Yesterday, I suggested a careful response to a Dutch blackmailer whose victim is a Saudi woman. Despite our efforts to help him upon his release from jail—he announced to all and sundry that he was in the haram areas of Mecca—isn’t all Mecca haram?—he threatened at least two of our attorneys. Why we are paying attention to this client’s screed is beyond me. When I heard the outlines of his harangue and requests for money accompanied by threats it was clear to me that we were dealing with a romance scam. When one of our lawyers asked why the poor Saudi victim was sending him money, the client’s response was, “maybe as a gift?” He hadn’t even thought through his proposed justification for his crimes.

We are handling the case pro bono—there’s an employment case (of course) and some other litigation he’s involved himself with in addition to the criminal charges filed against him. I spoke up at our team meeting and asked, “why are we representing this guy when we decided we would no longer represent individuals?” There was no satisfactory answer.

Unfortunately, the only way to deal with crazy is to be more crazy. I proposed a draft letter to the Mecca-visitor modestly suggesting, since as he pointed out, his case is so difficult, that we need a lawyer who is spiritually gifted to handle the case. Unfortunately, that lawyer is currently involved with a particularly difficult exorcism in West Africa. A demon had implanted itself into the body of a young man there. Unfortunately, the demon in question has a fondness for Johnny Black, gambling and bank robbery to finance his pastimes. As soon as the spiritually gifted lawyer is successful in casting out the demon, he will be able to attend to the candidate client’s (his term) complicated case.

Of course, I didn’t stop there. I asked the candidate client if there was any way he could procure a live chicken and a transistor radio. The spiritually-gifted lawyer had asked that the candidate client complete a simple task that could shed light on the case at hand. The candidate client was to play American jazz at a high volume and then carefully transcribe the screeches of the chicken, if any. The document produced thereby could provide valuable clues as to the correct strategy to employ in the defense of the candidate client’s case.

For reasons that I don’t entirely understand, no one in the office was in favor of this approach.

The only way to beat crazy is with more crazy.