Lansing lawyers team up for comedy podcast

The law’s so serious all the time. Trying to find funny parts in it lightens it up.”

Nick Leydorf

SATURDAY, April 11 — After years of working independently as a defense lawyer, Nick Leydorf, 39, has seen the full extent of the absurdity of practicing law — unsolicited questions from legally troubled strangers, self-righteous sovereign citizens, frustratingly stubborn judges and more.

Onstage at comedy shows around the state, Leydorf has found success converting stories from his life as a lawyer into material. He is part of a group of Lansing comedians — including Mac’s Monday Comedy hosts Megan Cottington-Heath and Robert Jenkins — who practice law by day and grace the stages of comedy open mics at night.

Now Leydorf produces “Free Consultation,” a web show and podcast on whch he gives free legal advice to people with strange, often-unsolvable problems. It’s available via Stitcher, Anchor and the Apple Podcast app. The web show is available on Facebook and YouTube.

“I’m part of this website called AVVO.com where people can ask questions anonymously to lawyers,” explained Leydorf. “The crazy questions people had blew my mind, so I just started saving them.” He decided to use these emails as the basis for his show.

With the concept for his podcast determined, Leydorf recruited local comedian Louis D. Michael as his cohost. They met doing standup together at Mac’s and Crunchy’s. On the podcast, Michael plays the fool to Leydorf’s expert. While Leydorf has a decade plus of experience as a lawyer, Michael has only ever fleetingly considered law school.

“When I first met Lou, he was planning on going to law school,” Leydorf said. “Unintentionally or intentionally, he’s not going to go to law school anymore.” Leydorf laughed as though Michael’s experiences on the podcast may have swayed him away from studying law.

Recording during the coronavirus outbreak has proved difficult for Leydorf and Michael, but they’re still trying to release content on a regular basis. Their main issue has been trying to maintain a sense of comic timing over the Internet.

“The most challenging thing is trying to find a strong Internet connection,” Leydorf said. His wife has been teaching online classes at Lansing Community College, making it difficult for Leydorf and Michael to find a good time to record their show. Apparently, fast-paced banter requires a strong Wi-Fi connection. “It’s hard to do comedy when you’re remote. It’s hard to pick up on timing when the internet is slow.”

Still, Leydorf and Michael have been churning out episodes and have no plans to stop.

Fifty episodes of “Free Consultation” in, Leydorf and Michael have figured out how to produce a compelling show on the fly, despite the limitations of remote recording. Their show is largely improvised. They don’t even discuss the content of the emails beforehand, so Michaels’ reaction is genuine.

“We’ve tried to keep it as loose as possible. We try to keep it mostly unstructured so we can riff off each other,” said Leydorf.

Each episode, they discuss Supreme Court cases, topical legal news, weird laws and of course, they answer those AVVO questions. (AVVO stands for avoccato, which is Italian for lawyer.) In one recurring segment, Leydorf forces Michael to guess the definitions of different, obscure legal terms.

Leydorf recently started releasing the video version of his show in partnership with East Lansing comedy co-op Salsa Parlor, which produces, films and edits the show. Until the outbreak ends, the web show has ceased production, but Leydorf plans on releasing all the episodes that he’s recorded thus far in the coming weeks.

Like the podcast, the Web show features wacky legal questions and Leydorf’s wry humor. Frequently, he can barely contain his laughter when reading and responding to emails.

Episode 2 of the web show focuses on sovereign citizens, one of Leydorf’s favorite topics. Here’s how he describes them: “A sovereign citizen is someone who read a book sometime and said that I am going to create some legal documents declaring myself a corporation.” Sovereign citizens typically view themselves as either above the law or only answerable to their particular interpretation of the law. Leydorf can’t help finding them interesting.

“I’ve talked to some of them before,” he laughed. “It puts me in a situation like, am I right or are they right?” To Leydorf, they represent a fascinating segment of the populace that simply refuses to accept the law, another strange, niche corner of the legal world that he’s occupied for a decade plus.

One of Leydorf’s favorite bits on the show so far involved a company called Ruin Days, which allowed customers to mail anonymous, exploding bags of glitter to any address they wanted. “We had never heard it before, but it’s just this website that lets you send tubes of glitter to your enemies anonymously,” Leydorf said. He received an email from a victim of Ruin Days asking if this service was legal and if they could potentially sue whomever sent them a glitter bomb. Leydorf’s conclusion: “It’s not legal, and it could be assault, but it’s one of the funniest ideas I’ve ever heard.”

He said, “This just shows what happens when the law interacts with something absurd, like a glitter bomb.” The comedy of “Free Consultation” comes from the contradiction between the rigid seriousness of the law and the comical reality of being human. To Leydorf, the justice system creates an endless comedy of errors that he can easily mine for comedic material.

“Judges have these big, black robes and all this serious stuff, but really, they’re just human beings,” said Leydorf. “The law’s so serious all the time. Trying to find funny parts in it lightens it up.”