Weekly Report #37: Lawyers Who Are Bullies

Is there a simple psychological explanation for the need some lawyers have to behave like bullies? When my lawyer friends and I spot a bully, we talk jokingly about how he was probably pushed around on the playground as a kid--now, armed with a law license, he's getting back at the world. So the bully screams at other lawyers in the same way an older child might try to reduce a younger one to tears. You get the sense that if you don't do exactly as he wants, he'll take all his toys and move to another sandbox.

Any advantage that can be gained by being a bully is temporary, at best, which might explain why I haven't encountered too many lawyer-bullies in my career. It also makes me wonder why this week I found myself acting like a bully during a conversation with another lawyer. I wasn't sleep-deprived, which is usually the explanation when I get into a shouting match with another lawyer. Instead, I was exasperated. I was fed up with some of the moves the other side had been making in the case. But this was no excuse to shout. Besides, the things I was exasperated about were not all that shocking.

The lawyer I was shouting at didn't shout back, which is one of the best lines of defense when dealing with a bully. The next day, I talked to the lawyer again and he was as friendly toward me as ever. We didn't discuss my brief tirade. But I remembered it, and I felt like a show-off. I felt like I had been drawing attention to myself the day before for no purpose other than to be noticed.

Maybe this explains the behavior of bullies: the bully is, at his core, the sort of person who has no right to draw attention to himself but who does it anyway. He's a braggart with no reason to brag. Though everyone around him would rather just pretend he doesn't exist, he makes this impossible. He demands to be noticed. And he's mean about it too.

Next time, I promise to do better.

Comments

[David Giacalone]

The legal profession might attract bullies, because it offers more opportunities than most fields to use bullying tactics under the guise of "zealous" advocacy -- with many clients even hoping that their lawyer will shame the opposition (an act "pit-bully"?).

I'm not sure that the issue is one merely of wanting to be noticed, but surely that is one aspect of the emotional issues that might lead to bullying, which seems to involve the lack of self-esteem in one fashion or the other. I'm always ashamed of myself when I engage in bullying, in person or online. Learning how to "intervene" before it starts seems like a very worthwhile goal.

I just did a quick Google search on bullying, and found an interesting article from the UK, where workplace bullying is illegal -- see Dysfunctional Workplace, which describes how bullying harms the bottomline as well as the victims. It reminds me that the lawyer who tries to bully other lawyers is very likely to do it even more frequently with his or her staff. Improving Emotional Quotients to prevent bullying is certainly a good goal at home, the school and at work.

Also, see
Bully in sight How to predict, resist, challenge and combat workplace bullying
Overcoming the silence and denial by which abuse thrives, by Tim Field.

[Rufus]

"It reminds me that the lawyer who tries to bully other lawyers is very likely to do it even more frequently with his or her staff," David writes above. While I obviously have no idea how my adversaries who acted like bullies treated their associates and staff, my lomg time senior partner, Lord of the Combover, was a mean spirited bully in the office -- it seemed that he got pleasure out of humiliating people -- but a respectful gentleman with adversaries. Lawyers from other firms when they found out I worked for him would always say what an old fashioned gentleman lawyer he was -- tough but not difficult. Why he was such a bastard in the office is a mystery, but no kidding around, I really think it had to do with a combination of low self esteen and and exaggerated sense of his own importance.

A lot of lawyers who act like bullies are terrible lawyers, and the bluster is to cover up that they have no idea what they're talking about. But quite a few are very good, or at least smart. I also have to add that in my experience the biggest bullies I dealt with, both the dumb and the smart kind, were plaintiffs lawyers. But I will concede that defense lawyers would usually have no cause to show that side of themselves to me, so I guess there are probably plenty of them out there on the side of truth and justice and the, you know, American way -- which lately, at least on the foreign policy front, is all about bullying.

[David Giacalone]

Re: the psychology of bullies: If you haven't checked out Al Gore's statement in The New Yorker on George W. Bush as a Bully, click here

[Jim Husen]

The factors underlying abusive lawyers are probably no different than those informing more or less pathological social conduct in non-lawyers. What makes it so galling is the increased expense and difficulty bully lawyers create by their lack of respect for others while practicing law.

[Seth]

As a lawyer that is considered a "bully", I would like to point out that we make a lot more money that way and it's nice to be able to have things that we could not otherwise were we not bullies.

[Dellome]

Let's look at the real targets of bully lawyers -- not other lawyers or even staff -- it's those they oppose. The law provides a venue for someone with bullying tendencies, which we all have, to attack and harm in ways that truly should be illegal. Get yourself involved in a family law case and you'll quickly see how rewarded a bully lawyer can be by our system and just how much damage they can do. There one in my town that is notorious, and yet you will not find a negative would about her on the web anywhere. Now that's intimidation. The tragedy is it is all considered legal. You actually have more rights in some ways if you are accused of a crime than you do if you are involved, even in an ancillary way, in a lawsuit. Contempt if you do do not comply, privacy -- what privacy?, freedom to speak freely to others -- gag order, freedom not to testify -- sorry you have to or be in contempt.