Friday 13 August 2010

Word of the day

Today's word is lawyer up, a verb, and thank you to Professor Rob Moodie, a health educationalist and chairman of Melbourne Storm, for the term. Rob was speaking (as a Surrey Hills resident) at a breakfast in aid of Foundation Boroondara, a charitable organisation in this area.

The term lawyer up comes to us, like so many useful terms relating to the practice of law, from the United States. Lawyer up means to equip yourself extensively with legal assistance, and has been created by analogy with terms like gear up, or saddle up.

For example, this picture with the caption "Oksana looking to lawyer up against Mel" illustrates the concept pretty well. As does this one captioned "Sandra Bullock, Jesse James lawyer up." And here is positively the shortest example of lawyering up around.

The term has been around for a while, including in Australia, and it is not all about celebrities. This article in The Age (2008), headed "Do you need to lawyer up?" illustrates the concept pretty well. (It also references a great Tex Perkins song, "Better get a lawyer.")

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