Litigators

Work At A Real-Life Pace -- Not Simply A Lawyer Pace -- To Serve Your Clients

Just as justice delayed is justice denied, advice too long delayed is stress created.

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One of the things we do as trial lawyers is provide prudent advice. But keep in mind that your clients need that advice now.

In one of the greatest decisions rendered by judges in our history, our highest court found a whole host of formal anti-Black discrimination to be illegal under our Constitution and ordered that the purportedly separate but equal structure that had been developed for nearly a century be eradicated “with all deliberate speed.” While one of the high-water marks of our legal development, that highly imprecise timetable was criticized. The reason is understandable: what does “deliberate speed” mean when you’re dealing with a desegregation regime under which millions continued to daily suffer?

As lawyers, this is how we sometimes think — we must be careful, cautious, deliberate. But while most of us are not as fortunate as the Supreme Court of the United States was in its 1953 term to grapple with and seek to end legalized racial discrimination, from our clients’ perspectives, their cases matter. A lot. And while lawyers at firms like ours are often hired to fight, we must always be aware that at the same time, we are counselors.

Our clients look to us for advice that we must give. And we are not only called to provide that advice with some emotional distance from the clients’ problems (since there are always people behind those problems, and all clients understandably have some emotional response to those problems), and with our legal skills (clients aren’t supposed to know the difference between a motion under Federal Rule 12 or Federal Rule 56, nor what the hell a “dispositive” motion even is), but with what many scholars have called our prudential judgment. That is a particularly considered kind of judgment that even references prudence, one of the cardinal virtues of Christian theology (along with justice, temperance, and fortitude).

And that is what we must do: not rush to judgment, not shoot from the hip, not (apply any other cliche that means make a very fast call). But while acknowledging this obligation we must remember: our clients need our advice if not quite now, then soon. That is often because they must decide promptly based on our advice, but also because of what I wrote above: they are emotionally responding to their problems and just as justice delayed is justice denied, advice too long delayed is stress created.

So let’s be careful. Let’s be considered. Let’s discuss with our colleagues. Let’s be the good lawyers our clients are relying on us to be. But let’s remember a lesson from our profession’s own history where, in one of the great judicial moments in America, our high court perhaps leaned a bit too much into being overly careful lawyers and thought “deliberate speed” was fast enough when the Nation — especially millions of Black Americans 00 needed action a lot faster.

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John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

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