Although the facile use of stereotypes, can, at times, boast a measure of descriptive convenience, more often, said lazy and reductive mode of characterization is effectively unfair and grossly misleading. Notwithstanding any perceived commonality (viz., race, ethnicity, work, or profession) it is rationally appropriate and empirically fair, to characterize and treat each individual as singular and individually nuanced. No more is this reductive practice of facile stereotyping more evident, unfair, or on occasion, demeaning, than when applied to lawyers.
Before retirement, we were engaged in the public practice of (civil) law in the City of New York for no less than fifty years, and feel confident as to the experiential accuracy of our present observations on the subject.
The publically televised interminable saga of Trump’s full-to bursting, cornucopia of shameful criminal prosecutions may, understandably engender the viewer’s perception of lawyers as unprincipled, millionaire, servants of the felonious rich, plying their cryptic alchemy to assist them in evading justice. Contextually, we would declare the mathematical formula that, in the same proportion as every American President is a replication of the unprincipled and amoral Donald Trump, so are the Nation’s lawyers appropriately personified by that amoral miscreant’s nuanced and well-paid counsel. Yet, we would be overjoyed to be able to empirically declare that said positive observation is universally applicable. We admit that our principles are colored by our declared foundational sentiment that attorneys should eternally evince the standards of scholarly, fiduciary services to their clients. The latter principles constituted our navigational compass and are reprised by our selected successors.
Over the years we painfully experienced the populist, cynical conception of the “lawyer” as being a devious, unprincipled “shyster” (civil law) or a hypocritically “paid mouthpiece” (criminal law). We are not Pollyannaish enough not to presume that, in keeping with the nuances of the human persona, such people do not often exist. But to saddle all legal practitioners with such epithets would be equivalent to the atavistic dismissal of such adjectival vocabulary as, “sincere,” “trusted,” “wise,” “protective” and “caring.” Just as Donald Trump has polluted American standards and traditional moral expectations, the contextually populist and effectively defamatory stereotype has unjustifiably branded, without exception, or empirical experience, an entire population of ethical and venerated legal practitioners. The plethora of shameful Trump cases displayed on the public media is a toxic encouragement to such uninformed and factually prejudiced insults.
In our decades of practice, we have come to know, and quite often befriend, clients to whom we have taken personal and professional pleasure in rendering utilitarian and dedicated legal services and guiding advice; helping to navigate their business through the, often labyrinthine, intricacies of the legal and juristic Federal, State and Local Statutes and precedential law, and when necessary, providing legal relief from business injury and legal injustice by means of litigated services, trial and appellate.
To describe an individual as a “lawyer” (or, for that matter, any other profession or calling) is merely to designate the nature of their employment or profession; it appropriately and relevantly, says nothing about character or persona.
-p.
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