I wondered if I ought to put this in IMHO since this might be a matter of subjective experience–mods pls feel free to move if appropriate.
Watching shows ranging from Law & Order to Perry Mason, I get different impressions of how a prosecutor and a defense attorney regard one another personally and professionally. It’s hard for me to imagine shifting from “I’m going to nail your client to the wall” to “hey, wanna go get a drink?” very easily. I’m sure things vary wildly according to the individuals, but I wondered if there’s any common denominators.
I’ve always thought that Shakespeare summed it up well:
*And do as adversaries do in law,
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
– Taming of the Shrew, Act I, scene ii, 269–277*
I’ve frequently done exactly what the OP asks: gone out for coffee or lunch with opposing counsel, sometimes after the case has been all entered, other times when there’s still work to be done in the afternoon. If it’s late in the day and the case is all entered, going out for drinks is not unknown. Sometimes we keep talking about the case and the respective strengths and weaknesses of each side; other times it’s more about how the Riders are doing, but it’s definitely a time to relax and socialize with one’s fellow lawyers.
And in rural areas, once the case is entered and on reserve, it’s not unknown for the judge to come for coffee or lunch as well - on a well-understood practice that the case won’t be discussed, and that the judge will only come if both counsel are present.
Drinks in the bar on a Friday afternoon are quite common as well, and we’ve just finished the Christmas season, where the Crown, the police, and the Legal Aid office each have a party and invite each other. I’ve seen cops joshing with defence counsel about how they each handled themselves in a recent case, Crowns and defence shooting pool, and so on.
It’s an adversarial system, but as professionals, we’re trained to keep it as objective as possible, not personal.
Northern Piper has it (as one would expect ). The problem is assuming that Law and Order is like real life. Ignoring the possibility that New York is specifically and uniquely different from other jurisdictions, the TV show ramps up the displays of personal hostility for dramatic effect. Emotional boilovers don’t work - in RL, the profession (and judges and juries) value being careful and clinical much more than being melodramatic.
If real lawyers started playing the drama queen like they do in L and O, the effect would be counterproductive. Instead of being intimidated, the opponent would just think the guy pulling the finger-poking anger crap was a wanker. Aggro guy would get giggled at (at one end of the spectrum) or get told “F*** off, Bob, save that shit for the kiddies” (at the other).
It is of the nature of these contests that the guy who stays cool wins. If you fly off the handle and let it become personal, you look like you’re not handling the pressure, and you become incredibly vulnerable. It’s really not a good look.
It’s like any profession - you personally like some people on the other side, dislike some, and can take or leave some. But that’s because of their personal characteristics, not because they happen to be opposed to you.
Because of its unusual nature, the Bar builds in processes to confirm that your opponent of the hour is not your personal enemy. One example - phrases like “my learned friend” act as a constant reminder not to take it all personally.
At one point, my Dad worked for the Prosecuting Attorney while my Mom worked for Legal Aid. Most of the friends were lawyers and the occasional judge. It probably seems cold blooded and cynical to outsiders, but it is just a job.
Not a bad thibg if opposinbg counsel “talk shop”. The trend over the past 10 years or so all over the common law world has been to have parties talk with each other as much as possible to iron out differences. And in many juridictions, Barristers from the same chambers may represent different sides.
It’s a four way continuum, really. Some opposing attorneys are complete dicks, but great to work with (because their dickishness and/or incompetence makes us bill a lot more than we otherwise would); some are nice, and also great to work with; some are dicks, and miserable to work with; and some are nice, and miserable to work with.
There’s a firm in the area whose attorneys are a father and his daughter who are horrible to work with in the sense that they’ll never give us an inch, but wonderful in the sense that they’re really genuinely nice people. Thus, our relationship is odd in the sense that we groan when we see them listed as opposing counsel, but if one of us was filing a suit, we’d want them handling it.
My father-in-law was an assistant DA until his retirement a year ago or so.
From my conversations with him, I have the impression that he doesn’t think much of defense attorneys. He seems to think they have to be fundamentally dishonest in order to do their job, and so he tends not to have much respect for them.
That’s what he says in private when talking to his family, but I imagine he probably doesn’t go around saying this kind of thing at work.
Anyway, from the responses so far, it appears my FiL is atypical.
Whoever they represent, in general lawyers are just doing a job.
The main behavior that causes me to dislike a lawyer is if they make my job harder than it needs to be, by not responding to phone calls quickly, misrepresenting things, gross incompetence, and such. And I don’t appreciate lawyers who act as tho theirs is the side of right. They’re just a whore representing a client same as me. Nor am I overly fond of a couple of opposing counsel, tho, whom I believe structure their representation in a manner to maximize their billing - which unneccessarily imposes effort and costs on me and my client.
At least in the world of civil law, it tends to be a job. Getting emotionally invested is a bad thing and tends to make things a lot more painful and expensive for everyone involved. I think that it is in the client’s interest if I stay dispassionate about the case, so that I can render objective advice.
Usually, I tend to be polite and somewhat friendly with the other side. However, I really try to keep my personal life separate from my professional, and I try not to talk about the case too much. Occasionally, it helps to chat with opposing counsel informally to see if some disputes can’t be worked out and to avoid needless fighting over minor issues.
My friends who are/have been prosecutors share the generally low opinion of criminal defense lawyers. There are a limited number of ways that people end up criminal defense lawyers – and to generalize, and at risk of wronging some idealistic sorts (they do exist), most prosecutors seem to assume, with some foundation, that these routes boil down to (1) being ethically compromised/having an affinity for criminals; (2) doing poorly in school such that hanging out a shingle as a criminal defense lawyer is the best option; and (3) moving over to the dark side for the money after a few years as a lowly-paid prosecutor.
One of my friends started out wanting to believe that defense lawyers were basically decent people, honest brokers, etc. That idealism quickly evaporated after the first six months or so of lies, scurrilous attacks on the state and the cops in front of the jury, broken promises, and endless last-minute no-shows, postponements, etc. from defense counsel.
Having said that, as noted, everyone’s a repeat player, so they do cut deals, cooperate, etc. But at least in the case of my friends, there’s no great degree of trust or affection, and drinking with defense lawyers would be very out of the ordinary.
Huerta88, my husband is a former DA and he disagrees with you 100%. While he may have had professional conflicts with defense counsel (duh- he was a prosecutor), he never thought that they were inherently dishonest or poor litigators. Your items 1, 2 & 3 seem to be made up out of whole cloth (or at least, they are not our experience at all). And I am not an idealist- far from it. I am a realist.
Every defendant deserves the best possible defense- it’s what makes our system work. Are some of them guilty? Of course- maybe even most of them. That does NOT mean that their attorneys are. Attorneys who break the law are disbarred, and it’s a bitch to get your license back after a disbarrment.
Your post seems to reflect the ignorant “lawyers are assholes” view that so many people seem to hold… until they need a lawyer. :rolleyes:
Not made up out of the whole cloth at all. Just conveying what my friends have said. It may vary by jurisdiction and by the nature of the caseload, so I’m perfectly willing to believe what you say about your husband’s experience. And, as noted, they all have working relationships in which they are cordial to their adversaries as need be.
Also should have conveyed that my comments pertained to defense lawyers who made their living from fees or state-paid subsidies. My friends had a very different take on legal aid lawyers, whom they saw as honest, idealistic, deluded, and paradoxically much harder to deal with because they actually cared more about their clients and would never cut a deal.
I’d rather the attorneys respect each other and the practice of law itself (and fairness and even-handedness, etc) more than they’re invested in a partisan desire for their side to win always, than the other way around.
If the partisanship is first and foremost, corruption and dirty tricks and “win at all costs” approaches will increase and fairness in trials shrink.
Most of my experience is in rural/small town areas. Prosecutors and defense lawyers are rivals…but usually friendly rivals. Try a case or twenty against a guy, and as long as he’s not a total asshole, a certain level of mutual respect develops. Yeah, in court, we try our cases to the best of our abilities…but outside of court, there’s very little personal animosity.
Criminal defense attorney here. I get along great with all of our local DA’s, and am close enough with a few of them to have them over to my house for dinner or go out and have a drink with them. It’s kind of like being on a high school basketball team and having a friend who plays for the crosstown rival. While you’re on the court you’re going to try your damndest to win, but after the game you can be friends. Every once in a while things might get a little heated in court and you might get irritated with one another, but you both blow it off by the next day.
There are plenty of defense lawyers that they don’t have a high opinion of, and in some cases I share that opinion of those same lawyers because I have to deal with them in civil cases. I generally avoid not being held in low regard by the DA’s by simply not lying to them, jerking them around, or treating them like assholes. Just that alone goes a long way towards good relations.
In my experience as a PD, most of the prosecutors (known in my state as “Assistant Commonwealth Attorney”) were reasonably decent sorts, and a drink at the evening gathering was certainly not unheard of.
There was a small number of prosecutors that I found myself disliking immensely on a pesonal level, though, and it was because they treated the cases personally, almost self-righteously. You want to hold a hard line and not offer a deal because you think you have a strong case? Fine; that’s what the system is for. And you want to hold the line because the accused is a multiple-repeat-offender? OK, makes sense. But these guys would hold the line on a first-offense 18-year-old whose real “crime” was having a scumbag boyfriend… to “teach her a lesson.” When you know your case won’t stand up at trial, but you still oppose low bail because “even if we lose at trial, at least she’ll have six months of county confinement to learn a lesson…”
THAT kind of thinking made me lose personal respect. It was rare, but damn if there wasn’t at least one in every single county I practiced in.
I usually see it the other way around. A lawyer who cares about the welfare of his client might have to encourage the client to take a deal if he knows that the evidence against him is pretty bad and that he’s likely to get hammered in punishment, while a shadier lawyer might encourage the client to turn all offers down and might misrepresent the client’s chances of winning because he knows a jury trial will make him more money than working out a plea agreement will.
Come to think of it, I actually know one of those as well, a couple of counties over. On a personal crusade and talks to me like I’m a dog. She’s the exception, though.
). The problem is assuming that Law and Order is like real life. Ignoring the possibility that New York is specifically and uniquely different from other jurisdictions, the TV show ramps up the displays of personal hostility for dramatic effect. Emotional boilovers don’t work - in RL, the profession (and judges and juries) value being careful and clinical much more than being melodramatic.