It’s not clear when exactly it happens. Some of my younger buddies on twitter and in the blawgosphere tell me that a lawyer is “pretty good” because they’ve become friends with them, followed their twits, read their posts, and, well, like them. Maybe it’s age 40? 50?
As the sage curmudgeon, Mark Herrmann writes at Above the Law, there comes a point when the glass is no longer half full.
I don’t live in Lake Wobegon.I live in Lake WoeIsMe: All of the children are a little below average.
Or maybe I just have a bad attitude.
I’ll be frank: If I just met you, I assume that you’re inept. Not because you necessarily are inept, but because I’ve been blindsided too often in the past by the mistakes of people who I foolishly believed to be competent. That ain’t gonna happen again.
I live next door to Mark. The other day, a lawyer asked me for some advice on where to take his practice. We spoke on the phone for a while, during which I asked a bunch of questions about where his practice was and how he got there. It did nothing to answer his questions, but then, it wasn’t my purpose. Before discussing where he wanted to go, I needed to know who he was, how he thought, what his motivations were. I could not simply assume he was a great young lawyer who had a clear understanding of his purpose. As it turned out, his answers made it clear to me that this was a lawyer with a great future, and someone I wanted to help. But I didn’t take it for granted.
As I’ve written before, I don’t assume that you’re inept because I know that you’re inept. When we first meet, I don’t know you at all. Rather, I assume that you’re inept because you’re haunted by the ghosts of incompetents past, whose memories stick in my craw. I don’t have to hedge against you being good; that would be a welcome surprise. I have to hedge against you being bad; that would ruin my life (as has happened too often in years gone by).
Nearly every young lawyer attributes fabulous skills to herself. Just ask and they’ll tell you how awesome they are. When you question their self-assessment, they get angry. Old jerk. Douche. Mean curmudgeon. It’s understandable, as no one has ever doubted their awesomeness before, and every young lawyer knows how stupid and incompetent old lawyers are.
But Herrmann’s message isn’t that you aren’t a great lawyer; it’s that old lawyers have been burned by self-proclaimed geniuses too many times to assume it’s true. We don’t take it for granted with each other. We don’t take it for granted with new lawyers. We assume the worst. Horrible.
When confronted by a young lawyer whose skills are unproven, and whose reaction to my questioning their abilities and work ethic is to inform me how much better she is than all those miserable, lazy, incompetent old lawyers she’s seen, I pose a question: If inexperienced lawyers are so smart and hardworking, far more so than old lawyers, how does it happen that the young lawyer grows so much stupider and lazier after a decade or two of experience? They hate this question.
The guy (or gal) who I’ve worked with before and who has proven (as opposed to asserted) that he’s a fine lawyer. Assertions don’t mean anything; the proof is in the summary judgment papers.
If I don’t know the right lawyer for a matter, then I locate someone who’s proven himself to be competent, and I ask that person for a recommendation. It’s true this makes me nervous, but it’s far better than the alternative of trusting some unknown clown who tells me that he thinks he’s a good lawyer.
Curmudgeons call people “guys” and “gals.” It’s not sexist, just the language we were raised with. But some old lawyers, this one included, has no plans to refer a case to anyone I know from twitter. I take referrals seriously, and won’t send a human being to a lawyer I assume to be inept. So your twits are cute? Informative? Cool? That’s wonderful, but it doesn’t make you a good lawyer.
This isn’t a slap in the face to new lawyers. I know it feels that way, but it’s really not. You haven’t suffered the experience of the screw-up that should never happen, the simplest of things that can never go wrong going wrong. Stick around for a while and you will. When you look into the eyes of a client and offer solace by saying “I thought she knew what she was doing,” there will be no comfort taken. The rest of the world won’t be as forgiving of your mistakes as you are. The rest of world doesn’t really care about you. Just like you, people really only care about themselves.
And so the glass will be half-full, and you will be inept, and something will go wrong, and curmudgeons expect it, anticipate it, and do everything in their power to stop it from happening. This means we nudge you, tell you stuff that you think is obvious and make you feel as if we’re treating you like some monumentally dumb fool. “You don’t trust me?” you say. No. I don’t. I can’t afford to trust you, and I have no intention of letting things go south and then, after the mistake that can never happen happens, have to clean up your mess.
Does this happen to a person at age 40? It’s hard to say, but it comes with the experience of having seen too much go wrong to assume that things will go right. The sooner this realization happens, however, the sooner you can be trusted. Once you recognize that Reagan was right about one thing, hope for the best but prepare for the worst, you have half a chance of getting things done right.
Until then, when you’re still filled with your awesomeness, you can’t be trusted and curmudgeons, like me, will assume the worst.
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Greenfield, great post. Mark sounds like my kind of guy . . .
Though I have but one quibble and then a statement:
Quibble: If all the children are now below average, by definition, it is the new, but unfortunately lower, average. BTW, this is not a good thing . . .
Statement: It is said, “No good deed goes unpunished . . .” And the truth is that while not ALL good deeds end up punishing the good deed doer, many deeds do. After all is said and done, you are often left scratching your head asking yourself, “Now tell me again why I went out of my way to help that ungrateful / incompetent / selfish / demanding / entitled person or family?” . . .
But being a good soul, you go back on out and keep doing good deeds. And that is the right thing to do, in my opinion. Though experience should teach us to dole out our good deeds more judiciously over time; I used to get burned 9 out of 10 times doing good deeds, now I’ve got it down to only 5 of 10. Human nature will ensure that the ratio of good deeds to punishment won’t get much better than that. At least me thinks not . . .
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First, your quibble: What I understood Mark as saying isn’t the below average is the new average, but that the children of Lake WhoIsMe, the world as seen through the eyes of the curmudgeon, falls a tad shy of the world as seen through the eyes of the children or their apologists and mothers.
Second, your statement: When I see something that I believe needs fixing, or at least can be helped, even though the subject is unlikely to appreciate anything other than a sweet tummy rub, there is some bone in my head that makes me feel responsible for doing something. So I do, as do others who see the world as I do.
We don’t do it for praise or love, since we get neither. We are far more likely to be hated than appreciated for saying things that people don’t want to hear. We aren’t welcome in the tribes, or put on pedestals by adoring fans. But we may save a person here and there. So we do it, and when someone tells us how much they hate us and how stupid and mean we are, we shrug. What else can we do?
As I responded to Orin Kerr who apologized for my lack of manners to a new lawprof guest poster at PrawfsBlawg the other day, whose post was worthless, uninformative and reflected a complete lack of grasp of what blogging was about, “someone had to say it.” So I did. Or I can do nothing, say nothing, and die loved and part of the problem.
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Manners are, IMO, highly overrated . . .
Mine are more closely aligned with that of the king in the “King’s Speech” — where he swears quite a lot, — and less like the current queen — his daughter –, who, I imagine, wastes far too much time being polite . . .
BTW — I called my fiancée a special snowflake a few days ago, without her being in on the joke. She replied, “Why would I want to be a snowflake? They just melt and get you wet” I chuckled, of course, but still didn’t let her in on the joke . . .
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For about six months, my son would respond to Dr. SJ with “cool story, bro.” She thought he liked/appreciated what she said. Nobody told her. I finally broke down. After all, she is my beloved wife.
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That is funny; I’m gonna start using that line on my fiancée too . . .
Last week I went out to dinner with my 14-year-old daughter and my mom – her grandma. I cracked an inside joke between my daughter and me, at my mom’s expense, but in such a way that my mom was laughing at it too. Then I asked everyone whether they preferred laughing with someone or laughing at them. My daughter and mom both answered they much favored laughing with someone. At which point I simply commented, “You know, they aren’t mutually exclusive, I like both equally . . .”
As we were walking out of the restaurant, my daughter turned to me and said, “Now I get it, Papi – yeah, I like laughing both ways too.” I felt, in a small way, I had made a difference that day . . .
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When one understands that we live in an age when virtually every person we meet is, unconsciously, a Rousseauean and hence 1) believes in original virtue, 2) is a rank sentimentalist, and 3) embraces the myth of progress and its chronological snobbery, then none of this is surprising.