kicker” of course
puss encrusted streetwalker
Yeech! Is this some weird form of a self flagellation exercise? Consult Opus Dei or devout Shi’a for the finer points on self-abuse.
That set me wondering, too. Amongst the wonders was how long it would take PETA to get on Scott’s case.
Chill out. It’s not my fault I have a way with words.
As a Doctor of Science, (it’s a Ph.D, not the British higher doctorate or the Soviet doktor nauk, but Finnish government officially uses this translation), I dislike the ABA statement. The number of semester hours is quite irrelevant in determining the equivalency of doctoral degrees.
The hallmark of the Ph.D is not the coursework. It is the dissertation, in which the student has published new scientific or scholarly knowledge, making a real, original contribution to the field. Coursework is simply theoretical training which has been the groundwork giving the student the needed skills and knowledge to do the actual research.
Studying existing knowledge and creating new research are two completely different things. Of course, many JD holders make real contributions to the field of law, but this happens later during their career, not in law school.
My field is physics. There, the use of “Dr” is important because only grad students are addressed with “Mr”. For example, when you present a group of researchers, you mention: “Here are Professor Smith, Dr. Brown and Mr. Green.” Then, everyone understands that “Mr.” Green is a lowly student, while Brown is at least a post-doc.
Because of this, the use of “Dr” becomes important. In contexts where persons are referred to with the prefix “Mr”, using “Dr” for Ph.D holders is imperative. If you call Dr. Brown “Mr. Brown”, you imply that he is not a competent scientist.
Little Sammy won–but now they’re not speaking. Been much better if you had taken it for the weekend.