She may seem nice enough, but Anne Reed is an evil sociopath determined to pursue her diabolical agenda of giving trial lawyers intellectual wedgies.  This time, however, she’s gone too far.

“Stop Thinking Like A Lawyer!”

“Most of your most cherished beliefs about juries are wrong.”

So begins jury consultant Patricia Steele of Varinsky Associates in her article “To Deal Better With Juries, Stop Thinking Like A Lawyer!”  She should know about lawyers’ mistaken assumptions, she explains, because she was a lawyer.  “[A]fter hundreds of hours debriefing actual jurors and watching mock juries deliberate,” she says, “I now know that a great deal of [lawyers’] accepted wisdom about jury psychology is completely baseless.”

Great.  All that money and three years of life down the tubes.  Just the picture of those books, at $50 a pop, in the snow is enough to break a lawyer’s heart.

Anne, what are you doing?  You’re killing me.  I feel so . . . worthless.

Learn to think like a lawyer, that’s what they kept telling me in law school.  Nightmare images of Prof. Kingsfield (we all had one) socraticizing us into submission.  Beating, beating, beating logic into our dumb, thick heads.

Ms. Smarty-Pants Reed, after gently informing us post after post of how voir dire should be performed, now tells us that it doesn’t matter because, no matter what we ask or what they say, we won’t get it because we’re (gasp) lawyers. 

“For generations lawyers have told each other that the jury’s opinion of the lawyer is important to their decision in the case. Trial lawyers think that what they wear and how charming they are influences jurors. They think they can dazzle juries with their eloquence. This is a huge misconception.”

And now she’s making fun of my suits?  Is there nothing sacred to this Reed person?

“In addition, lawyers typically have little in common, either socially or economically, with the average juror.”

Now that hurts.  Just because we don’t earn as much as plumbers is no reason to publicly humiliate us.  And the fact that no one wants to hang out with lawyers socially is just rubbing salt in the wound.  Do you think we’re happy sitting all alone, night after night, when even our spouses tell us how annoying we can be?  My God, Reed, is there no end to your cruelty?

If you have a strong stomach, or are one of those self-loathing lawyer-types, go read Anne’s post, designed to destroy the very fabric of the lawyer belief system and reduce us to sniveling piles of much.  I would write more, but I now have to go into the corner, ball myself up in a fetal position and cry.