"…to help them avoid staying out of jail"

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From an email solicitation for an "Electronic Evidence Workshop", run by "E-Discovery Training Solutions":

What process do you have in place that will protect your clients [sic] privacy on their smartphones or from electronic discovery in general? Your clients are relying on you, as their counsel, to help them avoid staying out of jail or being "slapped" with a large litigation fine.

This is clearly a workshop that no responsible defense attorney can fail to miss.

Some prior art:

[A]fter reading the article I felt obliged to provide some life advice of my own on how one can actually successfully avoid staying out of jail (link)
Criminals involved in illegal activity can behave extremely violently to try to avoid staying out of jail, or even to make more money. (link)
Johnny is put into a real world situation where his problem has escalated out of control through his own doing and doesn’t know what to do, except avoid staying out of jail at all costs. (link)

Obligatory screenshot:

[h/t to reader P.B.]



8 Comments

  1. ===Dan said,

    May 29, 2013 @ 9:20 am

    After last night's Mets game, manager Terry Collins described the confrontation that got him ejected from the game. The Times rendered the quote as "I’m not say­ing he missed the call… but I don’t know if I’ve seen a call changed with­out help.” But on TV last night what he really said was "I'm not saying he didn't miss the call…" The Newspaper of Record reported what he meant, not what he said.

  2. J.W. Brewer said,

    May 29, 2013 @ 10:21 am

    Some people do have the goal of "avoiding staying out of jail," such as the protagonist of the famous O. Henry story (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cop_and_the_Anthem), but I suspect that most people pursuing such a goal do not find it necessary to retain counsel (and might experience various frustrations if they do).

  3. Sili said,

    May 29, 2013 @ 11:23 am

    I was wondering yesterday how to classify the bonus comic on SMBC:
    http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2991#comic

    As I read the interaction it should be something like "arrogance" or "false humility" as the ordinate label. I guess it isn't so much misnegation as undernegation.

  4. David Morris said,

    May 29, 2013 @ 3:27 pm

    The Monopoly card should use that: 'Avoid staying out of jail. Do not pass 'Go'. Do not collect $200.'

  5. Eugene said,

    May 29, 2013 @ 6:46 pm

    If your choices are to a) avoid staying out of jail OR b) being slapped with a large litigation fine, one might reasonably choose to option a.

  6. Eric P Smith said,

    May 29, 2013 @ 8:56 pm

    This particular over-negation has the further complication that the verb 'help' can itself mean 'avoid', as in "I can't help it."

  7. Bev Rowe said,

    June 4, 2013 @ 3:51 pm

    I came across "little unknown trick" on a programming advice page. I now see that this phrase occurs often. Some of the writers might actually mean [little [unknown trick]] but I suspect most of them wanted [[little-known] trick].

  8. Chandra said,

    June 6, 2013 @ 3:05 pm

    "Staying out of jail" still implies being in trouble somehow but managing not to get punished for it; I suppose "avoiding staying out of jail" could mean not getting into the kind of trouble in the first place that would necessitate an effort to stay out of jail? Although that does require a few twists of the brain.

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