"There's no reason to believe that Shakespeare himself thought all lawyers were crooks", but ...

To Kill or Not to Kill All the Lawyers? 

That Is the Question

byJacob Gershman

By The inscription on a novelty mug for sale at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's gift shop in Washington always gets a rise out of veteran trial lawyer David Epstein.

It isn't the line itself: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." It is that so few people see it his way: The Bard wasn't knocking lawyers, much less endorsing a litigicidal rampage, he says, but defending them.

"I'm a lawyer. I get the 'humor,' " he says. "But I don't like this target on my back."

Now, Mr. Epstein is among an unhappy band of attorneys who are toiling to, as they view it, set the record straight.

The line comes from Shakespeare's "Henry VI, Part 2" and is spoken by Dick the Butcher, the dopey henchman of rebel leader Jack Cade.

According to the attorneys' interpretation—one supported by many but not all English scholars—Shakespeare's point is to portray lawyers as the guardians of the rule of law who stand in the way of a fanatical mob.

The lawyers may have a good argument, but more than four centuries after the play made its debut, Dick the Butcher's words still haunt the legal profession, enduring as shorthand for frustration with excessive fees, frivolous lawsuits and ambulance chasing. It is plastered on mugs, T-shirts and posters and has popped up in everything from an Eagles song to Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom" cable drama. There are jokes about it going back at least to the 1800s.

"Things with that quote on it always do well," said Matthew Frederick, who manages the Folger Shakespeare Library gift shop in Washington, D.C., which offers a blue T-shirt featuring the line for $19.95. "People are amused with the idea of bashing lawyers." But he adds: "A lot of those people don't really understand the context of it."

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Read more: online.wsj.com

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Florida jury awards record

$23 billion against RJ Reynolds

By Barbara Liston

(Reuters) - A Florida jury has awarded the widow of a chain smoker who died of lung cancer 18 years ago record punitive damages of more than $23 billion in her lawsuit against the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the nation's second-biggest cigarette maker.

The judgment, returned on Friday night, was the largest in Florida history in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by a single plaintiff, according to Ryan Julison, a spokesman for the woman's lawyer, Chris Chestnut.

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Read more: www.reuters.com