Defending People

the art and science of criminal defense trial lawyering

Resiliency

I wrote here about the mind of the criminal defense lawyer. Today I realized I left a major point out.

In reading law practice management blogs, I happened on this post by Ed at LawBiz Blog, explaining that, according to a JD/psychologist, lawyers can’t “sell” because they have little or no “resiliency, or fast rebounding from setbacks.” He goes on to write:

Lawyers will be defensive, get their feelings hurt easily when someone says “no” to them or criticizes them, and are quick to justify their actions.

As is often true of generalizations about lawyers, this probably doesn’t quite apply to criminal defense lawyers. Not only are defenders not easily embarrassed, but they are also very resilient. Any lawyer who can’t get his butt handed to him in trial on Tuesday afternoon and be back fighting again on Wednesday morning has no business defending people.

So does our resiliency make us better able to “sell”? In some circumstances, sure — recall the judge’s comment about “trying, and trying, and trying” in this post — but overall, I think not. Ed is talking about lawyers marketing themselves. I don’t think criminal defense lawyers are any better at that than other sorts of lawyers. I don’t know why that is, but it’s not for want of resiliency.

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This entry was posted by Mark Bennett on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About The Author

Mark Bennett
Mark Bennett got his letter of marque from the Supreme Court of Texas in May 1995. He is famous for having no sense of humor when it comes to totalitarianism.

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