In the movies and on TV, lawyers are often portrayed as aggressive and ruthless, filled with righteous anger and doing battle daily. The encouragement of young lawyers to become "zealous advocates" backfires a lot of times. I guess law school professors who have never practiced in the real world don't understand that baby lawyers think "zealous" is the same thing as "jerk."
I just read a remark on LinkedIn by an attorney who says he has learned through experience that treating difficult opposing counsel, coworkers and clients sternly or aggressively is a mistake. Kindness should always be the default option. So true. The comments to his original post are all positive, which makes me glad.
However, I would like to point out a couple of additional things, from my vantage point as a litigation paralegal for more than forty years.
Kindness to support staff should always be a priority.
I've been a paralegal since 1985 and I've never seen an attorney who was mean to the secretary or paralegal who was also a good lawyer. The mean attorney is always an ineffective lawyer.
Being mean or nasty poisons every interaction.
I worked for a really difficult attorney years ago who couldn't get her cases settled because she was so antagonistic with opposing counsel. Her cases dragged on and on and ended up costing her clients far more than they should have, because of her nastiness. When she took plaintiff's depositions [she was a defense attorney] she almost always made them cry, usually within the first 15 minutes of the deposition. The associate, secretary, and I used to make bets on which page of the transcript we'd find a note indicating they had to take a break because the plaintiff was in tears.
She also made me cry, often. Every morning I'd find my desk covered in post-its accusing me of not doing my job properly because she couldn't find something in her file or on her desk. Then I'd check emails and voicemails and find more "nastygrams" spewing bile at me. About 95% of the time her accusations were totally without merit. The other 5% were mostly just miscommunication. When I pointed that out to her, however diplomatically, she would just glare at me, refusing to admit she had anything to do with causing the issue.
I often started my day in the shower just fussing at her, verbally unloading as I washed my hair. She couldn't hear me, of course, but venting like that helped me keep my sanity.
Secondly, if an attorney views their support staff as the enemy, and is mean and/or unreasonable, there is always a high turnover rate. Nobody wants to get screamed at. I've worked for several screamers; it's one reason why I've had to change jobs too often in my career.
The best lawyers I've ever known were kind and respectful to their paralegals, and were terrific at practicing law. Those lawyers they knew teamwork makes a huge difference in effectiveness. For a kind, respectful boss I will work all weekend, stay late, etc. -- because I feel like my contribution is valued and appreciated, even if all I'm doing is making copies or filing pleadings.
I'm not talking about attorneys being obsequious. I'm talking about basic courtesy.
At the highest-paying job I've ever had, I was told early on that if I took a sick day and thus didn't meet my billable hourly goal that I'd be fired. That motivated me, big time. I immediately polished up my resume and started looking for a new job.
Now, I was on a nightmare team. I have a friend who has been with that same firm for more than thirty years because the lawyers on her team were always kind to her.
So kindness needs to be shown to everyone, if an attorney truly wants to be effective.
My father had a friend years ago [I'll call him Mr. E] who had been a practicing civil litigation attorney since about 1950, and he was a very old-school southern gentleman. Mr. E once responded to a letter from an opposing counsel this way:
Dear Mr. _______,
Thank you for your ugly letter.
[He didn't say anything "ugly" in return, just calmly stated his position.]
A few years later when Mr. E died, many lawyers from the plaintiff's side attended the funeral, all recognizing that the old gentleman was a dying breed.
Just FYI, during World War II Mr. E spent more than two years in a German POW camp, but that experience hadn't made him a bitter, hateful man. He was unfailingly kind to everyone. He was also a very good lawyer. Was he a zealous advocate for his clients?
Yes, but he didn't have to be mean. He had seen enough of that in his life, I think..
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