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./