emotions

Legal battles are the worst

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The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Sun Tzu in The Art of War a few times talks about  winning without battle or winning before battle. I would say that in legal world, every dispute between persons and/or state is a battle. But these battles can develop at different stages.

First stage – reason for disagreement. Smaller or bigger battle, emotional, or in worst case scenario physical,  starts in the moment when two (or more) sides find themselves on opposite sides of the fence. Reason, no matter what it is, acts as a catalyst for dispute.

Second stage – materialising the argument. Obviously there can be many ways how to bring argument to life, but let’s look at legal ways. For example, mediation, settlement, court, doesn’t matter. Every path that is chosen will include emotional tension, arguments or more.

Third stage – escalation. Despite the way how to go on about this fight, sooner or later it’s gonna reach its end phase. Before ending though, opposing sides are going to try everything they can, to resolve the dispute with their best interests in mind. Which makes course of this dispute unpredictable. It can end there and then, or get dragged on and on.

Fourth stage – finish. Last phase of every fight means resolution. This stage heavily depends on two factors, chosen strategy and borders. By borders I mean, how far is each side ready to go for this fight to come to an end. How far is their border?

But why legal battles are the worst? Because, no matter how hard we, as lawyers, try, we can’t influence our clients wishes. We can only try to explain why one way might be better than other. Also, even though lawyers daily fight smaller or bigger legal battles, the ones with someones life out in the open are terrible. Why? To answer this question, let’s look at our reasoning for choosing law. For someone to fight injustice, for someone to bring peace or to get rich, to resolve family problems etc. But I don’t believe we can fully achieve our goals, because in the end we work for others. Which means we have to put aside our dreams and convert our ambitions into helping someone else. So why personal legal fights are terrible? Because lawyers must learn to use their personal energy for someone else, without becoming personally involved.

In the end, legal battles are not the worst worst, but they are pretty bad. Due the fact that we give up our skills to resolve somebody’s personal problems. Legal battles are emotionally, physically damaging even if we don’t feel it. They take our personal time away, but in the end we feel satisfied and happy with our work (at least we should feel like that). Because we are like doctors, but not for persons health, but for persons decisions. While doctors fix health, lawyers fix decisions.  

/M.P./

Emotions as a foundation…

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Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Emotions are a big part of our everyday lives. I would say – emotions are our life. The good, the bad and the ugly emotions showcase our abilities to process life. Inevitably, emotions are gonna be present in legal world. Because of this, I would like to look at emotions as a foundation for legal disputes.

What is an dispute? According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, dispute (noun) is a verbal controversy. Personally, I think emotions are main reason for every dispute, ever. But this time I’m gonna look at their influence over legal disputes.

Firstly, let’s imagine wife and husband who are going through divorce. Obviously, it is an emotionally draining process, especially if it concerns children or dividing property. But the moment this couple involves in their argument any sort of legal professional help, this family matter becomes legal dispute. Now reason for this (legal) problem is not law or its application process, but strong feelings felt by all involved parties.

Secondly, even though this example illustrated emotion involvement in civil case, I would argue that in criminal, administrative cases and every other case type, reasoning for disagreement between parties lies not in the way how law regulates specific situation, but how people react to these regulations.

While law is a way how state makes social norms into legal norms, it can’t regulate our feelings. Which, in my opinion, makes emotions more regulative than law. It makes me think that, person can live under unjust legal regulations while these regulations doesn’t have negative impact on their emotional side, but person will not be able to live under just regulations if these regulations negatively impact their emotional state.

Feel free to disagree with previous statement, but I think no one can deny the fact that emotions play big role in the way how we look at things, no matter how objective they are supposed to be.

/M. P./