U.S. State Government Lawyers’ Goals and Communicative Practices for Advising Lawmakers About Proposed Laws: A Goals-Plans-Action Study

When a lawyer pursues multiple communication goals at once, how do those goals relate to each other and influence the lawyer’s communicative practices? This paper addresses this question by applying Dillard’s (2004) goals-plans-action (GPA) model of communication to attorney-client communication.That lawyers simultaneously pursue multiple communication goals has been posited in previous studies (Archer, 2008, 2011a, 2011c; Cecconi, 2011; Johnson & Clifford, 2011; Penman, 1990). Dillard’s (2004) GPA model is well suited to analyzing lawyers’ communication because it explains how an individual’s multiple, conflicting goals influence his or her communicative behaviors (Wilson et al., 2000). Yet no previous study appears to have applied the GPA model to lawyers’ communication.This paper addresses this gap in the literature by applying the GPA model to U.S. state government lawyers’ communication with lawmaker-clients regarding proposed legislation or regulations. From published accounts of such communication, four goals (enabling lawmakers to make an informed decision, informing lawmakers about the policy objectives of a proposed law, complying with laws and policies applicable to the counseling interaction, and maintaining impartiality) and 15 features of communication (11 topics, 3 functions, and the narrative discursive mode) were chosen for examination in this study.Survey responses regarding these goals and features of communication from a representative sample of lawyers from U.S. state governmental law offices (N = 226) were analyzed through factor analysis, comparisons of means, and structural-equation models. Results indicated that lawyers generally rated all four goals as important -- though the goal of enabling informed decision making was rated as significantly more important than the other goals -- and lawyers reported including most of the features of communication (12 of the 15 features) more often than not in their communicative practices. Results were generally consistent with the predictions of the GPA model. Goals had a two-tier structure, all features of communication were significantly associated with at least one goal, and goals had conflicting associations with several features of communication (i.e., with each of those features of communication, at least one goal had a significant positive association and at least one goal had a significant negative association). The analysis suggests that such conflicts between goals may inhibit government lawyers from using certain communication practices that can aid clients.In addition, significant differences were found between lawyers working in different branches of government: Legislative counsel reported using several features of communication significantly less often than did executive-branch lawyers. Regional differences were also identified: Lawyers from northeastern states rated the goal of enabling informed decision making as significantly more important than did lawyers from southern states, and northeastern lawyers reported using several features of communication significantly more often than did lawyers in other regions. These results are to some extent consistent with research finding regionally based ideological differences between U.S. lawyers (Bonica, Chilton, & Sen, in press), and research identifying long-term influences on political cognition and behavior of distinctive regional political cultures and institutions in the U.S. (Acharya, Blackwell, & Sen, 2015).Moreover, results suggest that the GPA model may be usefully applied to legal communication in other contexts, such as litigation, negotiation, and attorney-client communication outside of government.