Category: The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

Categories
The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

Who Really Built The Pyramids?

Space ship with little green alien in it.
Photo by Michaël Meyer at Pexels.

I have heard it said that “an expert is someone from out of town with Power Point.”  This expression has some old roots. When I originally heard it, it was “someone from out of town with overhead slides.”

Apparently nowadays you do not even have to travel to become an expert. A young lawyer contacted me recently to ask me my views on the legal profession because he had been told by the Managing Partner of his firm that I was an expert on the profession, a status that I appear to have achieved by ranting on social media.

read more to find out about the root problem of the legal profession “Who Really Built The Pyramids?”
Categories
The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

Things I Used to Think Were True

Scrabble pieces spelling the words "Speak Truth."
Photo by Brett Jordan at Pexels.

I said and thought a lot of stuff while I was practicing law. I believed every single bit of it. Over time I figured out that some of it was kind of dumb. Here are some of those gems:

read more about what i used to think was true “Things I Used to Think Were True”
Categories
The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

I Want to Be a Fire Truck

Red fire truck.
Photo by Tom Fisk at Pexels.

Adults often ask young children what they want to be when they grow up.  I knew one child who insisted that he wanted to be a fire truck. Nobody could convince this fellow that he could not be a fire truck. You can be a “firefighter” they told him. But no, he insisted that he wanted to be a fire truck.

read more about inflexible people “I Want to Be a Fire Truck”
Categories
The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

A woman gardening.
Photo by Anna Shvets at Pexels.

I have observed that it is not only Mary who was quite contrary, but rather that the character flaw of contrariness is innate to all of us.

read more about people being contrary “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary”
Categories
The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

Lessons Learned from Boston Legal

Skyline of Boston Mass from East Boston.
King of Hearts, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

For those of you who never watched Boston Legal, my all-time favourite television show about lawyers, Denny Crane was the senior partner of Crane Poole & Schmidt.

read more about boston legal “Lessons Learned from Boston Legal”
Categories
The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

Why I Hate the Law Society

Plaque in Niagara On The Lake, Ontario, memorializing the establishment of the Law Society of Upper Canada
Photo by Spudgun67 at Wikimedia Commons

Obviously, it would be utterly impossible to comprehensively address the topic of ‘Why I Hate the Law Society’ in the depth that it so richly deserves while complying with the LinkedIn limit on the length of a post. So, I will try to just hit the high points.

So, what exactly do I hate about the Law Society? Primarily its arrogance, and the high-handed nature of its decision making.

read more about why I hate the Law Society of Ontario “Why I Hate the Law Society”
Categories
The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

Existing In Our Own Psychological Prisons

A prison cell with a single, high window.
Photo by Jimmy Chan at Pexels

I recently celebrated the 17th anniversary of one of the most significant events of my life.

Back on March 21, 2005, I came to what was, at the time, a stunning realization. I had accidentally fallen in love with a woman with whom I had been working very closely for six years.  Luckily for me and all the other potential Defendants in this situation, she came to the same troubling realization about me at the exact same time.

read more about the boxes that we live in “Existing In Our Own Psychological Prisons”
Categories
People I Met Practicing Law The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

The Narcissist

Woman staring at herself in the mirror
Photo by Mariana Kurnyk from Pexels

There was once a law firm which had a particular department which experienced some turn-over in its associates. Lots of turn-over, actually.

The department in question was headed by a lawyer with a ‘strong personality.’ I am not qualified to give a psychological diagnosis of this lawyer, but if I were, I would probably say that this person was a narcissist. If I was being nice.

read more about bad-mouthing departing associates “The Narcissist”
Categories
The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

Knowing Your Audience

Speaker in front of audience.
Photo by ICSA from Pexels

My father used to tell a story about when he was a young man with a young family.  Unlike many people of his age at that time, he had an automobile since his job was travelling the countryside selling stuff. One day he was pulled over for speeding. He tried to talk himself out of a ticket which he could not afford, explaining that he struggled to support his wife and children on his pitifully small salary, the amount of which he disclosed to the officer. The wise old cop let him off the hook but took the opportunity to teach him a lesson. The police officer said: “Always remember who you are speaking to. I earn less than you do.”

read more about the Soft STuff “Knowing Your Audience”
Categories
The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

On Being Perfect(ly) Insane

Tiles spelling out "Broken Crayons Still Colour"
Photo by Brett Jordan from Pexels

When I was just a wee lad, my father instilled in me the need to be perfect. If I scored 98% on an exam, his only comment was “What happened to the other two marks?”

read more about the curse of trying to be perfect “On Being Perfect(ly) Insane”