My Father’s Greatest Lesson

I don’t tend to talk about my father – or any of my relatives, really – all that much. It might not seem like it but I don’t have much of an ego so I try and leave myself between the lines and not inside of them. Just like to keep myself a bit private and I don’t think I have any right to talk much about people who aren’t me. Not to the extent I have to talk about myself. But, well, I can’t separate myself from my work, not mentally anyways. It’s a part of me and parts of myself are going to crop up from time to time. So, although I’d like to avoid the subject, I’ve got something to say to my father: thank you.

We’ve had our problems in the past, you understand. People say we look alike and I cringe. People say we sound alike and I shake. People say we act alike and I get angry. We’re really nothing like one another because, well, I set out to make sure that I never ended up like him. I think I’m doing a good job of it – to my detriment, I’m sure. But, well, just because I don’t like someone doesn’t mean I don’t respect them. And if nothing else, my father’s left me enough respect to trust that I’ll run my own life - as has most everyone else. So I’m grateful for that if nothing else.

My father, you see, is a lawyer. He taught me many things – mostly by teaching me how not to do them like he did. But there was one thing he taught me that I’ve always tried to remember. Maybe not quite the same way he did but, well, he’s a lawyer and I’m not. I’m a lot of things he’s not so we have our own way of seeing things. And that’s really what he taught me. But, first, to explain a bit about how lawyers seeing things there’s this concept of “good lawyering” that’s important to understand.

Lawyers you see have their own methods of telling if someone’s a good lawyer or not. These extend beyond the usual metric most people have of whether or not they actually win cases – good lawyers know that you can do everything right and still lose, after all, like any good creative people (they just get creative with the lawbooks in their role of being a zealous advocate for their client) – and stretch over the many cases that a competent lawyer will have over the course of their career. These people are, first and foremost, professionals. They sell their services to a client whether that’s the court itself or some private individual. And over the course of their career they’ll no doubt have many clients and many switch from prosecutors to defenders quite easily. The essence of good lawyering is professionalism. Those who do a fine job of being lawyers are the ones who show up and do their job time in and time out.

For lawyers that means arguing one case and another and another and another and another. And the facts, the circumstances, the people, the witnesses, and even the law might be completely different depending on the wishes and needs of their all-important clients. They can’t quite be sure that they’ll always get to argue the same points from the same vantage point. So, they train not to argue any one case but all of them. To see the points of view that can be reasonably taken from a set of facts. Not just theirs, not just their clients, but any other reasonable person’s too. And if they’re good lawyers they’ll be able to fight tooth and nail for each and every one of those opinions. That’s what good lawyering is: the ability to argue convincingly for one client one way and then to switch to the next and argue just as well for a completely opposite point of view.

My father didn’t teach me to be a good lawyer, mind, that’s just something I’ve figured out for myself since then. But what he did teach me is that there are lots of different points of view. And each of them is as valid as the next depending on how you look at them. And it’s possible to set your own views aside when they’re in conflict with someone else’s as you attempt to see things their way without ever losing your own ideas.

Smart man, my father. Although it’s hard for me to admit that. We’ve had our problems and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like me almost as much as I don’t like him (It’s not so much white-hot hate as it is a mutual resignation to just stay the hell away from each other.) but, well, things can always change if you give them a chance. He’s my old man but he’s not that old yet, you know? Just getting older with every passing day. I know he always regretted not talking with his own father more before he was gone. Maybe the next time I see him I’ll try and listen a bit more. Connect with him a bit. Because who knew the bastard had the answers all along?