{"id":628,"date":"2022-08-02T13:18:17","date_gmt":"2022-08-02T17:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/?page_id=628"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:12:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:12:14","slug":"the-funny-business","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/in-print\/volume-35-issue-2-spring-2022\/the-funny-business\/","title":{"rendered":"The Funny Business"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good attorneys are clowns. Or, at least, they should be. In this Article, I compare clowning and legal ethics. In so doing, I review elements of the ethics of clowning and the clown rules, and the lessons those provide to attorneys. I also consider aspects of clowning, such as world-creation, norm-inversion, clown logic, and the mythical matrix, all of which are instructive for the legal profession. Each of these elements contributes to an understanding of lawyering as a clown-like narrative project. This project provides a better lens for ethical analysis and reflection than past attempts at analogizing the lawyer\u2019s role.<\/p>\n<p>I therefore conclude that clowning offers the best comparison for Law as narrative, rather than acting or writing. Lessons from clowning provide attorneys with a provocative example by which they may address various issues in legal ethics, as well as engage more intimately with semiotics in practice.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/24\/2022\/08\/GT-GJLE220016.pdf\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good attorneys are clowns. Or, at least, they should be. In this Article, I compare clowning and legal ethics. In so doing, I review elements of the ethics of clowning [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9015,"featured_media":0,"parent":613,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-628","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9015"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":828,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/628\/revisions\/828"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/legal-ethics-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}