I was on Facebook the other day (no, I don’t want to be your friend), and a status update from a lawyer I’m friends with caught my eye. She was walking into the courthouse and was confronted by a “protester” who was yelling at everyone, proclaiming that attorneys are liars, are not to be trusted, are scum, etc. The usual.
Lots of people just don’t like lawyers. It’s a common trope. See yesterday’s post about a lawyer asking a teacher what he makes. Lawyers have become the punching bag for much of society. The butt of jokes, the target of scorn. Why is it that people dislike lawyers so much? Has it been the race to the bottom in lawyer advertising? Manipulative conduct in court? Taking advantage of “the little guy?” Personally, I think it comes down to one thing:
Lawyers are professional a-holes….
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Sure there are times that lawyers play nice with each other. And lawyers in certain practice areas can probably act nicer than others. But, generally speaking, nice isn’t exactly a quality that most people are looking for in an attorney. When you’re in a contested will battle, you don’t want your lawyer playing nice with the other side. When your child was run over by a municipal garbage truck, you don’t want your lawyer playing nice with the city. When you’re falsely accused of murder, you don’t want your lawyer playing nice with the prosecutor. You want your lawyer to fight and advocate for your position with everything they’ve got.
That’s not to say that there isn’t professional responsibility between opposing lawyers on a matter. There generally is. But at various points, a contested issue is going to come up and neither side will be willing to budge. And so the lawyers have to push and push until they get what they want.
Once a matter has made it to litigation, often times it’s because the parties can’t work it out. If people on opposite sides of an issue could work it out on their own, there wouldn’t be a need to involve lawyers. But because the parties are so opposed, so wronged, so injured, so unbelievably pissed off at one another, they can’t come to terms and need to hire professionals to handle the matter for them. The parties are too riled up to work it out themselves. They need someone else to be an a-hole in their place, but one who has professional distance and no emotional baggage, enabling them to actually resolve the problem.
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And when non-lawyers get involved in this process, and see how the opposing counsel is acting towards their lawyer, their perspective, to them themselves — they become angry. They think lawyers are scum. Lawyers lie and misrepresent the truth. They protect “the man” and squash “the little guy.” They bring frivolous lawsuits and cause insurance prices to go up. They take advantage of society and make things much more complicated than they really are.
Except of course, their lawyer. Their lawyer is the best.
By the way, my friend’s response to the “protester”:
Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter at @associatesmind.