Court Opinion

ID: 9552443
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:10:45.280988+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:26:26.707656
License: Public Domain

PETERSON, J.,
concurring.
The court’s opinion should be required reading for every lawyer, for almost every practicing lawyer becomes involved in situations which create pressures and stresses akin to those which are present in this case.
The scenario is not unusual. A strong-willed, competent client (in this case, a retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel). An intelligent, successful attorney, highly trained in the subject matter involved in the matter at hand. An unsuccessful result. Inability of the lawyer to bring himself to do comparatively simple work which he was trained to do and was capable of doing, and which had to be done. And finally, inability of the lawyer to ask for help.
Almost every lawyer — almost every person, for that matter — encounters similar situations at one time or another. The nonlawyer may lose a job. The lawyer may lose a license to practice law. How can the lawyer recognize the danger signals? What should the lawyer do?
If a lawyer is in a group practice, opportunity exists for discussing the problem with associates.1 The sole practitioner sometimes has no ear to bend, no ready assistance and no sympathetic counsel. Of course, the file can be referred to another lawyer. But this case proves that that alternative, for inexplicable reasons, is not always followed. Often it is not.
The lawyer-client relationship is a complex one. Lawyers are trained to exclude emotional considerations from their analysis of most cases. Yet relations between a lawyer and a client involve the same type of emotional considerations as in many other interpersonal relationships and require highly developed communications skills. *814Lawyers must be alert to the emotions involved in practicing law. In a provocative article, Andrew Watson states:
“* * * While it is true that emotions can grossly disrupt rationality, it is also a fundamental fact of psychological life that to ignore the existence of emotions is itself irrational. It is crucial that professionals who deal with people and their passions be able to react properly to such passions without creating behavior inconsistent with professionally accepted aims and actions. To ignore the enemy is not to defeat him.” A. Watson, Lawyers and Professionalism: A Further Psychiatric Perspective on Legal Education, 8 U Mich J L Ref 248, 252 (1975).
Unfortunately, few lawyers are trained to detect the existence of a deteriorating client relationship or to discuss the causes of the problem.
“Like law students, until very recently no medical student was told how important his interaction with a patient could be or how to communicate more effectively with the patient. Most still are not told. Senator Ribicoff recounts asking a professor of internal medicine what in his view was the single greatest flaw in American medical education. He replied, ‘We never teach our students the most important part of medicine. We never teach them what it’s like to be a patient. So they go out into practice not knowing what patients really need and why they are so upset with us.’ Medical students, he said, rarely learn what medicine looks like from the bottom up because their professors make little effort to leave the ivory tower. The same thing is substantially true of most law students and professors.” A. Smith and P. Nester, Lawyers, Clients, and Communication Skill, BYU L Rev 275, 325 (1977).
Smith and Nester claim that the best place to develop lawyer-client communication skills is in the law school. Id. at 324. Mr. Watson echoes that view:
“Because law students do not habitually conceptualize their future roles as lawyer-professionals, those who teach them how to behave as lawyers become extremely important in the ultimate shaping process. It thus borders on irresponsibility to leave the professionalizing process to the random adventitious experiences of post-law school encounters. It is critical then that legal educators avoid reinforcement of inappropriate lawyer behavior and avidly grasp every opportunity to reinforce positively those behaviors which are vital to effective and appropriate professional practice. For example, a law teacher who *815discourages, makes light of, or ignores the multitude of practical problems about law practice that constantly press into a law student’s consciousness only reinforces his belief that issues about lawyer-client relationships are unimportant and of secondary consequence. If the faculty attitude toward professionalism were to be rejected by students, so, too, might others of the precepts they teach be seriously challenged. Consequently, ideas about professional behavior gathered from practicing lawyers will be eagerly grasped and emulated by the student, even when such practices border on unethical behavior. Because of this intensely felt psychological need for appropriate models, all learning experiences, both in and out of law school, will vitally affect the ultimate behavior and character-shaping of every law student and young lawyer.” A. Watson, Lawyers and Professionalism: A Further Psychiatric Perspective on Legal Education, 8 U Mich J L Ref 248, 250-251 (1975). (Footnotes omitted.)
Over the years I have seen a host of intelligent, capable lawyers get into trouble because of their inability to recognize and resolve problems such as faced Loew in this case. I am not trained or skilled in psychological matters. The psychiatrist who testified for Mr. Loew in this case stated, “* * * [0]ne of the behavior skills that [one in Loew’s position lacks] is the ability to go to somebody or anyone and ask for help, seek support when you’re feeling like you’re getting a little bit overwhelmed. * * *” One thing seems to be clear: The lawyer in that situation often is incapable or unwilling to face the problem (courts rarely say which, usually because the record lacks expert testimony such as we have in this case) and has lost the ability to discuss the problem with anyone, including the client.2
*816The problem is complex. The decision as to the appropriate sanction in such cases is more difficult because the lawyer’s motivation is different from that of the lawyer who steals or lies to obtain advantage. But the need for protection of the public and integrity in the administration of justice is as great as that which exists in the case of dishonest lawyers.

 Ronald E. Mallen, in “Legal Malpractice,” § 14, 32 (1977) points out:
“The interaction between attorneys within a firm can be an important factor in preventing malpractice. Without suggesting a catharsis, it can be helpful for attorneys to share with each other the types of errors they have made, the reasons the errors occurred, and the solutions (if any) which were found. * * *”

 “Many lawyers and clients are reluctant to engage in mutual discussion about the dynamics of their relationship. This kind of discussion — requiring a skill that many lawyers lack — has been referred to as ‘immediacy.’ Immediacy as a communicative technique can be useful to both lawyer and client.
“A lawyer may find an immediacy discussion useful when he senses that unmentioned thoughts and feelings of the client are affecting the client’s behavior and getting in the way of success. Such thoughts and feelings may simply reflect differences of style between the lawyer and the client, or they can result from mistrust. Both lawyer and client may experience interpersonal difficulties and immediacy may be useful in reducing these problems.” A. Smith and P. Nester, Lawyers, Clients, and Communication Skill, BYU L Rev 275, 318-319 (1977). (Footnote omitted.)
See also, C. Kelso, Conflict, Emotion, and Legal Ethics, 10 Pac L J 69 (1979).