A purple dragon dressed in a business suit seemed a natural choice for a logo when Jacob A. Perrone, an East Lansing lawyer, Michigan, recently opened a new company and called him Dragon Lawyers.
He pointed out that some lawyers liked to be called “Bulldogs” and said the dragon symbolized “aggressive representation.”
But a federal magistrate judge, Ray Kent, was not impressed. The dragon was so disgusted that he gave a lawsuit filed by Mr. Perrone on behalf of a partner who had accused the prison officials in Clinton County, Michigan, or being “deliberately indifferent” to her, began to vomit last year.
In an order of letter issued on Monday, Judge knows, he pointed out that “each page of the plaintiff’s complaint appears in an electronic presentation that is dominated by a large multicolored cartoon dressed in a suit, presumably Becoaon Sheard Award Award lawyers of the firm.” “
“The use of this dragon cartoon logo not only distracts, it is youthful and impertinent,” Judge knows. “The court is not a cartoon.”
Judge Kent gave the woman, who was identified only as Jane No. 2, until May 5 to refil his demand “without the cartoon dragon.” Hello, he also ordered that he did not present “any other document with the cartoon dragon or other inappropriate content.”
Perrone, the lawyer, said in an interview on Tuesday that he planned to comply and eliminate the dragon, which had appeared as a water mark on the 12 pages of the complaint. “I’m sorry to put it on the please shown so prominently,” he said.
But Mr. Perrone, 43, also defended his use of mythical beast as a way of marketing his company. He said he had bought the dragon image in a suuit for about $ 20 online.
“People like dragons,” he said, adding: “The whole era” Game of Thrones “is how the concept initially occurred to me.”
The judge’s order caused some fun in legal circles after Volokh’s conspiracy blog reported it under the headline, “going to the dragon.” Another legal blog, going down the bar, also collected the story and commented: “So many things that people should not be doing, so little time.”
Dyane O’Leary, a professor of legal writing at the University of Suffolk in Boston, was among those who took note of the faint vision of the judge’s dragon. She said that many lawyers had experienced unusual types, hyperlinks, photos and graphics in their files, but generally in an effort to illustrate the substance of a case.
“This seems to have zero substantive purpose and it is more, as the court said, decorative and silly,” said Professor O’Leary. “So I think that’s where the line is drawn.”
Mr. Perrone, who has practiced the law for 17 years, said he would not stop using the dragon, but would be more judicious to show it in legal presentations.
“I’m not trying to push the envelope,” he said. “I’m just trying to manage a business.”
