The Paradox of Professional Rivalry: Why Lawyers Don�t Always Like Other Lawyers

• Publication year: 2023
• Pages: 20

The Paradox of Professional Rivalry: Why Lawyers Don't Always Like Other Lawyers Vol. 52, No. 9 [Page 20] Colorado Lawyer November 2023

DEPARTMENT | MENTORING MATTERS

Why Lawyers Don’t Always Like Other Lawyers

BY J. RYANN PEYTON

While lawyers are united by a shared commitment to justice, they are not immune to the age-old paradox: lawyers don't always like other lawyers. This intriguing phenomenon is deeply rooted in the adversarial nature of the legal profession, which places lawyers at odds with their own kind. Although professional sparring is an anticipated demand of lawyering, the line between zealous advocacy and personal attack is frequently blurred. It is not uncommon to hear stories of harassment, shouting, and lambasting from one lawyer to another. This type of behavior is frequently not admonished by judges, decision-makers, legal employers, and regulators, leaving lawyers to process and respond to such abusive behavior on their own.

Many seek to explain this behavior through the simple narrative that all lawyers are unhappy, or the practice of law is a soul-sucking endeavor. However, this lens is inaccurate and unhelpful, as many happy, thriving lawyers still encounter the paradox of professional rivalry and its effect on their relationship with other lawyers. This paradox not only gets in the way of professional relationship building, but also undermines opportunities for mentoring, good role modeling, and socializing new lawyers into the profession.

The legal profession is layered with paradoxes that keep lawyers from authentically connecting and communicating with one another. In better understanding these paradoxes, lawyers can strive to bridge the gaps that hinder genuine connections and foster more effective communication within the legal community.

The Paradox of Professionalism

The legal profession is often hailed as a bastion of professionalism, characterized by strict adherence to ethical standards, unwavering commitment to clients, and an unyielding dedication to justice. Yet beneath this seemingly impenetrable veneer of professional conduct lies a complex paradox that lawyers must navigate daily. This paradox creates unique challenges that can sometimes hinder authentic connections and effective communication among lawyers.

Coined by Sunita Sah, the "professionalism paradox" illuminates a dark side of professionalism that can lead those most bound by professionalism standards to have the least underlying principles and values to meet those standards.^[1] This is the difference between what Sah calls "deep" and "shallow" professionalism. Deep and shallow professionalism represent different understandings of what constitutes professional behavior and what is needed to enact it. A "shallow" understanding of professionalism is demonstrated by a belief that one's ability to self-regulate is sufficient to counteract the influence of stressors, emotions, and conflicts of interest on a person's professional behavior.^[2]A "deep" understanding of professionalism, on the other hand, involves both an awareness of one's fallibility and corresponding consistent professional behavioral practices.^[3] Sah's research has found that a high self-concept of professionalism, such as that found in lawyers and legal professionals, often goes hand-in-hand with a shallow understanding of what professionalism means and serves the belief that one is resilient to unwanted influence on professional behavior.^[4]

The legal profession is anchored in principles of professionalism, which...