It’s spring, so it’s commencement time, and graduates of all ages (and all schools, be it elementary through professional schools) are listening to speakers of various kinds mix atta-boys and atta-girls with purported pearls of wisdom about what the future holds for these grads and how they should approach those uncertainties. I have absolutely no recollection of who spoke or what was said at my law school graduation, but good grief, it was forty years ago.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, told the 2016 class at University of California, Berkeley, to “stay resilient.”
Madeleine Albright, President Clinton’s Secretary of State, who encountered a hailstorm of protest when she was announced as the commencement at Scripps College (one of the Claremont Colleges here in SoCal), talked about the need for civil discourse and the need to “start discussions, not end them.”
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Robert Reich, the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at Cal (UC Berkeley to those east of the Sierra) and President Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, said at the December 2015 Cal commencement that “a college degree is not a license for arrogance.” (Full disclosure here, my undergrad degree is from Cal.) Regardless of your views of Reich’s philosophy and writings (see Secretary Albright’s comment above), I don’t think that anyone would say that Reich’s comments weren’t spot on. If you’re curious about the three things Reich wanted the graduates to carry away with them and his perspective on issues facing the grads, such as income inequality (doc review jobs for peanuts?) you can find his speech here. Scroll down a little ways; his speech runs about thirteen minutes. Reich also mentions how labor-saving technologies are replacing professional services. Sound familiar? How many jobs and careers are being lost to those technologies?
Back in May, 2012, he posted on his website the “commencement speech that wouldn’t be given.” Read it; for many graduates and those of us out in the world, the speech he didn’t give is still timely, perhaps even more so. Even if it doesn’t speak to you, it still speaks to a lot of young lawyers in our profession. It has been a slog for them and remains so.
Repeat after me, “A college degree is not a license for arrogance.” Substitute “law degree” for “college degree” and many people, both in and out of the profession, will agree. Do I see hands raised from legal assistants, paralegals, file clerks, calendar clerks, court clerks and all the other unsung who toil in the backwaters of the legal profession, who rarely, if ever, get any credit, but who get rations of you know what when things don’t go precisely as planned?
How did our profession become so nasty and uncivil in so many fundamental ways? Don’t blame it on the stresses in the profession. Physicians combat life and death and, except for temper tantrums usually seen on TV medical shows, are remarkably calm in the face of such tasks. (I’ve seen that calmness up close and personal.)
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So the exhibits to the motion for summary judgment weren’t properly tabbed or incorrectly numbered, or the messenger service forgot to get a conformed copy of the complaint, or the court clerk took way too much time to issue the summons, or the default judgment took forever to get entered, or the sheriff’s office was slow to get a keeper into the business, or the attorney’s service forgot to drop off a courtesy copy to the bankruptcy judge.
Mistakes happen, people, we’re human, and yelling, slamming doors, or whatever version (figuratively or literally or both) of jumping up and down you choose, not only won’t solve the problem, but just creates new ones. Abusive behavior in the workplace equals a hostile work environment? Lots of stories about bullying in the schools; is that any different from what goes on in the workplace? I think not.
California now includes “abusive conduct” as part of the curriculum in its required two hours of training on sexual harassment. The definition contains this language: “Abusive conduct may include repeated infliction of verbal abuse, such as the use of derogatory remarks, insults, and epithets, verbal or physical conduct that a reasonable person would find threatening, intimidating, or humiliating, or the gratuitous sabotage or undermining of a person’s work performance.”
I’ll stipulate that we can be, and often are, very arrogant. When I was in house, I was on the receiving end of that arrogance from time to time. Where does that arrogance come from? Why do we, as a profession, have a tendency to look down at others who aren’t lawyers? Clients, vendors, any and all third parties see us as arrogant and think that we don’t really have all that much, if anything, to be arrogant about. That arrogance and the fact that hourly fees are so high are two drivers pushing prospective and existing clients into the welcoming arms of non-legal providers and vendors.
All any non-lawyer has to see is the lousy way that we lawyers treat each other, in our lack of courtesy and respect for the other lawyer(s) and for the opposing client. If we need, as Secretary Albright says, to “start discussions, not end them,” then stop walking out in a huff during a settlement conference, or hanging up the phone before the other party has finished, or sending a nasty email in all caps that you know, as soon as you press the send button, will wind up as an exhibit to the other side’s opposition to something you want or need.
What is wrong with us? Do our billing rates give us a free ticket to arrogance?
I plead guilty to arrogance, hopefully not as much or as often as others, but I look back on some cringeworthy moments in my career. Why is humility in such short supply among us? Your thoughts?
Jill Switzer is closing in on 40 (not a typo) years as a active member of the State Bar of California. Yes, folks, California, that state west of the Sierra Nevada, which everyone likes to diss. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see old lawyers, young lawyers, and those in-between interact — it’s not always pretty. You can reach her by email at [email protected].