You know the joke about the 3 men in a lifeboat in a shark infested ocean, and the sharks leave the lawyer alone out of 'Professional courtesy'?
Anyway When the Euro-lottery rolls over a couple of times I run a syndicate at work. Tonight it's £91.00 GBP million, and I have 12 people in today's syndicate.
So the head of the Unit, 'F', comes in with £2.00 GBP in her hand, and I pull out the agreement form for her to sign. As she is signing her name she starts laughing.
She said her husband 'S' was part of a syndicate in his former office.
"Hold on," I say, "they are all lawyers."
"Yes, the syndicate agreement is this thick," she says, holding up thumb and forefinger about 5mm apart.
For reference this is our agreement
We, the undersigned, agree to be part of a lottery syndicate for the Euro-Lottery draw on 13 November 2015, to be administered by [me]. 1 share will cost £2.00 GBP, and the maximum number of tickets possible with the money paid will be bought. Any prize money will be distributed equally among all shares.
Then a list with these headings
Name – Signature – Date
And that is only to show the taxman if they want to know why people are receiving £7.50 GBP million cheques from me.
She said "I said on Sunday I owed 'M' £2.00 GBP [we have been doing this syndicate since last week, when I realised there was a roll over] for the lottery and 'S' wanted to know what the legal safeguards were."
As far as I'm concerned, the legal safeguard was she had signed, and I had £2.00 GBP on her behalf, and I don't care where it came from. She said to 'S' "Maybe where I work we don't mistrust each other."
Apparently the members of 'S' lottery would take it in terms to administer, and he came home with a thick wedge of paper.
"What's this? "
"It's my turn to administer the syndicate."
"How many of there are you? A thousand?"
I've been giggling all day at the idea of lawyers running a leisure activity like it's high finance.