Thursday, October 20, 2005

Gambling Man

I'm in Tax right now, and my professor is talking about getting comps from casinos. Apparently, many conventions are held in Las Vegas because of the inexpensive room rates that casinos offer with the hopes that the convention goers will gamble. No legal conventions are held there, though, because (she claims) the casinos are convinced lawyers/legal convention attendees won't gamble and thus the casinos only offer these potential convention goers high priced rooms.

Casinos should rethink this reasoning. Lawyers are attractive gambling prospects, after all, and accommodating a large number of them will more likely than not benefit casinos and result in more gambling than they are currently allowing for. Lawyers earn high incomes. They also like to drink/abuse substances See: Strung-out-on-coke lawyer stereotypes!. They also get little free time in their everyday lives See: Billables!!, so convention-going would offer a rare opportunity to enjoy themselves, for which opportunity they are likely not to care about spending their high incomes and, indeed, spending said incomes freely. (One need only consider the way lawyers tell themselves their lives are worthwhile by purchasing lots of expensive, high-end items with the idea that "I may not have much free time, but I can still take half an hour to acquire a completely unnecessary Gucci bag, three-digit-priced raw silk tie, etc." I, myself, have fallen victim to this mentality already.)

Call me cynical, but surely this combination of infrequently-spent free time, lots of disposable income, and probable judgment impairedness is a potent gambling cocktail.

2 comments:

Law Fairy said...

I've SEEN lawyers gamble, and you're completely right. Frightening how much money they'll drop once they get going.

Also, I guess this isn't exactly a "convention" -- but one of the practice groups in my firm has its annual retreat in Las Vegas, every year. Hmmm...

Anonymous said...

I think they'd change their minds if they knew how many law students play online poker in class. :)