Should Lawyers Tell Jokes?

That's the question raised by the above video appearing on a new YouTube-like site for lawyers called LegalTube.

Ok, it's mildly funny but am I missing something? Is this supposed to be a marketing tool?

I'll stick with Carlin for now.

Then there's this profile of Doral lawyers Michael Wermuth and Ricardo Gonzalez from today's Herald. It's part of a new series by Herald writer Doug Hanks designed to highlight any discernible glimmers of recovery in the current dismal economic environment -- he's calling it "Green Shoots."

I'm not sure you can draw any broad conclusions for the general marketplace from the experience of these lawyers, or even whether you can apply it more specifically to the South Florida legal community as a whole.

Basically these guys, who seem like good lawyers, have a real estate, business and transactional practice, much of it coming from South America, and as the economy soured they continued to bill a lot but collections fell off.

Now, however, collections are on the rise:

For Gonzalez and Wermuth, cutting the firm's collections list has given them hope that the businesses they represent are shifting attitudes, too. Outstanding bills have dropped from 75 percent of billed hours to about 25 percent.

Instead of sensing disaster ahead, the lawyers say, their clients see some hope of new profits.

``It's not like all of a sudden we have another bull run,'' Wermuth said. ``But at least people made the adjustments they needed to make.''

``They cut down their costs,'' Gonzalez added. ``They cut down their overhead. Now ``they're looking for opportunities.''

Does that translate to the legal community as a whole, or beyond? I hope so, but we would need a lot more data beyond a few anecdotes to make even an educated guess.

All we know for sure is Alan Becker says 2009 is "stable," so that's pretty much a lock. Time to trade up my Porsche!