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Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney.
and where we make the practice of law fun. Now, today we’re going to take a look at handling difficult opposing counsel.
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Scott Benton: Today, in order to help assist your overall use of the success cycle as far as performing legal services goes, we’re gonna take a look at handling difficult opposing counsel.
Getting into law could be an indication that you’re probably someone who likes to argue and win. Now, it’s no secret that courtrooms and mediation rooms are filled with attorneys advocating for their clients, arguing with one another about case law and using every trick in the book to throw off the opposing party to make it difficult for them to achieve their legal goals because some of the cases involve high stakes and because sometimes those cases also involve family members who simply found themselves on opposite sides of the bargaining table.
These conversations can get heated. Contemptuous, embattled, and even [00:02:00] hostile. Emotions can run very high, and they can even break out into fistfights and criminal charges. But, maybe we’ll save that for another podcast episode. The point is that while you might enter a hearing or a trial with a cool and calm demeanor, The opposing counsel that you’ll be negotiating against may not have the same communication style in mind that you do and they might bring a level of aggression or even hostility into the courtroom.
So the question becomes how to handle a difficult opposing counsel and what strategies you need to use to remain professional while navigating a volatile environment and a difficult opposing personality. So to best understand how to handle a difficult opposing counsel, it’s helpful to understand the role of the opposing counsel.
You need to recognize the nature of the legal adversarial system that you’re in, which as the term suggests, is adversarial. That means the opposing counsel’s role is to challenge your [00:03:00] case, although that doesn’t necessarily mean that the process has to be combative. That means that sometimes difficult behavior from opposing counsel is being used as a strategic effort simply to throw you off your game, and can also come from their own frustrations with the case.
And if one aggressive tactic doesn’t work and doesn’t outwardly phase you or knock you off balance, chances are they’re going to double down and try another tactic, but all of it’s designed to accomplish the exact same thing.
It’s designed to get you to crack under pressure and essentially to get you to break character as the cool, calm, and collected professional opposing counsel is determined to be. So it’s not uncommon to have the other side play a lot of dirty tricks intended to hook you.
and draw you in emotionally, which includes personal attacks, or really anything to get you to react. If you’re drawn in emotionally, then they’ve basically won because you’re no [00:04:00] longer focused on the facts of the case or your strategy, even if it’s just momentarily. When you get angry and you visibly react to some personal attack or some kind of strategy that they’re using, Typically, you’re usually worried about striking back in a game of tit for tat and they pull you into that game, but the minute you lose your cool and the minute you become unprofessional, then you’re in a much weaker position than you were when you maintained your state of non reactivity.
So you want to maintain that state of no reaction. The antidote is simply. Not to react. One way you can prime yourself for a non reaction, which is maybe a little unconventional, is to separate your personal emotions from the behavior of the opposing counsel. So imagine yourself as two people. One is a regular person with feelings and emotions who would most likely [00:05:00] react to insults, and then two is an attorney who is only capable of observing behavior and does not respond at all to emotional manipulation of any kind.
So by creating this separation inside of yourself, so to speak, you avoid taking the opposing counsel’s aggression personally, which helps maintain objectivity and an ongoing professional appearance. An amateur, would simply crack under pressure, and they’d crack under pressure fairly quickly. A professional wouldn’t crack under any amount of pressure, and remember that you are a professional, so nothing is going to shake your calm, collected demeanor, and this is something that you can accomplish by simply splitting yourself into two different people, so to speak, and observing the opposing counsel’s behavior from a distance and observing it dispassionately.
This is what a pro does. This is what you need to do. It’s [00:06:00] what sets you apart and it’s what makes you a great attorney and why you’re not going to let yourself get rattled by aggressive, hostile, or unreasonable behavior. But instead you’re going to remain calm.
You’re going to remain composed and you’re going to do this under any circumstances. There’s a lot of power in remaining calm at all times. Remaining your cool can help defuse any pressure that’s beginning to build, such as during the deposition, when you’re keeping your voice calm and measured, even when another attorney raises their voice or they interrupt.
By staying calm, you demonstrate your superior professionalism while keeping the situation completely under control. During these more volatile moments, it’s going to take a lot of focus, but you want to keep the conversation centered on the facts, on the case facts. That’s where your attention belongs.
When the conversation goes off track, you want to shift it back to the case. When opposing counsel gets personal or emotional, you already [00:07:00] know not to react, but rather to once again steer the conversation back to the facts and to the legal arguments that you’re discussing.
So if opposing counsel tries to provoke you with another personal attack, or some irrelevant points, you can simply respond by saying, Let’s focus on the issue at hand and simply bring the discussion back to the case’s main focus one more time.
So remember that because of the nature of the work that you do in the legal profession, that you’re going to encounter opposing counsels occasionally, or maybe even frequently. And you can either take the approach of fighting fire with fire and match the same kind of aggressive behavior that you see that’s going on, or you can exhibit professionalism and you can remain calm, which you may find has even greater benefits than contributing to the hassle.
Utilities that are present in the room and actually intimidates the opposing counsel more so than if you match their intensity. And always keep in mind that professionalism is [00:08:00] not only a legal obligation, it’s also a tool for success in every single case. I’m Scott Betten. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast.
Thank you so much for checking out this episode. If you like this podcast and you’d like to learn a little bit more about us, you can always go to our website, which is classroom2courtroom.com. That’s. Classroom, the number two courtroom. com where you can send us a message to keep in touch with us.
You can even inquire about our seasonal associate programs that we have available for law school students If you like you can apply to come and work with us. And as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe to stay on top of all of our latest episodes. And until next time, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time.
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