When I decided to become a lawyer

After decades of scoffing

At bourgeois stuffy boring men

In suits with briefcases

Like my father

I enrolled in law school, conveniently just

Down the road.

My first class was Legal Writing because

You know

You have to write to be a lawyer and

Lawyers have their own bourgeois stuffy boring language

I thought.

So for my first assignment

I wrote fluently, cascades of fancy words

Whereas accordingly insofar ascertainable approbation and so much more

Wrapped around a meaningless core, all these Latinate

Phrases

I was proud as a peacock.

I had written like a lawyer

Like my father.

When the professor returned my assignment with comments and corrections

She wrote in red

On the top of page one

This is gibberish.

So that is how I learned

The hard way

To write like a lawyer.