Trying to Remember Human Attitudes

Some time has passed since my successes and failures in law school, in law firms, and in handling my own lawsuits. During that time, I have made some progress back up the road I came down, toward deciding whether I got sidetracked, in law school, from things that were once important and should be again.

I'm still working on that question, but I can offer a few comments that may elevate the discussion from the everyday stories I've been telling to the philosophical level you'll need to consider in making your career decisions. In posing these thoughts, I talk as an outsider, referring to attorneys as them rather than us. This seems appropriate, whether you're a future law student or a potential ex-practitioner.


Self-Evident Rights

My question for you is: Where is your energy best spent in resolving the law-related issues you face? Can you redress the injustices I'm about to describe by becoming a lawyer instead of something else? If I were ever on a radio talk show, these are the points I'd press most vigorously:

The Right to Screw Up

When you were young, you probably knew some kids who were always being made fun of. If you laughed at them long enough, they got mad and went off to tell the grownups on you.

In a way, nothing has changed. As it turns out, you should have been nicer to those little twerps, because they grew up and became attorneys, and now they're pissed. They're no more tolerant of your laughter today than they were 30 years earlier, when they were kids.396 In their daily business, they'll trample, without hesitation, on your world's happiness. To them, blithe living is a Black Hole;397 it's inscrutable, and therefore meaningless.

The practice of law, like leprosy, is totally serious. But the seriousness does not persuade me that either the plague or the profession represents the way things should be. Any kid out of law school can hope to impress people with the glint in the eyes and the set of the jaw. It takes a champ, I believe, to back up and say, Hey, I'd prefer to laugh."

Lawyers will be quick to object that they are among the wittiest members of our society. And it's true, for some of them. But after a while, you start to get a feel for what attorneys think is funny.

For example, do you remember how, in the old films, James Bond's car had a rotating license plate with numbers from different countries? When someone would copy down his number, he'd just rotate to another one. Well, if lawyers had written that part, instead of seeing our hero in high-speed races across international frontiers to get away from the bad guys, we would have watched him rotate to the "Handicapped" plate while parking at a fire hydrant.

I don't think most lawyers like fun when it involves the risk of liability, as in high-speed races, or when it comes in the form of gaiety and silliness. They prefer word plays and at least some of the other things that pass for wit. They like jokes in which someone is shafted. And they especially like a story about a good screw up.

But I don't think it's fair for them to laugh at screw ups. You may recall my complaint that, as a practicing attorney, I found myself working with people who had a strange need to pretend that errors did not happen. If screw-ups are bad, then it makes no more sense for these lawyers to laugh at them than for a nun to giggle at a penis joke.

The problem for humour , depending on how you look at it, for the law itself - is that the law can't take a joke. When you screw up, you may do something very funny, but it may also be grounds for a lawsuit. This is why lawyers don't like practical jokes. My temptation to put trick blackface soap in the toilets at the Wall Street firm was so far-fetched, so likely to result in dismissal, that I never even tried.

What can I tell you? There's a place for errors in every-day life. And not just the funny ones. Even the painted ones are essential to progress. People who look like they're mistaken have a nasty habit of turning out to be right some-times. For example, I hear that the Japanese take the long view when they're entering an industry. That gives them enough spare time to allow for an occasional screw up. And this seems wise. You can't be trying to win every competition at every moment.

It's easy to say that we learn from our mistakes. But it's also easy to condemn someone for one foul-up. Lawyers, in particular, are paid to make everything out of one mistake and ignore the progress that the defendant has been making and the good that s/he has been doing otherwise.

The law in America, as it's now taught and practiced, acts as though we have an infinite amount of leeway to attack those who get out there and try to accomplish something. And that's wrong. We like screw ups, and we need them.

We are very far from the day when you can go into court and say, "Yes, I tried something, it didn't work, I screwed up, I know what I did wrong, and I'm thinking about making a few changes and trying it again." That is unfortunate for the sake of progress in our society and for adopting the long-term perspective we'll need if we wish to remain competitive - and much more so if we wish to enjoy competing in this world.