Clients come to us to solve difficult life problems and conflicts, or to make critically important life decisions based upon the persons and relationships that they most value in the world. It is fundamental for legal professionals to understand that, when they assist clients with the law, they are not dealing with mere business transactions, nor with professional abstractions – they are dealing with intimate, large, life-and-death matters in the lives of real embodied persons. Everyone hires a lawyer to solve day-to-day, practical problems that can fundamentally shape and determine one’s family relationships, financial liberty and independence, and the future care and security of one’s self and one’s family and loved ones. There are many conflicts resolved by the legal system that are quite literally a matter of life and death to the individuals and families affected. It is for this reason that Empathy is one of our Core Values.
Empathy is the capacity to place oneself in another’s shoes, and to thereby feel what another feels. It is a form of emotional intelligence that takes more than the abstract and rational into account. It takes into account loves, emotions, vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and assumes a perspective of equality and dignity as regards to the other. This is contrary to and transcends how many lawyers are simply “militantly rational” as Ronda Muir, author of Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence describes those who practice law. “The quality of mercy is not strained.” There is a generosity and a desire to serve that is inherent in empathy, and it is a quality that we greatly value.
Meanwhile, as O. Carter Snead writes: “The fundamental purpose of law is to protect and promote the flourishing of persons. Accordingly, the richest understanding of the law is an anthropological one, obtained by inquiry into its underwriting premises about human identity and thriving. In order to be fully wise, just, and humane, the means and ends of the law must correspond to the reality of human life, humanly lived. The defining character of this reality is embodiment – the fact that we experience ourselves, one another, and the world around us as living bodies. As living bodies in time, we are vulnerable, dependent, and subject to natural limits, including injury, illness, senescence, and death. Thus, both for our basic survival and to realize our potential, we need to care for one another … Viewed through the lens of the anthropology of embodiment, all living members of the human family are worthy of care and protection, regardless of age, disability, cognitive capacity, dependence, and most of all, regardless of the opinions of others.” There is not one single area of family law or estate planning law that can refuse to take these qualities of what it means to be a vulnerable human person into account.
Empathy is therefore a skill and a practice. It is the capacity to feel strongly as one’s client’s feel strongly, about the same persons, relationships, and issues. It is a practice where, as C.S. Lewis describes: “We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with with other hearts, as well as with our own.” This requires a healthy and realistic anthropology (an understanding of what it means to be human) and a sensitivity to vulnerability, dependence, fear, strong emotions, physical and psychological frailty and weakness. This is a value that every single one of us practices at our Firm.