Member Article

Interpersonal Skills for Important Lawyers

Having been a paralegal for 12 years, I have encountered every different kind of lawyer you can imagine. None sticks out in my memory more than the important lawyers. I moved to California around 4 years ago, and I promise you California is full of some of the most important lawyers you will ever meet. The thing which stuck out most was not the fact that they lawyer was “important”, or that they were rich, or even that they were often crazy.

The thing that stuck out the most was the fact that they lacked such interpersonal skills. The issue is that most lawyers will go from School, university, law school bar exam, office. Their whole life they will be surrounded by other potential lawyers and then finally surrounded by other lawyers. As a result of this you will find that most important lawyers will have some bad interpersonal skills.

This situation is made even worse by the fact that when they begin their work life they will very rarely leave the office and actually socialize with people. Ever heard the age old maxim “never marry a lawyer” now you know why. Of course I am not suggesting that lawyers don’t have a social life at all, some lawyers I know will have amazing social lives.

However there is no way that I would ever call them “important”. Actually, some of the most social lawyers I know never actually planned to become lawyers when they were growing up, they were in totally different fields such as being a paralegal, clerk, office administrator and then decided to move into law after they passed the bar. These people will often have good solid personal skills because they will have had exposure to the “real world”. Of course, there is another element that comes with being an important lawyer and that is the money aspect.

On average in California and New York an attorney will make over a hundred thousand dollars a year, for people like you and me that’s a serious amount of cash. Because important lawyers will make that much money, they will do what all people who have a large amount of money do and that is turn into the self righteous idiots that people with too much money become (sorry, its true, i’m yet to meet an amazing person with a huge amount of money).

Finally, there is the courtroom element. Important lawyers will end up working in important cases that will at the end of the day end up in a courtroom. Because they lawyer will get to pick a jury, argue with a judge and fight against other important lawyers, if they win or lose they still end up walking away feeling like a winner (obviously this is made worse if they win).

There is nothing more self loving than an important lawyer, making a huge amount of money, winning big cases. If you take all of these facts and add them together you can quite quickly paint a picture of how important lawyers can lose their social ability around people that don’t work in the field and lose their interpersonal skills.

If a lawyer wants to rebuild their interpersonal skills it is the easiest thing in the world, they should start by getting to know their staff, who are not lawyers or highly paid, and spend time with them. They will see how we interact as people who are not lawyers and more importantly they should observe how we communicate.

Additionally, if a lawyer is looking for good interpersonal skills they should date lots, there is nothing like the baptism of fire that humbles people down and makes them learn interpersonal skills quickly like a handful of failed dates. If all else fails, they should do what everyone else does and spend time online chatting with people to make friend omitting their occupation.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jennifer Roberts .