What, if anything, is wrong with lawyers?

After one week of jury duty, I've become more convinced than ever of the following things:

1. New York City is indeed a dangerous place.
2. People are stupid.
3. Lawyers make things way more complicated than they really need to be. (No news here, huh?)

I imagine it's probably a different story when you've lived in New York all your life, but when you move here from somewhere else, namely a sheltered suburban setting, it goes something like this: You arrive in New York with a head full of all the stories you heard about people getting mugged in broad daylight, murdered on school playgrounds, and assaulted in their own homes. You are paranoid and you look for it everywhere but you just don't see it. After a while you start to believe that the stories were all horribly exaggerated, or maybe just plain made up. You develop a sense of security and you are more or less comfortable. Then one day after you've been here for a few years, you get called up for grand jury duty where you get to sit and listen to story after story about horrible things that actually happened to real people right here in New York City, and you realize that all the stories you heard before you moved here were actually true, after all. Yes, Virginia, New York City is a dangerous place.

People are stupid. There's just no getting around that fact. I don't know if it's TV, the internet, fast food, public school, NASCAR, Paulie Shore, or what it is, but people have just stopped using their brains. I wish I could find a way to blame this on good ol' Dubbya Bush, but this has been going on since way before he finagled his way into office. Nobody thinks anymore. They can't process information, even the simplest bits. Don't believe me? Sit on a grand jury sometime. When a witness or a police officer finishes their story and the Assistant District Attorney asks the jury if they have any questions about the testimony, and 8 people ask questions the answers to which were clearly explained in the story we JUST heard, and 5 others ask questions that have absolutely no relevance whatsoever, you'll want to boil your own head in a vat of putrescent cottage cheese too. I realize this sounds awfully high handed of me, and I'm sorry for that, but come on people. Listen and process. Not a difficult task by any stretch. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everyone is stupid, but I fear that it is rapidly becoming (or has already become) the rule rather than the exception.


Lawyers. I know I don't really have to say anything about lawyers, they're pretty universally despised already. But sitting on the grand jury has finally revealed to me the reason why legal proceedings take so bloody long. Why can't lawyers ever speak a sentence with less than 87 words in it? Or, more to the point, couldn't they just say what it is they're trying to say? If you have to ask someone, "Did you do ever get such-and-such item back?" Would you say,

A. "Did you ever get such-and-such item back?"
or
B. "Did you, at any time, ever see such-and-such item again, and, if so, what were the circumstances under which you saw said such-and-such item?"

I think most of us would go ahead and use option A. Simple, effective. It gets the point across and you get the answer you need. The lawyers on the other hand, all go with option B. Why? Who knows? Probably so they don't get sued. Ha! Most of the time it just confuses the witness, and when they finally understand the question and answer it, they still have to also be asked "Was such-and-such item returned to you at that time, or at any time after that?" So now they've asked two long, ridiculous questions just to get the answer to one simple question. This is my favorite one, though. They never ask someone "What happened next?" or "What did you do next?" It's always "What, if anything, did you observe after such-and-such event?" Again, it's more complicated than it needs to be, but, more than that, why the fuck do they have to say "if anything?" If nothing had happened, we wouldn't all be there in that room listening that horrible story to begin with. Please, for the love of Pete, just say what you mean. They also end up repeating themselves an awful lot, which wouldn't be so bad if it was just because they forgot what they had already said. But it's not. They repeat the same disclaimers over and over and over and over. Just say it once, we get the picture. It would make everyone a whole lot happier. And we could go home much earlier.

All that aside, jury duty can actually be pretty interesting. The stories you hear are mostly terrible and sad, but at the same time...well, uh, I was going to write something here that was meant to be poignant, but my brain just decided to give up and shut itself down. Sorry. I guess I just got my share of the stupid. Maybe I should go watch something on MTV.