37 Comments - Laura - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 6:44 am: The problem is that many, many clients want an aggressive attorney and many attorneys seem amenable to playing that role to get/retain clients. The loud, aggressive lawyer is, in almost all instances, not the best or most effective lawyer. The general public - and sophisticated clients - don’t know or care about that, unfortunately, and TV shows and movies reinforce this view. Kudos to those trying to inject civility into the legal profession, however, this is a much larger societal issue. - Flyin'Elvis'-Utah Chapter - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 7:25 am: Forced to work with lawyers many times during my career in law enforcement. There were some good people there, however, the profession is tailor made for aggressive, Type A egos. To get a lawyer to admit mistakes is to reverse the rotation of the Earth. - Gravitas - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 7:31 am: The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois needs to be proactive and step up its game considerably. Too often, the Commission simply ignores requests for investigations of lawyers and only wants to pursue easier matters. - Stephanie Kollmann - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 7:42 am: ==the profession is tailor made for aggressive, Type A egos== interesting cast-the-first-stone approach, ha - Stephanie Kollmann - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 7:43 am: Bullying is so pervasive that there are still law faculty who believe that if you’re not bullying students, you’re not preparing them for practice. - Excitable Boy - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 7:48 am: I’m not a lawyer and can’t say I’ve been a victim of bullying, but I’ve seen it plenty. It’s always seemed to me that management is as afraid of the bully as their victim is. I’ve also seen employees quit who weren’t the victims of bullying but didn’t like the toxic environment. This is something that needs to be nipped in the bud the first time it happens. - Occasionally Moderated. - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 7:55 am: ”Pay me. I’ll shamelessly act any way the client wants, I’ll say anything the client wants me to say, and then earnestly claim the client deserves a vigorous defense like it somehow serves justice.” - Yellow Dog Democrat - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 8:05 am: === just think of the crazy number of attorneys who said they’ve been bullied. === Unfortunately those figures are pretty much in line with self-reported workplace abuse in the private sector. In the wake of scandal, the legislature enacted reforms to address workplace abuse in the Legislative Branch. Kudos to the Judicial Branch for making a critical self-examination, and hopefully making similar steps forward. According to research, workplace abuse is a common means for low-performing workers to impede, undermine and drive out high-performers, who threaten their career advancement, power and influence. We all benefit from curtailing abusive workplace behavior. - Larry Bowa Jr. - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 8:17 am: “workplace abuse is a common means for low-performing workers to impede, undermine and drive out high-performers, who threaten their career advancement, power and influence” This is the last managing attorney I worked for. Others got it much worse than I did. Mine and my family’s quality of life improved 1000% when I stopped practicing law. - H-W - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 8:44 am: Just as a statistical aside, the fact that the overall pattern is 18%, and yet the percentage for white lawyers is 23%, suggests that ethnic minorities are also significantly under-represented in the legal profession. That they are under-represented and yet have higher rates that white lawyers, suggest not only that fewer minorities are completing law school (relative to whites), but bullying along race lines may well be a contributing factor to their under-representation. It would be interesting to see a follow-up along those lines, because if so, it would point to latent racial discrimination in the practice. - Socially DIstant watcher - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 8:56 am: The legal profession has done an admirable if imperfect job of addressing substance abuse by professionals. I hope they address this with the same or greater determination. - Flyin'Elvis'-Utah Chapter - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 8:58 am: “interesting cast-the-first-stone approach,” Sure. I’m the only person who has that opinion of lawyers. - Anyone Remember - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 9:09 am: This is far bigger than lawyers (&, based upon comments, law enforcement). In my experience, the very worst are incompetent patronage hires as managers. - TJ - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 9:15 am: I hate to say it, but this is only a surprise if you haven’t really talked to younger, minority, and women attorneys. This is an absolutely endemic problem and extends beyond bullying, but of general jackassery by a load of the bar to their colleagues when they think they can get away with it. There are a lot of incompetent and lazy attorneys out there that love to absolutely rip younger, non-white, and women attorneys every which way to cover their own tracks. If a random black female attorney committed as much as a tenth of the mistakes that I’ve heard levied against some of these bozos, they’d be the first on the charge to have them disbarred over it. - HSI - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 9:21 am: I’m shocked — shocked — to find that gambling is going on in here. No one who is in court rooms on a regular basis is astonished or shocked. The level of decorum has steadily declined since my first appearance as a witness for the State in the 90’s. Being in a fed courtroom is always a breath of fresh air. - Captain Obvious - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 9:27 am: Have you met many lawyers? In a former career spanning over 30 years I encountered and worked with literally hundreds of them. I will only say I was dissuaded from going to law school by the apparently mandatory personality transplant generally performed by a proctologist. So this story is completely on point with my experience. And if you think they bully other lawyers you should see how they treat non lawyers they work with… - Amalia - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 10:04 am: Don’t doubt that the profession has bullying. stories of firms and clerks and associates and partners abound. But. I wonder (and not just on this topic) about younger people and the need for walking on eggshells around them. giving space, micro aggressions, all talked about so frequently. will read further to see about opinions by age. - AlfondoGonz - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 10:13 am: I’ve been a practicing attorney for 9 years now. I’ve spent the lion’s share of that almost-decade in criminal courts. Because the findings sort by race/gender, I suppose I should note I am a white male. I’d be interested to know more about what type of behavior the bullied lawyers consider bullying. Inherent to our adversarial system is dispute; some attorneys certainly posture more aggressively than I should think is required to be a fierce or effective advocate. I guess I’m having a hard time imagining feeling bullied by another lawyer. I say this not in any way to dismiss the perspectives of those who have felt bullied. I guess I would chalk up most bullying-type behavior as overzealous advocacy. Judges bullying lawyers, however, is common-place. - yinn - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 10:27 am: As an elected officer of a local unit of government, I became the target for several types of bullying, including intimidation and exclusionary tactics from “colleagues” on the inside. Unfortunately, when media got wind of the situation they framed it as a “feud,” either not understanding or not caring about the power imbalance at play. I finished the term of office but know the culture there that allows bullying and sexual harassment continues with impunity to this day. - yinn - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 10:44 am: Forgot to add: the attorneys were/are always complicit. - @misterjayem - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 11:00 am: “Lawyers being bullied should respond in the way they feel best safeguards their rights, well-being, and career.” tl;dr- Good luck. – MrJM - Lurker - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 11:00 am: Have you talked to attorneys in social settings, especially if they’ve had too many drinks? Bullying is there normal go to in my experience. None of this shocks me. - Reporter math - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 11:04 am: Bullying is a serious workplace issue and this is an interesting report exploring its unfortunate presence in the legal profession. However, I would urge everyone to do the math. 6,000 respondents. 18 percent said they left a job because of bullying. That does NOT mean 10,000 lawyers left jobs because of bullying. It means nearly 1,100 left jobs. Any bullying is too much, but the media report has the math wrong. If there had been 60,000 respondents then 18 percent would equal more than 10,000. According to the ARDC 2023 annual report, there are 65,515 active registered lawyers located in Illinois. (96,440 total active/inactive registered in Illinois). And if you click on the actual study and press release, it refers to a study of just over 6,000 respondents. - Anon324 - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 11:31 am: ==Sure. I’m the only person who has that opinion of lawyers.== I don’t think that was her point. She wasn’t saying you’re wrong, just that it’s ironic that someone who admits to living in a glass house would choose to throw stones. - Beep booop - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 11:56 am: How does this compare to other professions? - Rich Miller - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 12:02 pm: ===How does this compare=== Ever heard of Google? Also, we’re talking about attorneys on this post. It looks like you could be deliberately trying to derail the conversation or undermine the premise. Save it. - JoanP - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 12:08 pm: Honestly, I am surprised. I practiced criminal law for 35 years. When I was in law school, you could count the number of women in my class on one hand (me included). And I have to say that I agree with AlfondoGonz that most bullying comes from judges. And they are equal opportunity bullies. They bully lawyers of whatever gender or race. They bully defendants. They bully prosecutors and defense lawyers. But I rarely saw any bullying from other lawyers. Maybe things have changed since retired a decade ago. - Suburban Mom - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 12:18 pm: I asked the IARDC and the Supreme Court’s professionalism person if they had ever considered an option to allow attorneys who were being stalked or harassed to hide their registration on the ARDC’s website, or at least any parts of it that a stalker could use to stalk or harass the attorney. They didn’t even bother responding. I have a phone number I can’t use for anything but the IARDC because they force you to display a phone number and my stalker just calls that number allllllllll day long. - Beep booop - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 12:32 pm: Geez, now who’s being bullied. - ChicagoR - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 1:06 pm: I want to meet the 3% of heterosexual lawyers who say they were bullied for being heterosexual. (I say this as a gay lawyer who has never been bullied for being gay.) In what context does that happen? - H-W - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 2:57 pm: @ Reporter Math If the study was done using a sampling frame, rather than the entire population of lawyers, then we can generalize from the the study of 6000 randomly selected lawyers that the 18% figure applies to the population, not just the same respondents. The study itself says “the Survey was emailed to 55,295 lawyers, all of whom were registered as active in 2023.” So it seems the entire populations was surveyed (censused, actually). The report also says 6010 lawyers responded. So that means the response rate was just under 11%. Alternatively, 89% of the lawyers did not return the survey. This is a pretty low response rate, but it does not mean that 89% did not experience bullying - it means they did not care to participate in the study. We can conclude that of those who did participate, 18% report having left a employer because they were bullied. Recall that in order to participate, these respondents are still lawyers. To your point, that 18% of the participants indicate that they were bullied, we can generally conclude that that rate applies closely to the the rate of bullying among those who did not respond, unless there is reason to believe those who did and those who did not are fundamentally different groups of lawyers. I would guess because of the low response rate, there is a little measurement error, but not much. Perhaps 15-20% of all lawyers experience bullying first hand, similar to the sample (subset) of lawyers responding. - Laura - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 3:16 pm: ==I want to meet the 3% of heterosexual lawyers who say they were bullied for being heterosexual. (I say this as a gay lawyer who has never been bullied for being gay.) In what context does that happen?== This seems insensitive, intimidating, close minded and perhaps a step away from a bullying statement…remember, you can’t exclude folks from a bullying policy based on race, gender, etc. - Dotnonymous x - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 4:55 pm: - Beep booop - Geez, now who’s being bullied. - A manipulative bully who feels threatened by being identified? - Yellow Dog Democrat - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 5:52 pm: Laura is correct. Read what I wrote before. Workplace abuse is about power, not about gender identity or sexual preference. A woman who is managing partner can be just as abusive as a man, if she thinks it will help her career. How do we stop it? This part is important: === Only 20% of bullied attorneys reported the bullying behavior to a supervisor, human resources manager, or upper-level attorney. Common reasons for not reporting the bullying include not wanting to be perceived as weak or a “complainer” (34%), fear of the bully’s status (27%), the belief that the employer would not take action (27%), or concerns about the loss of work or their job (16%) === The Judicial, Legislative and Administrative Branches could send a clear message to all that workplace abuse/bullying is not tolerated by sharing information about how many complaints they recieve regarding workplace abuse, how many were founded, and what action was taken. When employees see that their workplace takes abusive behavior seriously, the abuse will stop, and not before. - H-W - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 8:11 pm: Well said, Laura. - Candy Dogood - Wednesday, Oct 9, 24 @ 9:35 pm: ===According to research, workplace abuse is a common means for low-performing workers to impede, undermine and drive out high-performers, who threaten their career advancement, power and influence. We all benefit from curtailing abusive workplace behavior. === Especially in government. Especially in government. - sal-says - Thursday, Oct 10, 24 @ 10:14 am: Seems like another breakdown of civilization. Sad & scary. TrackBack URI Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.