A Plea For Holiday Civility

Our profession must return to the civility society expects us to exemplify.

With the holidays getting into full swing, I will admit I am getting a little soft. After all, last week I advocated for — gasp! — communicating with opposing counsel of all things, and this week I am doubling down.

In an era that constantly seems to be filled with hate, we attorneys have a chance to inject a little civility back into our daily routines. Not only is it the morally proper thing to do, but odds are you likely swore an oath to behave civilly in the haze of passing your state’s respective bar examination when you were sworn into the profession.

In California, you committed to maintaining “the respect due to the courts of justice and judicial officers” and to conduct yourself with “dignity, courtesy, and integrity.”

In New York’s Orientation to the Profession, you were reminded, “to be courteous to and cooperative with fellow lawyers, judges, and court personnel.”

And in all states in between who have adopted a variation of the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct, attorneys are required to, at the very least, be fair with one another.

Yet over a third of the members of Congress who are attorneys seem to have forgotten their oaths to be civil and the talking heads on television who graduated from law school do not seem to be doing us any favors either. After all, when one of Duke University School of Law’s most exalted, now disgraced, alums Charlie Rose fails to live up to his oath, you know our profession has reached a point of reckoning.

Which is why this holiday season, I offer a humble plea to attorneys everyone to get back to the basics of civility in our profession.

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Yes, we all hated the gunner back in law school, but our heart broke for them just the same as the other students when they were destroyed via a professor’s application of the Socratic method in Torts class. We similarly rallied around one of our classmates who missed the honor roll due to having an off day on the day of a final examination.

We went through the collective hell that was law school together as one, but as time has passed, recent news has demonstrated we clearly have forgotten the bond and mutual respect we had for one another in school regardless of gender, race, creed, or political ideology.

As a profession, we are fortunate to have colleagues at all levels of society. From Congress to public defenders and from Fortune 500 CEOs to non-profit general counsels, our profession impacts a broad swath of the population and has a unique ability to impart meaningful change if we just remember to live by our respective oaths.

So during this holiday season, let’s all pledge to return to civility. Call opposing counsel for clarification rather than firing off a Latin-filled letter, send a holiday card, or donate to a charity in another’s name. Do anything that shows you have not forgotten the days of being in the trenches together during law school, or uniformly raising your right hand with hundreds others as you joined the profession.

I will be the first to admit I have much work to do in this area. But it is only when we are self-aware of our need to make improvements that our profession can begin to return to the civility society expects us to exemplify.

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Stephen R. Williams is in-house counsel with a multi-facility hospital network in the Midwest. His column focuses on a little talked about area of the in-house life, management. You can reach Stephen at stephenwilliamsjd@gmail.com.