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Sorry, Jerry Springer turned down our offer.

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In Reply to: Re: Oh, and I promise no more boring legal posts posted by Audio Fan on June 26, 2000 at 17:58:09:

Pay was too low.

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Gerry Springer? Audio fan 08:29:16 06/27/00 (1)
I can't watch Gerry Springer. Too scary!
Hey, did you know he's a lawyer? I think his is the perfect job for someone with training in the adverserial legal system. The point of the Gerry Springer show is to provoke and intensify conflict. And that is exactly what I've experienced every time a lawyer gets involved in my personal or business life. I've noticed that parties immediately start to move apart as soon as someone involves a lawyer.
IMO there are personality traits that certain disciplines foster. In the legal profession, I think one of the traits that gets taught and reinforced is a combative negotiating style. What do you guys think?
- combative PaulN 09:42:01 06/27/00 (0)
  Most lawyers are competitive by nature. If you want to call that combative so be it. The two are not mutually exclusive. The American legal system is designed to be adversarial, so you better hope that your attorney is competitive and wants to win for winnings sake. Sometimes though, a lawyers job is counselor, and in this role a lawyer may cousel that winning may not really be winning. For example, you may win custody and have a child that hates you for it, is this really winning?
  But mediators are often lawyers too. The job of a mediator is to help two parties with a conflict to resolve it. Often the resolution involves exchanging feelings or emotional aspects of the conflict, which for many is more important to the resolution than the actual terms. This requires a steady, thick skinned and non-combative person to hold things together.
  Legal tactics can involve hard negotiating, and this is usually a function of the personality of the lawyer more than anything, but the real job of lawyers is to help people resolve their conflicts, not to create them. If your experience is that the presence of a lawyer results in division, then I would say that you were unaware of the preexisting conflict, but that it most certainly already existed at a different or hidden level you didn't see.
  FYI, in lawschool these days Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is the preferred curriculum. The combative style is not taught, nor reinforced; quite the opposite in fact.

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