When I was maybe 10 or 11, I was given an IQ test of some sort. I don’t recall much of the test, but I do recall being faced with defining a word… “regatta.”

Now, being from OK and seriously land-locked, the term “regatta” does not often come up in a 10/11 year-old’s vocabulary, at least not for a boy from a small hick town. (now, if they had asked me to define a “heeler” or a “chute gate”… but I digress.)

My point is, well, I’m not certain what my point is except to say that not all tests are created equal and not all reference points are static – many are quite relative. So intelligence, as measured on any scale, must be measured against a relative scale and that relative point must be kept in mind or the measurement (a la Rene Descartes and Einstein) is truly meaningless.

I remember studying music, and learning that there are four major musical senses — pitch, timbre, dynamics, and rhythm. A person may excel in some, and have no sense of the others. That is not factoring in the physical senses and skills involved in playing an instrument. A person may study clarinet, and end up believing they have no musical talent, while if they switch to keyboards they may be classified as a genius. Yet the persons skills would not change.

I think the same thing holds true for lawyers. We have our skills, and some of us are very good at them, even geniuses (genii?) — yet few of us could excel at clarinet.

I was puzzling over why someone as smart as you would so obdurately confuse the proposition that lawyers, as a group, have above-average intelligence with the proposition that there aren’t very smart people doing other things.

Then I realized: you’re very cleverly illustrating your point by literately demonstrating lawyer innumeracy.

How droll!

I have yet to meet a person of intelligence in the median range of the bell curve who could not get into some law school.

Higher education acts as a filter, certainly, but not a filter as to intelligence. As I said, discipline and perseverance counts far more than intelligence in contributing to educational success. So does luck and financial happenstance. Intelligence is a minor factor compared to the others.

I know many extremely intelligent high school dropouts, who work as tattoo artists, garbage men, carpenters, roadies, artisans, and the like. I’m not sure if you are overestimating bar members, or under-estimating the rest of humanity.

I have very little doubt that, as a group, lawyers are more intelligent by any measure than the mean. Higher education acts as a filter. If you haven’t met a person who couldn’t get through college and into law school, you don’t get out nearly enough.

No backpatting here, though—those who know me know that I don’t think I’m brilliant because I’m a lawyer.

I remember, in law school, one professor stated law students were the smartest on any university campus. The guy I was sitting next to happened to have a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT. He and I both started laughing, and the prof didn’t get it. We lawyers tend to have stiff shoulders from patting ourselves on the back too much on that score.

Lawyers are highly literate, but as a group, barely numerate. Lawyers might be above average on some measures of intelligence. Whether, overall, they tend to be outside the center of the bell curve, well, the longer I practice the less sure I am.

I have yet to find a person who could not get into SOME law school. Those few I’ve met who have not been able to pass a bar exam have more problems with mental blocks than with the ability to master the material. Law school involves a lot of material, but it’s not necessarily difficult material — drudgery and self discipline are far more important than brilliance, or, as they say in music, it’s more perspiration than inspiration.

Again, I suppose I am merely lamenting the passing of the “gentlemanly” profession.