Lots of talk these days for the need for lawyers to be emphatic. To work on practicing empathy. To be more emphatic toward others. Usually, this is couched in terms of being able to better serve and relate to clients, and their needs and concerns, all of which is true enough. But there’s another more practical side to empathy for lawyers that’s also pretty valuable.
I stumbled upon this recently when a good friend said to me, “not sure how you were so successful as a lawyer, you’re such a nice guy.” (She was a little less direct than that, but I got the thrust). Ignoring for the moment that the idea that being a good/successful lawyer requires you to be an asshole, her comment did get me thinking about why I was so successful for so long while still being thought of as a reasonably nice person (well, at least by most).
After thinking about it, I decided that one reason I succeeded was that I was pretty adept at putting myself in other people’s shoes. Not just clients, but my adversaries and their clients as well. And this didn’t always mean pleasant, touchy-feely conclusions. It often meant seeing the more base and unpleasant motivations like greed, pride, underhandedness. The more I thought about my career and the careers of other successful lawyers, the more I have come to see that the ability to understand these motivations and to be able to manipulate them is a pretty critical skill for a lawyer.
This kind of empathy is called cognitive empathy. But it has a dark side which I believe was what my friend was getting at. Cognitive empathy ultimately leads you to always look for and expect the worst in people. It frankly turns you by
