My Favorite Legal Terms That Sound Funnier Than They Are

[Entry for Sunday, June 6]

I've often started off with a lawyer joke, a complete caricature of a lawyer who's been nasty, greedy, and unethical. But I've stopped that practice. I gradually realized that the lawyers in the audience didn't think the jokes were funny and the non-lawyers didn't know they were jokes.

-Chief Justice William Rehnquist

I am studying for the bar exam now, and so I am going to be writing about more legal things.  Just live with it.  Today I'm writing about my six favorite legal terms that sound like something funny.  Get that drum set ready for some rim shots!

Pro bono
Actual Legal meaning: to work for the public good rather than for profit or personal interest.
I don't think I have to explain why this particular Latin term provokes giggles.  And it's super flexible, you can use it in at least two different ways.  One: Why do you think Craig is charging that hot blonde for her divorce?  I think he has taken that case pro bono if you know what I mean.   Two: I took the case defending the pornographic theater because I'm 100% pro bono.  Either way, good times.

Hung Jury 
Actual legal meaning: A jury that cannot reach a verdict by the required voting margin.
Possible misapplication would go "Did you see that group of twelve Chip n' Dale guys at Julie's bachelorette party?  [I think you see where I am going with this...]"

Preexisting duty
Actual legal meaning:  A duty that one party has to another party that arose in the past.  For example, Joe hires Mike to mow his lawn next week for $50.  Joe pays Mike the $50.  Before Mike mows the lawn he asks Joe for another $10 and Joe refuses.  Mike still has to mow the lawn because he has a preexisting duty.
Another note about preexisting duty, this is why my roommate and I call it when Ty, the puppy, leaves us a smelly little gift and we don't find it until later.

Penal Anything
Penal is a word used to describe anything that pertains to punishment for a crime.  I don't think I have to explain why this is funny.  It works to create double entendre with pretty much any phrase.  Penal transportation (the job of a jock strap?), penal populism (very low in lesbian communities), penal colonies (wonder why they declared independence?), penal code (similar to the bro code?).  I could go on and on and on.*

Attractive Nuisance
Of all the phrases I have learned in law school, this is the one I have made the focus of the most jokes.  If you don't know at least seventeen people who could be classified as attractive nuisances, then you aren't hanging out at the right clubs/bars/grocery stores/dating websites.
For the record, an attractive nuisance is a dangerous condition on land that may attract children and then injure them.  Much more boring than what you were imagining.

Attenuated taint
This is, by a large margin, my favorite legal phrase that sounds gross.  Taint has its the regular literal meaning, the trace of something bad.  Taint is often used in terms of bad things done that make a search illegal.  For instance, if a police officer searches a house without consent, a search warrant, or probable cause, the search is tainted.  However, when the tainted activity is done so far back in a long chain of events, the taint is said to be attenuated and sometimes doesn't not make the product of search illegal.
Now, there is also another meaning for taint that you are more likely to find in urban dictionary than Webster's dictionary.  Because of this my seventh grade mind could not keep quiet.
I had a criminal procedure professor who said attenuated taint so many times that I had to excuse myself from the the classroom.  In my defense, I sat in the front row and he had a hand motion of drawing something out that went along with the phrase.


Like a volcano of laughter waiting to explode.
In a courtroom that is solemn as a funeral.
One giggle leaks out, like a drop of water falling from the bathroom faucet long after the house is empty.

* Thanks to my extreme immaturity