Featured Articles for Attorneys 

From Joseph Shaub:

What follows are links to articles I have written over the past years which have been printed in various legal publications.  Since September, 2000, I have written a bimonthly column in the King County Bar Bulletin entitled Personal Skills for Lawyers.   These columns are included below.  The theme which runs throughout can probably best be described as “how lawyers can recognize the humanity in themselves and in their clients.”

Lawyers have as much trouble as anyone else engaging in “difficult conversations” where emotions run high and a lot is at stake.  This column discusses the groundbreaking new book which provides an excellent map for negotiating this very tricky personal terrain. 

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a wonderful tool for helping us understand our differences with others in an enlightening, non-judgmental, way.  Research finds that the overwhelming percentage of lawyers are “thinkers” rather than “feelers.”  What does this mean for our practices and how we relate to our clients. 

Above all else, our clients need to trust us, but to “trust” someone is to be vulnerable to them - so we ask a lot of our clients when we have that expectation.  In order to understand our clients’ position, we must ask the important question: Who do I trust? 

How do law firms keep the good lawyers?  Recent research shows that its much more than big salaries that keep lawyers from leaving.  A personal investment in young lawyers, their lives and careers, is how loyalty is cultivated.

This is a personal reflection about how I juggle my commitment to development of my law practice and my love for a seven year old girl who lights up my heart every day.

Even though lawyers deal with conflict in their professional lives, this does not mean that we handle personal conflict well in our own lives.  In fact, we often run away from conflict.  Here are some suggestions for how to face personal conflict productively.

The impact of 9/11 raised all our levels of stress.  Lawyers already live in a very stressful world.  Where do we turn when we are burdened by the weight of our cares?  Do we turn to those we love or do we “circle the wagons” and isolate for self protection? 

Anyone who has seen Al Pacino dance an impeccable tango with the young stranger in "Scent of a Woman" has witnessed the smooth “complementary” steps of partners.  The same principle exists with long standing intimate partners in how they live together day-to-day.  Sometimes this is good, sometimes we get locked into a destructive dance.

Although it is not a subject that lawyers talk about often, there is unquestionably a hunger for meaning in the work that we do that many are beginning to voice.  The subject is discussed in the course of ethics seminars; law school symposia and other forums.  Here it is suggested that this is a good subject for our concern and discussion.

Managing Anger in the Workplace: Difficult but Essential task for Today's Lawyer (Washington State Bar News)

Anger is present everywhere in the legal environment - which is dangerous for practitioners, since volumes of research point to the lethal impact of chronic hostility. Dr. Meyer Friedman, the first observer of Type A behavior suggested that this was the most lethal element of the Type A personality.  Here we consider the effects of anger and ways of moderating its impact.  

Depression is, perhaps, the most common emotional disturbance suffered throughout our society and attorney’s experience more than their proportionate share of depression. Yet, because we are a culture which is grounded upon self sufficiency, the force of will and rational problem solving, there is still a stigma attached to depression in the legal community. We owe it to ourselves and our colleagues to understand this disorder and its treatment. Andrew Solomon’s National Book Award winning treatment, The Noonday Demon helps us pursue these goals.  

If one were to set out to design a legal training program intended to promote tolerance, the case method would be an excellent foundation. Imagine, a course of study which explores the positions of all sides in depth - with a view to instilling the ability to embrace and promote any of the interests in a dispute. So how did legal training become, rather than a fertile bed for the growth of tolerance, instead, the source of such rampant professional cynicism? Well in the words of noted ethics scholar and University of Notre Dame law professor Thomas Shaffer, we need look no further than "The Unique, Novel, and Unsound Adversary Ethic." 

Our families of origin are the source of our earliest, and most indelible, lessons about love, as well as our understanding of who we are in the world. Here we first learned what kind of impact we have on our environment, what is "right" and what is "wrong" and what it means to be a good person. These lessons remain with us throughout our lives, and if unexamined will often result in conduct and choices which are not in our best interests - or the best interests of our families and professional colleagues. The impact of these family of origin lessons are discussed. 

About ten years ago Larry Richard conducted a study of lawyers and psychological type, with the active support of the American Bar Association. Richard was a lapsed lawyer in the process of shifting careers to psychology and the study was the basis for his doctoral dissertation. Last year, the entire dissertation was published in the Capital University Law Review1 and the numbers are a cruncher's dream-especially those who are interested in what makes lawyers tick.  

Using a fictitious study group, we follow four people with distinct personality styles and temperaments though law school into practice. There are a myriad of ways for each of us to approach the personal and professional challenges offered by the law and temperament theory helps gain insight into why some thrive and others stumble. It is also an argument for protecting the place of humanists in this field which does not embrace them.  

Perhaps no development in the practice of law and dispute resolution has greater implications than the rise of the collaborative law movement. Born in Minnesota more than a dozen years ago, it has taken hold in many states and has finally established its presence in Washington. What it is and how it works - and why it should be the wave of the future - are explored.  

Divorce lawyers are familiar - too familiar - with our society's tolerance for the breakdown of marital bonds. While escape from a destructive or abusive marriage is a salutary outcome of this movement, the psychology wreckage following abandonment of salvageable marriages impacts all of us - including lawyers in their personal lives. The work of psychologist William Doerty should make us stop and take a second look at what we could do to protect our marriages.  

So much has been written over the past 15 years about the need for lawyers to find balance between their personal and professional lives and responsibilities. Yet, little is said about the deep personal value we can gain from our professional lives, aside from the monetary compensation. What brought us to this work? Have we strayed from these guiding motivations? How can we regain our purpose?  

Denial is more than a river in Egypt - it is the inability or refusal to recognize and acknowledge unpleasant realities in our lives which others see quite clearly. What are the unpleasant realities against which many lawyers keep their eyes tightly shut? What would happen if we acknowledged certain choices we have made in our professional and personal lives? Far from being a negative exercise, this shedding of denial may be the first step in a path of greater fulfillment.