An education in client-centered law practice by John Crouch, Esq.
At 42 I am the youngster in this group. I can’t stand arm in arm with Joe Condo upon the pinnacle of the legal profession, nor pass you the baton of public service like Frank Brown, nor dispense the wisdom of Job like Brian Hirsch. But I am just old enough in the law to be able to speak with authority about legal education — that is, about what parts of my education I have found useful in meeting the needs of clients.
Some of my most important education for law practice came from my college summer jobs as a Park Ranger at the monuments in Washington. The work was a lot like what I do in my law office:
My primary mission was to tell people what the government wanted them to know – not trivia like how many bricks were in the monuments, but about Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. I learned to compose and deliver talks without notes, including a 69-second history lesson I gave while driving the elevator up the Washington Monument. Laying aside my cherished Naw’un Vuhginyuh mumble, I learned to project, talk fast, and articulate every sound. I also had to really engage with whoever I was talking to, whatever their age, class, race, etc. — which doesn’t come naturally to most young people. For example, if there’s someone in a wheelchair, you look them in the eye and talk with them, not whoever is pushing them around.
But we also had to tell people whatever they most urgently wanted to know: where’s the bathroom, or a place to eat, and how to drive around Washington — which most people who live there don’t even know. We had to learn fiendishly complex ways of getting around on often unnamed, unmarked roads, then figure out how to effectively communicate them to bewildered, disoriented outlanders.
We also had to enforce laws and regulations, including some that neither I nor the tourists liked. Probably the biggest thing I learned was how to tell people what they didn’t want to hear; but politely, respectfully, and in a way they could understand. Some rangers loved to rush out at tourists, waving their badge-holders, shouting in bureaucratic lingo that meant nothing to the tourists — well, it meant that the rangers were far smarter and more important than the tourists. Lawyers habitually do the same thing, but I have always tried to do the exact opposite.
Enforcement also included dealing with very slippery media people, who would always assure you that they had someone’s permission to do whatever they wanted to do, wherever they wanted to go. That teaches you brutal lessons in how to “trust but verify,” to nail down the specifics, not take things at face value, and not get manipulated, played, or placated with nice-sounding verbiage.
And finally, writing it down. I was already a good writer, but the way I had to write as a Park Ranger completely turned around how I wrote, and made me start thinking a lot more realistically about being a lawyer. In the daily log books we had to record significant incidents and accidents. We had to put down all the relevant facts — and just the facts. None of the literary impressions, analogies, adverbs, exaggerations and streams-of-consciousness that I was so fond of in high school. What we wrote might be introduced as evidence in court, I might be cross examined under oath about it, and it could make the difference in who won a lawsuit, or whether there was a lawsuit in the first place. And printing it in pen, in a book, you had to keep it short, know how you were going to finish before you began, and get it right the first time.
In law school probably the most important classes for everyday law practice were mediation and William & Mary’s Legal Skills program. I learned many skills from mediation that I use with clients and lawyers every day. My most important moment in law school was in a role-play with another student, Bill Pincus. He was the client, I was the lawyer, and there was one question I didn’t ask him: “Why?” By assuming, not asking, why he didn’t want to do what was clearly in his legal interests, I charged ahead with the legal solution I knew was best for him. It would have either ruined his life or gotten me fired, or both. That taught me to always “peel the onion” until I get at the client’s real interests and goals, and to ask “stupid” questions — which often get surprising answers.
William & Mary’s great Legal Skills program was centered around clients, counseling and dispute resolution as the lawyer’s main concerns, with litigation as the small end of the pyramid. That’s the exact opposite of the rest of first-year law school, which trained students to think like appellate judges, not trial lawyers, let alone lawyers who could help clients settle their case or avoid having a case in the first place. Our first big assignment was to meet with the “client”, and try to talk with him in a way that uncovered his real situation and what he might need. (My client, Jon Brownlee, helped me by answering one question with, “It was a … Mr. Herring. Mr. Red Herring.”) The next phase was learning how to settle a case based on the client’s most important interests and goals. I don’t think we went to “court” until second year.
I studied economics in college and had heavy doses of “Law and Economics” in law school. I resisted valiantly, but was dragged kicking and screaming into recognizing how markets work. The economic perspective is crucial for understanding what’s going on in a transaction – i.e., every time I negotiate a settlement. “Law and Economics” is often dismissed as “theoretical,” but it’s the study of the choices people make in their dealings with each other, even within their families. It studies and predicts the real-life effects of public policies and laws.
In college I majored in history, which taught me how to think about how things happen. Or at least, how they don’t happen: history doesn’t move in fixed cycles, nor as inevitable progress. Most things aren’t the result of some conspiracy, or the decisions and decrees of philosopher-kings or legislatures. Many things happen by accident, by unpredictable combinations of events, and good things are often by-products of bad things, and vice versa. And yet people can act to make a difference, even though their success is not entirely in their hands. A great mentor and inspiration to me was my American and environmental history professor, Jack Thomas. He once said, “What you and I are really studying is the people who said, ‘It doesn’t have to be this way!’”
The study of economics and history helps me see what’s going on with my divorce clients and think about how to make things better for them. They are not victims of conspiracies, gender bias, and corruption, as most of them think. They are victims of bad incentives created by well-intentioned laws. There aren’t many easy, simple ways to make things better, but the current situation isn’t inevitable and eternal, either.
That’s what inspires my two main “extracurriculars” as a lawyer. I was the first Virginian to join the movement for Collaborative Divorce, a process that minimizes the escalation of distrust and conflict, and helps couples resolve difficult issues with dignity and grace. But I can also see the need to go even further “upstream” to reduce the damage of divorce, and that’s why I’m active in the “healthy marriage movement” to improve marriages and reduce divorces. I try to be a bridge between that movement of therapists and marriage skills educators, and the legal profession and the court system. The main challenge I’m working on now is how to give couples the information, opportunity and motivation to repair their marriages before it’s too late.
That’s one of the greatest things about being a lawyer: you get to help people in some ways in their individual cases, but the problems that you can’t fight in individual cases, you can work to change through public policy, education, and community activism, using what you’ve learned from your daily work and from all the rest of your education.
© 2010 John Crouch
John Crouch is a partner at Crouch & Crouch, PLLC in Arlington, Virginia, and the Assistant Editor of the Virginia State Bar’s Family Law News. He is a Fellow of the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. He is a past chair of the Northern Virginia Collaborative Professionals, the Arlington County Bar Association Family Law Section, the American Bar Association Child Custody Committee, and the American Bar Association Child Representation Standards Committee. He serves on the Advisory Group of Smart Marriages: The Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education.
Updated: Mar 09, 2010