A good lawyer is a bad neighbor – French origin

Fools and obstinate men make lawyer’s rich – unknown

The hand’s of a lawyer are always in someone’s pocket – Indian origin

A lawyer and a wagon wheel must be well greased – German origin

A lawyer looks at you with one eye but looks at your pocket with two – Jamaican Origin

The houses or lawyers are roofed with the skins of litigants – Welsh origin

It is better to be a mouse in a cat’s mouse than a man in a lawyer’s hands – Spanish origin

Unless hell is full, no lawyer will ever be saved – French origin

God wanted to punish mankind so he created lawyers – Russian origin

What is clear from the way that the world views lawyers in these proverbs and sayings is that lawyers are generally reviled and hated the world over. This article is written to offer a different view of lawyers, as a persuasive argument to lead to the truth.

Lawyers can be Evil

The problem with being a lawyer is the lawyer is at the intersection of money, emotions and knowledge.

Business Oriented

Successful lawyers are business oriented, they calculate in their minds how much money is available to them from the client, how much money the case will make, and then make a decision as to the value of the case. This cold, calculating approach to the most serious and life altering events that a human being can experience (divorce, death, bankruptcy, etc.) leaves the average person questioning whether or not to trust a person who can make such calculations around such important events.

Emotionally Bankrupt

When the client is experiencing intense emotions such as fear, anger, anxiety and despair, it can be unnerving to witness the interaction between a lawyer and a client. The strangeness of the lawyer/client relationship occurs because one person (the client) is looking to the lawyer for help and possibly compassion, while the lawyer is often working on the other side of their brain – thinking of the applicable law, procedural considerations of the legal issue, the financial aspects of the case, etc. The squaring off of emotion and intellect can create an awkward mix between the lawyer and the client resulting in misunderstandings and miscommunication.

Intellectual Focus

As previously addressed, the lawyer must use experience and knowledge of the law to come to a conclusion as to the best way to proceed with any given legal issue. The trouble lies with lawyers who maintain this intellectual focus and neglect to use compassion in their interactions with clients.

Losing Combination

The combination of a business oriented, emotionally dull and intellectually focused lawyer who fails to notice and address the emotional aspects of the client results in a failed attorney-client relationship, one which inevitably leads to a confused and disappointed client.

How Being a Nurse Makes Me a Better Lawyer

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not claiming that I am the only compassionate or client-focused attorney working in Massachusetts. In fact, many lawyers that I have met throughout my travels are just that…compassionate, caring people.

Nursing is Hard

Working in the nursing field is challenging. Not only must you deal with the medical aspects of a patient’s condition, but more importantly you must deal with the emotions of a patient. If you doubt this statement, try calming down a person who is restrained to a bed because they are experiencing delusions and psychosis due to a drug overdose so that you can administer or deliver medications that they need. Another example, imagine the grief of a mother who has lost a child and suffered a heart attack as a result; how do you minister to that person to help them move forward, to follow a medicine regimen, to follow after care instructions?

Striking a balance between the harsh reality of a patient’s medical circumstances and their emotional state is a Herculean task which takes a toll on the nurse attempting to strike such a balance. I am not claiming that I have always had the energy, time or even the will to do the work necessary to assist all of my patients in getting them towards perfect health. Burnout, stress and other internal factors make reaching Florence Nightingale status nearly impossible. The difference is, though, that a good nurse (like a good lawyer) is aware that such a balance between emotions and outcomes must be struck, and feels an ethical and moral pull towards doing the extra work required to produce the best possible outcome in every situation as often as possible.

Lawyering is Hard

While it is true that working as a lawyer is hard work, it is also true that it is hard for the very same reasons that working as a nurse is difficult. A lawyer, like a nurse, has an ethical obligation and (in my opinion) a moral obligation to understand the emotional stress that each client is experiencing and to find solutions to that client that fit. Sometimes there are circumstances where a client cannot afford my services and I cannot afford to provide pro bono (without charge) services for that client because of time limitations, other commitments, etc. When this inability to service a client occurs, I believe that a lawyers has the obligation to steer the client in a direction that might produce some results: limited assistance representation, free lawyer services, pro se instruction and other options may be helpful for such a client.

How to Get Help with a Legal Problem

My hope in writing this article is to not only inform a reader as to the type of lawyer that I am and possibly to ingratiate such a person to my services, but also to offer an argument as to what type of lawyer too look for when facing a troubling legal issue. A good lawyer (and such a thing does exist) is one who can balance the intellectual challenges of the moment with the emotional and experiential challenges that the client is experiencing.

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