The
practice of law does have positives. There are brilliant moments of triumph and
self-actualization as well as the defeat and ennui. If the question had been
"ARE NIGERIA LAWYERS, INTELLECTUAL, JOYOUS AND FLAMBOUYANT I'm sure we
would have gotten some good write ups too.
However,
reminiscing the Ondo State elections debate 2012 brought about this write up, one
of the then contenders a SAN and former President of the NBA Rotimi Akeredolu,
contrary to what everybody expected, the learned Silk performance was unimpressive
and laid back, it appears as if, years
of using legalese and court room theatrics has eroded him of strong political
acumen and stagecraft needed on such occasions.
The
ability to articulate one’s vision matters. Alluding to the holy book, ‘out of
the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks’! Often, when the mouth is unable
to speak sense, the probable cause could be that the heart is shallow. The
implication of a shallow heart on communication could include incoherence and
uttering mediocre solutions to serious challenges as Ondo State people witnessed
during the debate.
This
made me to wonder what might have caused the learned silk to perform so
miserably, in my quest for answers i dabble into this lawyers personality
theoretical, which i believe might be applicable to Nigeria lawyers too.
The
law will make you into the worst kind of person.
If
you believe that one's personality is shaped by one's life experiences, then
you should be very worried about what the practice of law will do to you. I suggest
that you should fear the inculcation of the following highly negative
personality traits:
Unintellectualism.
Contrary to popular belief, the law is not a particularly
"intellectual" profession. Most of the reasoning in legal argument is
patently casuistic. Legal arguments are often made in a "kitchen
sink" fashion, throwing every conceivably plausible argument into a brief,
regardless of the relative strength of the arguments or coherence of the
submission as a whole. The practice of law is the development of a habit of extreme
intellectual dishonesty where the routine is to state one's opponent's
arguments as uncharitably as possible in aid of weakening their impact and conceal
every possible fact or principle
that is against one's interest which one isn't explicitly required to disclose.
Arrogance.
A lawyer is surrounded largely by non-lawyers who come to him/her for expert
advice. That alone can encourage some arrogance, but even more is necessary for
the psychological warfare between lawyers. Lawyers often try to use extreme
false confidence (a.k.a. arrogance) to intimidate one another into
tactical
concessions, e.g. by making the other lawyer think that they've screwed up,
that "things are always done this way," etc. That is a tactic
especially used by older lawyers against younger ones. The younger ones need to
develop their own armor of arrogance to resist it.
Pettiness.
As I've been emphasizing, much of the nastiness in the practice of law is in
small-minded disputes about nothing points of procedure and other maneuvering for
tactical advantage. Do you really want to practice being the kind of prick who
demands that pleadings be thrown out for being one day late? Uninterestingness.
The practice of law takes so much of one's time that one can engage in few
activities with the rest of one's life. It is also so stressful that one tends
to obsess about it. The result is that lawyers can become very boring people,
with nothing to talk about except their ugly jobs.
Impatience.
Litigation is very stressful. Also, the law is a very deadline-driven
occupation, especially in litigation. There's always more work to do than there
is time to do it in, and there's always a court and opposing counsel breathing
down your throat with respect to strict deadlines. If you miss a deadline, the consequences
can be terrible: a lost case, a malpractice claim against you, etc. Don't be
surprised when this spills over and you find yourself swearing at people who
walk too slowly while crossing the street.
Aggressiveness.
Again, the psychological warfare between lawyers rewards this, and not to
forget some diabolical clients that will stop at nothing to win a case.
Lawyers are annoying
That lawyers are annoying is one that has more than a grain of truth to it,
in my experience. In about two years of actively practicing law, I came across
numerous examples of utterly atrocious behavior, often in litigation. It's not
always big things -- though big things are the ones that hit the news -- but patterns
of obstreperous behavior and downright stupidity that can wear you down over a
day-to-day basis. Bickering over stupid document production requests, delays,
phantom schedule conflicts... all these things add up. Contemporary lawyering
is often an expensive form of childish game-playing with the rules of civil
procedure. It's psychological warfare for minute tactical advantage.
Then
there are the lawyers in your own firm, who have been embittered by years of
this crap and by long hours. And then there are the clients, who want
judgements immediately their cases are filed in court, or have been badly
screwed through unnecessary adjournment and are consequently distrustful and
hostile toward the entire world . Not surprisingly, both groups of people act so annoying.
And
it's not just a matter of the pressures of the law turning people into jerks. I
think we can easily believe that annoying people select themselves into the practice of
law. Autoadmit. 'nuff said.
Then
another group is the charge and bail lawyers, lurking around magistrate courts
for over night cases: "overnight cases” – roughly meaning persons charged
to court as soon as they are arrested or apprehended in the course of committing
a crime - usually crimes like stealing, larceny, burglary, housebreaking and the
like. Most of these accused persons are usually small time and poor. They
cannot afford ‘big shot’ lawyers and many times their families and relatives
are even unaware of their arrest and subsequent arraignment.
The
Charge and bail Lawyer is often a creation of circumstances – chances are that
when he left Law School he was unable to find any Lawyer to employ him, those
who will employ him are unable or unwilling to pay him a dime and there will be
numerous Seniors who will impress it upon him that he is still learning the
trade and as such will only be entitled to some stipend; still others will regale
him with tales of how the big lawyers of the day started small and how we all
start small and why he should start small.
