Just a Thought

We have all these books full of "lawyering skills" and whatnot, that conceptually make sense, but in practicality really don't. Well, at least not for some aspects. For example, this week we have a "client" interview to get our legal issue for our open memo assignment in LLR. The book actually brought this point up in the text, so I'll just write what it says:

As lawyers, we are frequently in a hurry to find out what the legal problem is. We are trained in law school to stop issues, sift through the facts presented until we find the ones that matter, and then offer analysis of how the law applies to those facts. That is only a small part of what you must accomplish with a client. Avoid the temptation to become impatient when the client seems to ramble or starts talking about feelings.

(And because law school makes all law students slightly paranoid, This comes from "Legal Writing and Other Lawyering Skills" by Nancy L. Schultz and Louis J. Sirico, Jr. 5th Edition, Chapter 9 Section 9.06. For those of you wondering, this is absolutely not in correct Bluebook form, but since I'm not writing legal anything I don't care!)

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that we as lawyers have to be able to communicate and relate to clients. HAVE TO- as in, it's an imperative. The problem is that in law school we are taught to do exactly what that paragraph says- read through pages upon pages (if I said hundreds it wouldn't be an exaggeration) of legal writing to find the one or two sentences that state the issue, reasoning, and conclusion of the court. We get impatient while reading when the Justices throw in dicta (personal opinion is a close enough definition for now) before getting to the issue or conclusion. When fellow classmates brief a case in class, we roll our eyes, sigh, and zone out if their statement of the facts includes stupid things like the fact that the stolen coat was cashmere (someone actually did that today in class and the whole class laughed at him- no joke). If they can't state the issue in a sentence or the holding in a few words, we feel like they've done an inadequate job and have wasted our time. The professors are the same way! They will stop you mid sentence if you start giving a fact that is irrelevant, and get very irritated if you take too long in stating the issue.

I understand why- it's because it's the same way in trials. The judge is going to get annoyed if you waste his time with irrelevant facts, and the jury will stop paying attention if you ramble on too long. But, while this is important in trial, it seriously hinders us in regards to our client relationship. On top of that, we have to stop every now and then and remind ourselves that these cases are incidents involving real people with real families and real lives. They're not just legal issues that need to be studied. I have found myself actually laughing at some of these cases, and it makes me really angry with myself. It's more than just a schadenfreude-type thing, it's me laughing at a professional baseball player for thinking he could sue the opposing team and the stadium because he slipped on wet grass trying to catch a fly ball. Have I lost my empathy?

I've started making myself go back after every case and thinking about the people involved and how their lives were affected. To be honest, I still think the baseball case is pretty ridiculous, but then thinking back on it- he's probably lost his career. His whole life has been summed up into one measly case that takes up a whole paragraph in a torts book that law students laugh at when they read. His career was ended in an accident on the field, if he's like most professional athletes, they don't really have anything else to fall back on. What is he going to do now? He could go back to school. He could get a job that only requires a GED or High School Diploma, but how many of those are jobs that someone would actually want after being paid a professional athlete's salary. One of his only hopes is to appeal to the judicial system and hope to get some money out of the injury that ended his career.

To get back on track, law school almost teaches us to desensitize ourselves to real life and the people in it. We don't have any classes that teach us how to engage or interact with clients. I'm hoping that the steps I'm taking will help me in keeping myself down-to-earth and not think of every person as just a legal issue- but how can the legal profession expect to have compassionate, empathetic, and caring lawyers when the system pretty much teaches us the opposite? I understand now why people think of lawyers as a "necessary evil" instead of a helpful ally. I know I wouldn't want to go see a lawyer if I felt like I was being dealt with as a legal issue instead of a person- why should we expect any more from anyone else?