OK, "legal briefs" underpants jokes were already old when I was a kid.

Don't get me wrong, the gag has had a good run. It's time to put it out to pasture and find something else lawyerly to laugh at, like res ipsa loquitor or attractive nuisances. Seriously.

From News24:

New meaning to 'legal briefs'
16/08/2006 23:59 - (SA)

London - A lawyer has given a whole new meaning to the phrase "legal briefs" by dropping his suit trousers inside a court corridor in northeast England in protest at stringent new security measures.

Willie Johnstone stood with his trousers around his ankles inviting security staff to search him after being told to pass through electronic scanners at Sunderland magistrate's court, the Press Association news agency said on Wednesday.

He was one of a dozen defence lawyers protesting against the beefed-up security, which makes no exceptions to those who are scanned and searched before entering any courtroom through the main front door.

The real-life briefs claim the measures discriminate against them because they do not apply to prosecutors, magistrates (lower court judges) or court staff, who get into the building through a back door.

Still, that's my kind of civil disobedience: pulling one's pants down to protest security measures that single out defense attorneys (sworn officers of the court, as much as prosecutors are anyway). I love the fact that the courthouse I go to has no metal detector and doesn't smell like urine.