The art and science of selecting an attorney to defend yourself in court can be as problematic as selecting a student for your Law school. Those in need of legal services and those who operate Law schools face many of the same challenges, such as predicting success in the profession and in identifying those lawyerly attributes and traits that correlate with effectiveness in the legal system. Now, a six-year study by Marjorie Shultz, Professor of Law at the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, and Sheldon Zedeck Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, has put forth 26 factors that contribute to good lawyering, viz-
Analysis and Reasoning, Creativity/Innovation, Practical Judgment, Researching the Law, Passion and Engagement, Questioning and Interviewing, Influencing and Advocating, Writing, Speaking, Integrity/Honesty, Able to See the World Through the Eyes of Others, Self-Development, Organizing and Managing Others, Negotiation Skills, Networking and Business Development, Building Client Relationship and Providing Advice and Counsel, Organizing and Managing (Own) Work, Developing Relationships, Evaluation, Development and Mentoring, Problem Solving, Stress Management, Fact Finding, Diligence, Listening, Community Involvement and Service, Strategic Planning.
While the above is an interesting and comprehensive list of factors that can predict success, it seems far too generic and far-ranging and universal a compilation to be useful. It’s difficult to believe that the authors spent a total of six years in compiling this list. Shultz and Zedeck plan to spend even more time to further refine these 26 factors into a test that can replace the current LSAT-based system, which in their view merely predicts law school performance, and does so poorly at best.
Others, who have also studied “lawyer personality traits”, come up with different lists of factors. One such list puts forth the claim that, compared to the general public, lawyers are far more skeptical, have a higher sense of urgency, are less sociable and more autonomous. That list also goes on to state that compared to ‘ordinary’ lawyers, so-called ’super’ lawyers are characterized by a high ego drive, more empathy with others and a high degree of resilience. In their view, the most significant factor in the making of a super lawyer is the aforementioned ego drive, which translates into a propensity to view “argument as sport”.
Still other psychometric tests with lawyerly ambitions include the 16PF Questionnaire, MBTI, and FIRO-B. With MBTI, for example, lawyers tend to cluster in the four corners labeled ISTJ, INTJ, ENTJ and ESTJ, while others end up in ENTP, which implies the designee is Extroverted, iNtuitive, Thinking and Perceiving. The flaw in all of these intra-paragraph devices is that they rely on autoethnography. Test takers can game the system by the simple expedient of providing the desired answer instead of the true answer. If you wish to be deemed a Thinker, as lawyers are wont to do, then simply disagree with psychometric statements that resemble the following:”You make decisions to create harmony by applying person centered values”.
The current LSAT is heavily weighted towards logical reasoning, analytical reasoning and reading comprehension. Shultz and Zedeck propose to change that model by symbolically devaluing reasoning in favor of softer skills such as empathy, compassion, mentoring and harmony. A reductio ad absurdum of their approach would have us replace the adversarial system with a network of arbitrators, negotiators, grief counselors and psychologists.
But back to the matter at hand…how to find a good lawyer. Unfortunately, whatever system is in place for identifying good lawyers and law students with good potential, privacy matters will virtually guarantee that the associated data will constitute a system of hidden variables from the perspective of consumers of legal services. Lawyer’s test scores, school grades, grade point averages, class rankings, extra-curricular activities, HR evaluation reports, in-court win-lose ratios will be unavailable, so one surmises that ‘word of mouth’ will continue to be the mainstay of finding a good lawyer. That should be seconded by ascertaining which short-listed lawyers were on the debate team in school, and who also appear to be egotists.
[For a compendium of anti-lawyer sentiments, please consult Predators and Parasites: Lawyer-Bashing and Civil Justice. The article nicely dissects dislike of lawyers into four main groupings viz (1) Corrupters of discourse; (2) Fomenters of strife; (3) Betrayers of trust; and (4) Economic predators. The piece is a kind of preemptive strike against those with Shakespearean ambitions, is written by a lawyer, provides rebuttals and so effectively predates against narcissistic meanderings such as "The legal system discomfits by reducing life to a series of transactions in a kind of barter system wherein we are all consigned to be buyers and sellers in a marketplace that hovers between truth and justice, an artificial construct whose machinations are just beyond our purview and entrusted to mandarins".]
What Makes for Good Lawyering? – Boalt Hall Transcript, Summer 2005: Vol. 38 No. 2
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