George Orwell once wrote:
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
Law and lawyering is very much like Orwell’s “serious sport.”
Now of course you will say “not true, law and lawyering are all about ‘fair play.” My response is that it should be about fair play but in my experience with most lawyers in the real world of litigation it is not.
It is particularly not with regard to the so-called “superlawyers” I have encountered. Often these lawyers (the ones who have amassed wealth from highly paid practices) are people who play on fear, the predilections and biases of judges and juries, ignore the law and facts, submit briefs which are sophistry and in addition use ad homonym in argument, and, sometimes, engage in conduct which is outright illegal.
One of these lawyers was quite up front about his approach to law and lawyering in one of our cases. Just after the case was filed he called and in an arrogant, self-satisfied and freightening manner said the case will be “war”, that my client and I would find ourselves in a war and that that his juggernaut of power would destroy us. He said my client had better settle. For him, law and lawyering was war. The shear exercise of power.
I did not accede to his threats nor did my client. I did not because I thought my client’s cause was just and that she had the law on her side. I imagine most lawyers in the area would have submitted to the fear one our local superlawyers was trying to instill.
For the most part, I must conclude that law and lawyering, the struggles litigation, is war. The truly freightening part is this – it is supposed to be a civilized war fought by the rules and based upon the application of law. One will not find such to be the case in the practical experience of the law and lawyering ins some venues, those not in the high places of the law, in the venues of the hustings. In the places where judges do not have the time, experience, education, inclination or inner drive to truly be good practicioners of the high offices they hold. There are some who are not this way, but only some.