Cases—like seasons—come and go. What remains is the indelible mark left by the professional footprint of counsel. Long after the mediation is concluded, the plan confirmed, the jury discharged, the defendant sentenced, the loan closed, the adoption granted and file retired, there will remain both intended and unintended impressions and appreciations of the parties and their counsel.
A reputation is easier kept than recovered. In this truism is embodied the whole of the lawyer’s foundation from which to ply his trade. The reputation of the lawyer will define and even dominate the nature of his practice. While character can be defined as what one stands for, reputation can be defined as what one falls for. This is never truer as it is in the modalities and methods employed in advancing the interests of one’s client. In a phrase, “even a child is known by his doings.”
“I” and “me” exit the mouths of men as abundantly and frequently as the pelting rain exits the skies about the Amazon forests. We all think more highly of ourselves than we ought, engaging in self-aggrandizement to the detriment of the very causes we attempt to champion.
This writer will not now nor ever attempt to beguile any court or bar into believing that this lawyer holds a position of honor and dignity so superior to any other that he is exempted from the admonitions, and indeed the rebukes, to which all are deserving at given times in given cases. It is a fact, and I am not the first to say, that the wise man loves reproof and searches this own heart to rid it of pride and impurity.
Many cases, too many, are perilously poised to streak like a bolt of lightning from the heavens into a litigation quagmire not unlike that separation between hell and heaven Milton characterizes in his epic writing, Paradise Lost, as a “Gulf profound, As that Serbonian bog, Betwixted Damiata and Mount Cassius old, Where armies whole have sunk.”
Our membership in the internet community has spawned new, innovative and faster (nearly instantaneous) capabilities of communication. E-mail and facsimile transmissions to a lesser extent but no less effective, have become the order of the day for most in business and legal communities. These new methods of communication have, like nuclear energy, uses both beneficial and destructive. The power of the atom when harnessed can power millions of homes and businesses. When allowed to go uncontrolled or when used offensively it results in catastrophic harm and births mental and images conjured up in the mind’s eye by the mere mention of a name. Witness Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Chernobyl.
E-mail is as unforgiving a method of communication as experience is as unforgiving a teacher: She gives the test first then the lesson. Unlike the venerable missive or correspondence transmitted via the United States Mail, messages delivered through electronic mail and facsimile transmissions do not lend themselves to the same level of cautious contemplation and delayed rebuttal as does the age-old letter. This one whose feet are clay suggests that all counsel everywhere vigilantly guard against the temptation to use this new technology to immediately display our displeasures, anxieties, negativism and personal dissatisfaction with others with whom we must do.
Too often opening one’s e-mail, is like a Marine breaking into a room in Falujah, Iraq, in search of clandestine, cowardly terrorists plaguing those who desire freedom. He may find a pitiful family cowering in a corner, an enemy wielding an AK-47 rifle while using a child as a shield, a grenade rolling across the floor, or peaceful rays of golden sunlight piercing the darkness. One just never knows. Know this: patience, longsuffering, cooperation, geniality, and deference; against these there is no law.
While litigating plays its necessary roll in courts of law, it is not an end in itself. It affords the lawyer as peacemaker the superior opportunity to being a good man as Abraham Lincoln said. The Devil’s Dictionary speaks of litigation as “a machine you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.” Lincoln suggested in part that one who chooses to litigate requires several things among which are money, thick skin, a sense of humor, good evidence, good lawyer, good judge and jury, good counsel and good luck. That is a lot of good things that must coalesce to be successful in litigation.
Any piece of litigation can be a microcosm of that American creed “sue the bastards.” The pursuit of the elusive legal treasure called “justice” often sought for its prized reward; a victory in favor of the self-proclaimed righteous and vanquishment for the wretched abuser of the legal machinery of the state, is more often than not an air castle. In truth, courts do not exist for justice. They exist for the opportunity for justice.
Each party is all too anxious to condemn and ascribe to the other all manner of insidious, dark, animus of his position while simultaneously and shamelessly pontificating on the worthiness and moral propriety of his cause. The description offered herein is one that could be imputed to thousands if not millions of matters which consume the patience of judges, time of lawyers, and resources of the litigants. It is time that revival begins and lawyers across this country emulate the acts of those great counselors before us who trumpeted the toll of the lawyer as counselor, mediator, and peacemaker. Men like Abraham Lincoln and more contemporary and familiar ones, you know some, these are icons of integrity who sport legal careers that were the embodiment of the astute observation of one of the world’s greatest modern leaders, Golda Meir: “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.”
Were we not to abandon the broad and winding road leading to distrust, recalcitrance, acrimony, and obstinacy for the straight highway of cooperation, efficiency, kindness, honor and forthrightness the bones of our predecessors who traveled the highroad would, in concert with our children’s children, rise up in righteous indignation and condemn this generation of lawyers.
Therefore, all of us are compelled by honor and beckoned by the hirer power calling all to good, and indeed conscripted by conscience, to forsake that conduct which is unprofessional and antithetical to peace and good order, and to forge ahead with a missionary zeal to convert our brothers and sisters in the law to the highest levels of ethical, moral, patriotic and professional conduct. The law is sacred and lawyers are its priests. May these words challenge us all and, in so far as it depends on each of us, to be at peace with all men.
In conclusion, and with apologies and respects to the late, great patriot Patrick Henry for the bastardization of his famous speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses; our chains are forged. Their clanging can be heard on the steps of the courthouses of this country. Let each of us vow: I know not what course others may take, but as for me, I commit to colleagues and clients and to God almighty that my words and actions will profess integrity, duty, dignity, patience and professionalism or I will profess nothing at all.