Every time I am in the US people
offer me jokes about lawyers. There are plenty of them and I don’t like them at
all. I always tell my American colleagues that these are jokes about them, about
American lawyers, not about Polish lawyers and I am from Poland. Then, in
return, they want to offer me Polish jokes.

For a long time I was looking for
jokes about arbitrators. Are there
any jokes about arbitrators?

From my younger days I know a joke
about judges. It goes like this:

The courthouse in a small town catches
fire at night. Firemen arrive and start fighting the fire. The court bailiff
runs to the house of the judge and wakes him shouting. “The court in on fire,
Sir! – What should I do?”

“Hmm, let me think” – says the
judge – “I know” – he says on reflection – “Take the files lying under my bed
and throw them into the fire!”

Are there any jokes about
arbitrators? I recently heard the first one:

Question:         What is the first symptom
of schizophrenia?

Answer:           The sole arbitrator drafting his dissenting opinion.

Why are there so few jokes about
arbitrators? Is arbitration not funny? It is. I could tell many stories about
how funny it might be. So why are there no jokes?

My answer is: because people
still respect arbitrators! People have always respected the “wise man of the
village” – usually the old man called to resolve the disputes between
neighbors. There are no jokes about professions people actually respect. So we
have thousands of jokes about lawyers, but very few about judges and
arbitrators.

In our country we have a never ending discussion about:
“who bears the crown of the legal professions?” The judges want to bear it. The
journalists want to crown them even now. A lot is being said that the profession
of a public judge should be “the crown of all legal professions”. But judges
are poorly paid. Not only in Poland. So far I think that the crown belongs to the
international arbitrators. Few colleagues from our law schools travel more. Few
have a more interesting life. This is the job or mission many of our colleagues
want to follow. So, again – No jokes about arbitrators!