Dealing with Lawyers

I've often said that the worst part of being an attorney is having to deal with other lawyers all day.

If anyone were giving out medals for bad opposing counsel stories, my collection would win me at least a bronze.

The most obnoxious lawyer I've ever encountered was from St. Louis. When I was in private practice there, one of my first depositions there involved a lawsuit with three parties involved.  I don't remember what the case was about (and I couldn't tell you if I did), but the first deposition we took in it was something I'll never forget.

The parties sat down and we waded through the opening formalities, albeit with noticeable tension between the other two lawyers.  Then about two minutes into the proceedings, one of the opposing counsels, a plump, grey-haired, haggard looking man of about 60, started making faces at the other counsel as she questioned his witness.

Really.

The old man stuck his tongue out.  He rolled his eyes and puffed up his cheeks. At first I thought that maybe he was having a seizure, but then he started mouthing the words of opposing counsel's questions in a mocking fashion after she said them. 

Judges don't normally come to depositions, so the only people present for this display were us three attorneys, a court reporter, and the crazy attorney's own witness.  None of us were quite sure how to respond. Even the defendant looked more than a little confused by what was happening.

As for me, I sat silent.  What to do when one opposing counsel starts making silly, childhood faces at another one was not one of the things that ever came up during law school.

Unless maybe I was out that day.

So I just continued to sit there stunned. I was only a couple years out of school, I still owed $60,000 in student loan debt, and I came to the realization that I'd spent a fortune and my life's ambition to be part of a profession that closely resembled clown college.

I became a lawyer to argue for justice and truth. But here, I found myself the middle man in a playground dispute that seemed likely to be won by whoever could make the most effective cartoon face or schoolyard putdown.

This sort of thing never happened in any of the Grisham books. 

The counsel being mocked, a 40ish year-old woman, lodged an objection for the recorded transcript.  But the petulant old man continued to make faces and indecipherable noises undeterred. He verbalized nothing inappropriate that could be recorded for the transcript, except that at one point he called her "honey." His uncanny ability to be annoying without leaving demonstrable proof of his unprofessionalism showed that this was clearly not the first time he'd tried this trick.

But by his use of the "honey" line, it was suddenly clear to me what was happening, and why.

After no more than 5 minutes, the woman gave up, called off the deposition. Before the recording stopped, I narrated for the record everything that had happened in the prior five minutes and admonished this jerk for wasting our time. 

But the transcript didn't reveal anything directly from that obnoxious old man other than some language that was politically incorrect and the unverifiable accusations from me and the other attorney.

The woman later filed a motion for sanctions, but the judge didn't want to deal with it, so he just issued a warning and reset the deposition for some other day.

The scene was completely ridiculous, but it drove home and important point that I've carried with me throughout my legal career: too often in the legal profession there are no real repercussions for being a complete jerk. As a result, attorneys often feel emboldened to act like complete jerks, although generally in a manner at least slightly less childish.

It still aggravates me when opposing counsels break basic rules of human decency, but, thankfully, I've found a way to deal with it over the years. 

When I start to get annoyed at some ridiculous tactic my opposing counsel attempts, I stop myself, take deep breaths, pray for God's wisdom, and re-focus on my greater purpose of helping to bring justice to the world. 

Then I make a funny cartoon face.