Down and out in KentuckyWe know better than most the dangers of making jokes at lawyers’ expense, but a counterpart across the pond has got into hot water over a lawyer cartoon. It depicts a down-and-out practitioner sitting on a pavement next to a sign saying ‘Will sue for food’. A woman walking by comments: ‘It’s just the effects of tort reform, I suppose.’ According to the Associated Press, the editor of the Kentucky Bar Association’s magazine has received quite a few stinging letters. ‘There is absolutely nothing funny about the notion that the effect of tort reform is to reduce lawyers to the status of homeless beggars,’ one correspondent fumed, ‘when the real victims of these "reforms" are the injured person who can no longer receive full compensation.’ Others said such a journal should not publish lawyer jokes (we agree - but only because few are funny), and that it depicted plaintiff lawyers as parasites willing to sue over anything. The cartoonist, himself a lawyer, said his creation was meant humorously to question the benefits of tort reform.