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!
Piotr Nowaczyk, a Chartered Arbitrator, is a partner in Salans’ Warsaw office and works in construction disputes, FIDIC contracts, foreign investment, oil and gas, transfer of technology, IP, energy, international sales, banking, joint ventures, commercial contracts, M&A, distributorships, licenses, and sport arbitration. He is an ICC Court Member, a member of the Vienna International Arbitration Centre Advisory Board, and a Polish delegate for UNCITRAL Working Group II on Arbitration & Conciliation. Piotr is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIArb) and the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (ACICA), a member of the Canadian Bar Association, the Law Society of England & Wales, and the IBA Arbitration Committee (subcommittee on conflicts of interest), member of AFA, ASA, CEA, CEPANI, DIS, ICA, ITA, ÖVS, SAA, UIA and other professional organisations. He is an FIDIC adjudicator and an expert of WIPO. Piotr Nowaczyk is highly recommended for dispute resolution and international arbitration by Chambers Global 2011, Chambers Europe 2011 and listed among Most in Demand Arbitrators in the Europe-wide region. He is recommended in The Legal 500 EMEA 2011 and endorsed in Practical Law Company’s Which Lawyer? 2011 rankings in dispute resolution and intellectual property. Piotr is also recognised as an expert in dispute resolution, as well as IP, IT and telecommunications law in Poland in Legal Experts EMEA and recommended by Expert Guides as a leading expert in commercial arbitration and litigation in Poland. He is ranked among the top seven arbitration specialists in Poland by Rzeczpospolita (Polish quality daily) and recommended among the top individual lawyers in the 2010 and 2011 listings by Forbes in the category “Arbitration and Litigation”. He was the exclusive winner of the Arbitration category for Poland in the ILO International Client Choice Award 2010 and 2011. In 2011 he was honoured with the Gold Cross of Merit from the President of the Republic of Poland for services rendered to arbitration and to the promotion of Poland.