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May 18, 2011
Sensitive Litigation Moment No. 15: Is "Professionalism" a Smokescreen for Bad Lawyering?
Professionalism--like good crops, the flag and motherhood--is indeed hard to criticize. It is also tough to define. Is it always good for clients? Can it even hurt them?
Weenie Alert: It's not about the lawyers anymore. In litigation, and in other contentious projects, does the practice of routinely and without question granting extensions, expanding deadlines, and saying "yes" to an adversary's requests for an accommodation really help clients? Or are such courtesies merely effete and provincial folkways that take the focus off the main event: solving problems for clients as expeditiously as possible? See "Professionalism Revisited: What About the Client?" in San Diego's The Daily Transcript of April 29, 2005. Has anything changed in five years?
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Bar association meeting, San Diego. Pick any year.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (2)
Scott Greenfield: Clients, Bonding & Lawyering.
On the one hand, there's a critical need for trust between lawyer and client. On the other, there's a critical need for detachment. A defendant feels the former.
Over at his celebrated Simple Justice, a Not-For-Weenies venue, do read Scott Greenfield's Too Close For Comfort, preferably before The Rapture obtains.
Above: Greenfield before 2003 industrial accident.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)