ARTICLES

Believe in your client’s cause.

By Chinua Asuzu.

Published

9 months ago

August 20, 2023

Stella Charles Akupue

To make a convincing case, you must believe in your client’s cause. You should believe in the position you advocate. It’s tawdry, unethical, and unprofessional for an attorney to advocate a position he or she doesn’t believe in. Judges have a right to expect that attorneys on both sides believe in the positions they advocate, even if either or both may turn out to be ill-founded in fact or law.

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Belief in the client’s cause is not automatic on getting instructions. And it’s not necessary at that stage. The crucial time to believe in the case is when you must present it. When initially instructed, you might not know enough about the law or the facts to warrant faith in the client’s cause. You might even harbor misgivings about your client’s legal position or factual narrative or about the client.

Whether or not you have doubts about the case, take these three steps: (a) seek further instructions and clarification; (b) learn more facts and circumstances; and (c) research into the client as well as the client’s and other key players’ pertinent activities, backgrounds, businesses, operations, and transactions. Then research the law. When you do have doubts, the research and preparation may dispel them. If your doubts remain, frankly warn the client about the risks of shellacking, or suggest negotiated settlement.

Words, Phrases, Clauses, and Expressions You Mightn’t Know Are Wrong.

Uninstall your ego from the first paragraph of application letters.

Once instructed as an attorney, you should draw up a chronology of pertinent events.

Each time you’re consulted about a dispute, consciously consider settlement. Sit down with your colleagues and discuss the propriety or prudence of settling the dispute. Make this a phase of your preparation. Don’t be a warmonger; don’t be trigger happy; but don’t be a pacifist either or even a conscientious objector. Pick your battles. If you decide not to settle, then build up your weapons of war. “Once you have worked long and hard on your case—and have decided not to settle—you’ll probably be utterly convinced that your side is right. That is as it should be.”Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges (Thomson/West, 2008), 13.

If, on the other hand, you proceed amidst debilitating doubts, “your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution”(Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power (Penguin, 1998), 227) of the task, resulting in an avoidable disservice to the client and to the legal system.

“If [an attorney] does not believe [that the client ought to win,] his unbelief will appear to the [court], despite his protestations, and will become their unbelief.”Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Spiritual Laws,’ in Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, 2001), 70, 84.

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The bar telegraphs its doubts and fears onto the bench, and the bench can recoil in mistrust, not only of the case but also of its proponent. Many attorneys, being wolfish, will not toe this line of high honor. Stand out by toeing it. In the litigation minefields, you should stand “forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”Matthew 10:16, Holy Bible (King James Version). And respect yourself. Respecting yourself in this context includes not presenting quixotic cases.

Commit yourself to your client and devote your time and thoughts to the client’s work. “Advocates must try to be totally committed,” says The Devil’s Advocate.Iain Morley, The Devil’s Advocate, 3rd ed. (Sweet & Maxwell, 2015), 39. Think of your clients and share their angst, pain, or predicament. Moderate the outmoded idea that you shouldn’t be emotionally involved in a client’s case. Control, but don’t suppress, your emotions. Be professional but not clinical—don’t be aloof or detached.

You’re a human being, not a machine. Turn your client’s case into a cause. Litigate with missionary zeal. “Enter action with boldness.”Greene, 48 Laws of Power, 227. Entering litigation with boldness and zeal, and preparing your persuasive writing accordingly, will lend communicative fervor to your written work and make you more believable. You’ll sound more convincing because you are convinced. That’s the way to go about this honorable profession of ours.

But balance your devotion to your client with your overarching duty to the court and the legal system. In your own professional and career interests as an advocate, never try to shovel bad law or nefarious policy down the court’s throat just to please a client or win a case. And don’t inveigle lies into the proceedings! “The most persuasive writing is sincere writing—writing that most naturally reflects the personality, the spirit, and the feelings of the writer.”Antonio Gidi & Henry Weihofen, Legal Writing Style, 3rd ed. (WAP, 2018), 3.

Never aim to win at all costs. It is “certainly open to serious ethical objections” for an advocate to aim, under color of employment, “to persuade at any price.”Lord Macmillan, ‘Some Observations on the Art of Advocacy,’ Canadian Bar Review (No. 1, Jan. 1935), 22.

Chinua Asuzu, Brief-Writing Master Plan (Partridge, 2022), 2–5.