Will lawyers go to
heaven? I am a lawyer for the last 16 years. I am a personal
injury litigation lawyer. I did some divorces, probate and other
bread-and-butter enchilada of the law. I am therefore quite familiar with how
lawyers think and act in the field of litigation, negotiation and mediation. I
have admired and learned from many of them in my practice. And part of the
reason why I am still practising is because I love the people in the law.
But love aside, will
lawyers
go to heaven? Will they make
it pass St. Peter's pearly gates? You see, I am asking this question with a
dab of levity here but still we are a rather repressed breed of professionals.
Here is what I mean. On how to conduct ourselves in court and with judges and
clients, we actually have textbooks on etiquette and rules of conduct dealing
exclusively with lawyers. We also have a parliamentary enactment to regulate
us. Even how you greet the judiciary is neatly penned
out by well-meaning luminaries
of the field.
Do we then have an
attitude problem? Are we that wayward in our conduct that we need to be
reminded to behave? From my side of the biased fence, I think
lawyers are the most polite people in the world. At any time of the day,
provided it is during the working hours, they will greet strangers who walk
into their firm with the nicest smile and greetings you will ever hear. They
are preternaturally patient and gracious regardless of whatever legal problems
you
throw at them. You can even be accusing them of slacking on the job or
taking a much-deserved holiday and asking a junior to attend an inconsequential
pre-trial chamber hearing on your behalf and they will still listen to you with
unperturbed maternal understanding.
So if heaven is
created for saints, shouldn't lawyers be short-listed, hands-down?
Well, I guess still water runs deep. We lawyers are humans too. And in
the
gladiatorial coliseum of litigation, where blood and gore come in the form
of rights, betrayal, bitterness, paybacks and personal anguish, we are often
stretched to the max. If will-power to regulate and control our emotions are
limited in a week, we often use up most of our quota by Monday lunchtime. We
then have to borrow from whatever scraps of self-improvement literature and
sources we can muster to put on that tolerant, swallow-your-pride smile.
Still, lawyers are a strange
hybrid of sorts. And we are
largely creature of culture. If our profession has been pastoral in nature,
guiding docile parish sheep from going astray, and giving sermons on a Sunday
about love, joy and hope, I guess we will be exemplary and peace-loving 24-7. Alas,
far from it, litigation is often a dog-eat-dog arena where lawyers are reminded
from the start that it is called adversarial for a reason. And we all suffer
from what I would call the duplicity syndrome (a nastier label for it is hypocrisy).
On any given day, we can be acting on both sides of the
litigious fence, and on largely the same issue. Take me as an example. I can
act for a Plaintiff in a personal injury case seeking the highest possible
compensation, and in another file on largely similar facts, acting for a
Defendant but arguing for the lowest possible compensation.
And don't start me off with the family practice that leads to the unintended consequences of "breaking up marriages". I have seen myself mutated by a flip of a switch from
fighting
like an Erin Brockovich for the weeping wife to an Ally Mcbeal-ish tough-it-out
for the bullied husband. The glaring cognitive dissonance is just all in a
day's work. Some call it occupational hazard. I simply call it character
immersion (or wearing different colored hats).
And then comes the issue of honesty. If you find an honest lawyer, please frame him up in a
museum...he is close to extinction. But hey, don't judge us because a little
white lie peppered here and there is in reality part
and parcel of all
professions. We are human beings after all. Lawyers are actually as honest as
they get this side of heaven. In a parallel world, I would like to think
that we could be worse.
Our honesty is however tainted just that smidgen by the
technicality call subterfuge. It is
really a conscience-balming technique of not disclosing too much, holding evidential
cards close to our chest, playing hard-ball with opponents who are also our
coffee-table buddies, finding excuses, faking being adversarial for adversary’s
sake, blaming our
secretaries for personal lapses, telling disarming
half-truths, and informing pestering clients we are busy when we are obviously not.
I guess we should not beat ourselves over with a moral
stick too hard on this. If there is any consolation, for those keeping score,
the net behavioral result in a day is that we are more honest than dishonest. Now that's definitely worth a Friday night's
beer-bingeing cheer right?
Anyway, the last (but not least) smear in our otherwise
impeccable credentialed
profession is uppity.
This can be disconcerting. I once heard that lawyers are an egoistic bunch of
professionals. They have a sense of entitlement in the same way that a strict
disciplinarian always knows best. They are also individualistic, exclusive,
self-centered, dictatorial, domineering, discriminating and elitist - so I
heard.
Well, to be dead honest, and honesty is not exactly our
strongest suit, I must be practising in a remote part of the legal woods.
Because the
lawyers I come across in my years of practice are generally
reserved, polite, considerate, forgiving, wise, helpful and funny. You
just have to get to know them better. They are like M&Ms - hard on the outside but chocolatey-sweet on the inside.
In fact, most lawyers I meet are darn funny. Some of them tell such good jokes that
many of their punch-lines still sneak up to me in my sleep.
Of course, there are always the smug, in-your-face
characters but they are few and far in between. I count myself blessed
to have
avoided crossing their warpath.
So, going back full circle, will lawyers go to heaven?
You know, when I take the cab and when asked - while still
donned in my suit - whether I am a lawyer, I will sometimes reply, "No." See, dishonesty! I do that because I was prepping myself up
for a case, and if I'd said I was a lawyer, some of the cab drivers would be
asking me questions about their HDB flat or maintenance or how to wind down a
business. I can really do without the extra baggage - with
apologies of course.
My point? Maybe
when we stand at pearly gates and Saint Peter asks us the same question, we can
adopt the same reply? No, we are not lawyers. We can really do
without the extra baggage?
But then, come to think of it, I am proud of my
profession. I hold my card-carrying law practice high up like a banner. I like
to think that we lawyers are history makers. We get our hands dirty, sometimes dredging
deep into the purgatory of dark emotions, fighting a good fight, and making a
lasting difference as a result. We may be victims of our
adversarial culture
but we are also culture-transformers.
As a group, all over the world, we keep the wheels of
justice turning, and each of us are part of its nuts and bolts. We are surely
redeemed by the ideals of our profession though the means to that end may be less
than honorable at times. So, if the road to hell is paved with just good
intentions, then we lawyers are safe. We
are die-hard doers.
I guess the common denominator for all professions is that
we are flawed human beings. And as flawed as we are, any profession that has
got to do with justice, fairness and resolution always set us on a positive
start
and lead us to the most meaningful destination - the muddling middle notwithstanding. Cheerz.
I often hear: lawyers are liars....so are preachers who tell you that no issue or no problem when they are praying like crazy after you leave the scene...
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