Chicken Licken

Chicken Licken, yesterday

Once upon a time, an acorn fell on Chicken Licken’s head. Being legally qualified and rightly concerned about the risk that this would be recharacterised as evidence that the sky was falling, Chicken Licken rushed off at once to warn the King. On her journey, Chicken Licken met other dumb animals whom she persuaded title transfer collateral arrangements should be recharacterised as secured loans, credit derivatives as insurance contracts, and synthetic PB as cash equity, and before long the legal department numbered 400 and had an annual legal spend of £800m.

But they all ran into a fox who duped them all to rush into its lair, where it ate them all up.

The nervy animals never made it to the King, who remained blissfully unaware of the impending collapse of the sky. In the mean time he has made a small fortune trading delta-one equity derivatives.

On the other hand

Arthur Andersen. If you need any more explanation of this, you really haven’t being paying attention in the last 15 years.

See also

• Recharacterisation
• Mediocre lawyers

The standard issue drafting joke

“Did you know”, you say, “that, for a disguise, elephants paint their toenails red, and hide in cherry trees?”
“Why, that’s preposterous!” your adversary will cry.
“Aha! but have you ever seen an elephant hiding in a cherry tree?”
“No, of course not!”
“SHOWS WHAT A GOOD DISGUISE IT IS.”