Ostomy Memories of Legal Bullies

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HenryM

THIS POST IS DEDICATED TO OUR FRIENDLY VERSIFIER, Bill, who is our website’s own Don Quixote, spotting aggressive bullies stationed at every windmill, and tilting after them with his poems as his lance.
Attorneys are, by definition, bullies. They file intimidating law suits, send threatening letters and, in court, strut their stuff like barnyard roosters. The Anglo-American legal system with its engrained adversarial procedure promotes this kind of tough guy, watch-your-step-buster sort of behavior. The adversarial process generally is a system that encourages lawyers to behave like guard dogs, contesting their space or their client’s position with all the fervor that the procedural and ethical rules will allow them to get away with. Opposing parties dispute each other before an independent decision-maker, and may the best case (or, some might say, the best lawyer) carry the day. Some lawyers, I have observed, can be too adversarial, which is not in the best interest of their client. As it turns out, Bill is not the only poet in our midst. Here is my take on it, titled “Adversariness”:
A lawyer who’s too adversarial / May promote his client’s burial, / He can’t his nastiness efface, / Cuts off his nose to spite his case.
Lawyers come and lawyers go, / Repeating “No, no, no, no, no.” / Infrequently do they possess / The candor to say, simply, “Yes.”
Attorneys fight and claw and scratch, / They love a verbal sparring match, / They see the tree but not the forest, / Too often argument adorest.
Lawyers come and lawyers go, / Repeating “Can’t agree, no, no.” / Too bad they rarely can repress / Reluctance to commit to “Yes.”
A lawyer’s combative agenda / May help some Tom or Dick or Brenda, / But for the everyday type client, / Disputive hype is unreliant.
Lawyers come and lawyers go, / Repeating “Where’s my quid pro quo?” / Not able error to confess, / Not happy having to say “Yes.”

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Bill

Hello HenryM.
Thank you so much for the dedication and for the great rhyme depicting some of the lawyers in their natural habitat.
Many of my own rhymes, along the same lines, have been directed at lawmakers rather than lawyers, but your concept is well-made.

It reminds me of the time I got into trouble with my employers ( a Local Authority Social Services Department) for voicing my opinion in court.
Their assertion was that the court process was ‘adversarial’, which therefore meant that I should only put forward the ‘official’ line that was in accord with their organisation. I was given an ‘official-warning’ for my unacceptable behaviour.
Fortunately for me, I appeared in this court regularly and the magistrates were used to my alternative ‘take’ on the organisational viewpoint. I contacted the ‘chair of the bench’ to explain that I had been reprimanded and officially ‘warned’ because of what I had said in court; Reminding him that whilst under oath, I had sworn to tell: ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’.
The ‘Chair of the bench’ was also the chair of the Local Authority Social Services Committee so had direct access to the Director of Social Services.
Within an hour of this correspondence, I had a personal telephone call from the Director of Social Services stating that I had misinterpreted the previous correspondence and that I had not had an official warning and that I was quite right to adhere to the wording of the oath, even if this might put the Local Authority in a bad light.
That was as near as anyone was likely to get to an apology, and similar future alternative perspectives were never challenged again.
My perspective has tended to be that bullies (no matter who they are) need to be called out for their unacceptable behaviour. Most of the time our laws have been biased against my (ex) clients, but occasionally they word the law in such a way that it can be quoted verbatim to establish a principle that seems ‘fair-enough’.
Best wishes
Bill

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