TO WIT: BEYOND THE PALE
There are some distinct advantages to writing under a nom de plume. Cloaked with anonymity, I can tell the truth with impunity or I can lie like hell, and no one can tell the difference. It’s a lot like oral argument. And when, as now, I am about to confess a deep, dark secret, I run no risk at all of exposing myself to the taunts and jeers of my colleagues who have rightly suspected all these years that there is something wrong with me.
The truth is that I am a bleeder. I bleed with my clients. I do not have the capacity to remain objective and dispassionate about my clients and their causes. By comparison to my normal colleagues, I am quite pale.
Oh, and I’m not talking about becoming emotionally involved in spouse or child abuse cases, or custody cases, or divorce, or any of the other kinds of cases that from time to time take all of us to the dark side. For me, it does not matter what kind of case. If my client is cut, I bleed. If my client is hurt, I feel the pain. If my client loses, I become disconsolate. Any adversary of my client is my adversary. It’s a tough way to practice law. I am worn out at the pleading stage.
Whenever I take on a client, I take on his or her symptoms as well. With personal injury cases, I can become incapacitated, with divorce, bitter and sullen, with workmen’s compensation, chronically malingering. I dare not represent a woman in a paternity suit.
I have had this unfortunate propensity since early childhood. My friends were always the kids no one else would play with. I have always been taken by the plight of the downtrodden, the lonely, the helpless and the forlorn. I always felt I could save them from their sub-station in life.
And just what, you may well ask, am I doing in the practice of law? I was certainly taught differently. My favorite professor in law school was a fervent believer in the discipline of detached objectivity, and he devoted a great deal of passion in his effort to impart that philosophy to his students. So obsessed was he with the importance of objectivity that he steadfastly refused to learn any of our names, preferring to call us instead by number. I was No. 3.
“Never, never will I personalize the relationship of teacher and student by learning your names”, he said, “just as you must never, never personalize the relationship between lawyer and client. Even his twin children were named 1a and 1b.
I tried real hard to fashion myself after him, I really did. During the initial interview with my first client, I admonished her when she called me by my first name. “It is more appropriate for you to address me as Mr. , and I shall address you as Mrs. .”
She immediately left my office and hired another lawyer to do her will. Later I found out she had been deeply offended by my formality. She had apparently become accustomed over the years to my calling her Mom.
I have not been successful with detached objectivity, but I have come to realize that I am not alone. At the local bar, there is at least one other colleague who is similarly afflicted. He specializes in criminal law, and he becomes so distraught when he loses a case, he goes into seclusion for the same period of time as his client’s confinement. Admittedly, his condition is more severe than mine, but at least he only takes on new cases every 11-1/2 to 23 months.
I recently read of another bleeder who was representing a plaintiff who had been badly burned in an electrical accident. During his closing argument, he held up a large industrial electric switch which had wires running across the floor in the direction of the jury box.
“There is no other way for you to comprehend the pain and suffering my client has endured”, he argued, “unless…”. The jurors abandoned their civil duty on the spot, and the trial judge had no choice but to subsequently grant a mistrial by withdrawing all jurors nunc pro tunc.
I have given up all hope of changing my ways. What I am is what I am. I am not the perfect lawyer, but my clients are not perfect people, else they would have little need of me. I share their pain and suffering, I share their fears, I endure with them all the sadness and heartache that life dumps in their paths, and at times my judgment is indeed clouded by my with to be their defender. But I also share in their triumphs and their joys, and I guess when everything is duly considered, it isn’t all that bad an exchange.
© 1984 – S. Sponte, Esq.