Real Lawyer Reacts to Onion Headlines

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Sorry, occupational hazard: This is not legal advice, nor can I give you legal advice. I AM NOT YOUR LAWYER. Sorry! Everything here is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Nothing here should be construed to form an attorney-client relationship. Also, some of the links in this post may be affiliate links, meaning, at no cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. But if you click, it really helps me make more of these videos! All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes. See Hosseinzadeh v. Klein, 276 F.Supp.3d 34 (S.D.N.Y. 2017); Equals Three, LLC v. Jukin Media, Inc., 139 F. Supp. 3d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2015).

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[LegalEagle]

⚖ Did I miss any great Onion headlines?

[jrsimpkin]

“Jurisprudence Fetishist Gets Off On Technicality” is a classic, and definitely one of my all-time favorite Onion headlines

[merryhunt]

I was at a workshop recently where a woman was rude to the volunteer picking us up at the airport. Her excuse was, "Look, I'm from New York, " as if that justified it. Which leads me to my favorite Onion headline: after the 9/11 attacks, the Onion waited a decent interval, then had a headline "NATION FEELS TEMPORARY AFFECTION FOR NEW YORK."

[jdd]

When I was in college I read an Onion article that said that teens who are contemplating suicide should be put in a writing class so they can write a decent suicide note. It had 2 notes where the numerous errors were corrected in red pen. I showed it to some of my English professors and the response was always how horrible this was followed by asking me if it was alright for them to make a copy of the article.

[IceMetalPunk]

"Why do the class-action websites always look terrible?" As a web app developer with many big banks and credit unions as clients, I'd guess the reason is similar: they refuse to ditch Internet Explorer, and no sane, self-respecting, and qualified web developer wants to deal with IE.

[elderlybae]

I am legitimately shocked that aside about class action lawsuits having horrible websites wasn’t a segue for a square space commercial

[micwclar]

The Chinese food trope will remain in movies/tv because the boxes are opaque, so they can be full to the brim or nearly empty and the continuity person is good.

[richardp]

Should do an “Onion or Not” episode, where you have to guess if a legal headline is real or fake

[spamuel]

The whole "lawyers eating Chinese food" thing actually makes a lot of sense, from a logical perspective; traditionally, the only two types of food available for delivery, as busy law firms wouldn't have the spare time to send someone out to buy food, were Chinese food and pizza, and it would probably look really bad for important legal documents to show up in court covered in grease prints.

[jandorniak]

Uber got slapped with ADA recently. It was found that the two minute waiting time is too short, and billing people for waiting time when they legitimately have troubles getting to the car, or boarding, was discriminatory.

[sunalwaysshinesonTVs]

One of my favourite Onion headlines of all time. From 2008: "Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In". The Onion is also on by far one of the best sources for accurate and truthful news.

[thewitchbasket]

"Everyone on the defense team has their counterpart on the prosecution and they're gonna fall in love and they will betray their client for the greater good" Me, an Ace Attorney fan: *nervous sweating*

[AccidentalNinja]

The explanation for the Chinese take-out was that it makes it easier for continuity. If they're eating off plates & you have to re-shoot a scene, you have to make sure the food looks sufficiently similar. If it's concealed in a box, it doesn't matter what the food looks like or how much is left.

[Wampa]

"I think people on the Supreme Court are perfectly fine human beings." That there's an EXCELLENT Onion headline.

[Mar_Marine]

For anyone curious, the "45 seconds of extra life" would have the lawyers win... ~2.86 * 10^13 years. What's that, word form? Oh, you know, 28 trillion years. That means if they get 30% of that, they will have ~8.56 trillion years of their own.

[petharaguruge]

Devin: "Everyone On Defense Team An Equally Matched Romantic Interest for Member of Prosecution."
Me: "Glares At Ace Attorney"

[O]

I like how Onion articles always seem so topical and up-to-date before I found out it was written in 2006.

[jliller]

Signing up for a class action lawsuits should be done through an official government website. That would remove the "Is this a scam?" factor.

[nonyabizness.original]

shout out to madison, wisconsin where the onion was born in 1988. they were distributed free in boxes on the street and on racks inside grocery stores and such. i remember picking one up the first time and not gonna lie, i was baffled for a second, and then utterly ~delighted~.

[pieceofgosa]

To answer "why do class action claim sites look so janky?" it might be an idea to ask "what happens to the unclaimed settlement money ?" Because if that just gets to sit in a law firm's account earning interest, I think we may have our answer as to the reason for the low quality of the websites.