Call me a bitter feminist (because I am) or prude or practical. But frat boy lawyers are worse than Yalies. And just because I don’t grab my non-existent balls like you or utter ridiculous juvenalia like “owned” or “fail,” doesn’t mean I can’t tell you directly how ridiculous you are. Grow up. You are no longer “in the Bro Zone.” Stop abusing these four obvious and insipid frat boy lawyer words and you may actually move up in the law job pecking order.
Douchebag
This is probably the most abused and overused frat boy lawyer phrase. Typically, the frat boy lawyer uses it singularly, as a noun, as in “what a douchebag.” It also has obvious variants, like “d-bag” or just “douche,” as in “he’s a d-bag lawyer.” Enough already. It’s cool and all that you can pull this out of your tiny bag of linguistic lawyerly tricks, but it lost any real effect in 2003, if not 1995.
Tool
Not really offensive or even that interesting, tool is way overused and has come to to mean anything from “manpawn” to “I just added a comment to Above the Law.” Typical use by frat boy lawyers: “what a fucking TTT tool.” If you use it, though, it just screams “I pledged Sigma Nu, bro, how ’bout you? Aren’t we cool? [scratch balls for effect]” Wow, it was the Urban Dictionary Word of the Day in 2005.
Bitch
For some reason, bitch is most frequently used by frat boy lawyers when referring to document review, as in “I’m no doc review bitch” (add a comma and it’s actionable in some states). Many of the Bitter Lawyer writers—typically former or current frat boy lawyers—love this phrase. And they especially love its variant—biatch—which brings them back to their circle jerk days at Duke or Oklahoma. Lose it. Or relegate it to your oh-so-witty frat boy headlines you already provide on Fark.
Pwned or Pwn3d
I’ve happily never used these until just now. But frat boy lawyers generally love these and use them frequently in emails, when watching MMA, or in comments on JDUnderground or AutoAdmit. I’ve even seen it in comments on Lawyerist. But, yeah, we can tell you loved World of Warcraft and have sixteen different styles of Croakies. We don’t need actual confirmation.
Sure, there are others, like cockblock and TFM and eight different variations apparently associated with Tim Tebow. But generally those have not been around a terribly long time. Or, more accurately, fresh out of law school, frat boy lawyers are just now getting around to using them now in the legal market, trying frantically to hold on to their salad days. All the power to ya, Mr. SigEp.
(Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philiplarson/446102740)