DISCUSS THE QUALITIES WHICH A LAWYER MUST HAVE.

Written by: Fatemamod Mohammad Fardeen

Submitted to: Maȋtre Anusha Rawoah
Submission Date: 4th May 2020
When the word quality is being used to describe a person, it means a distinctive attribute or
characteristic possessed by that person according to the Cambridge Dictionary. Moreover,
qualities are perceived subjectively, as for a lawyer, his qualities would be perceived by the
general public, his actual or potential clients, his families, his friends and finally his peers. In
this essay, we will discuss the main qualities a lawyer must have and which can be classified
as follows: communication skills, courage, willpower self, essential judgement, commitment
to a lifelong learning, analytical skills, people skills, research skills, perseverance, creativity,
realistic, serving the true interests of clients, intuition/deliberative thinking, pursue justice
with integrity and finally persuasive.

Lawyers must fluently speak so that they can argue effortlessly in the courtroom before
judges for that communication skills are essential. Lawyers must be extrovert, articulate well
orally, have good writing skills and also be good listeners. In order to argue convincingly in
the courtroom before juries and judges, good public speaking skills are essential.
Communication and speaking skills can be developed during your studies by taking part in
activities such as mooting or general public speaking. Lawyers must also be able to write
clearly, persuasively and concisely, as they must produce a variety of legal documents. But
it’s not all about projection. To be able to analyse what clients tell them or follow a complex
testimony, a lawyer must have excellent listening skills.

According to Professor Pamela S. Karlan, in a lawyer, courage is a muscle. You develop

courage by exercising it. Sitting on the fence is not practice for standing up. Courage is a
virtue more often associated with, say, first responders and members of the military than it is
with people who carry briefcases. Some people might even suggest that it isn’t necessary to
be courageous to be a good lawyer and if courage meant physical courage only, they might
well be right. Lawyers have been accused of battling windmills (and a few environmental
lawyers representing wealthy seaside landowners in the Northeast have actually done so), but
rarely in the practice of law where words are the weapon of choice is physical courage
required. While some lawyers, such as prosecutors, accept some physical risks as part of their
job, the greatest work-related risk most lawyers face is the drive to their offices. But courage

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Comes in different forms, and the courage most good lawyers have in abundance is of the
moral, not physical, variety: they have the ability to do the right thing when doing the right
thing isn’t easy. In addition to physical and moral courage, there is a last form of courage,
one that might be called “psychological courage,” that good lawyers must call on from time
to time in order to remain psychologically intact. Often dealing with cases where PSTD is
being used for victims who were severely traumatized.

Self-control is really about making the future bigger and that’s certainly true Mr. George
Ainslie¹. Lawyers work in a high-stress profession that requires lots of effortful thinking.
Recent research establishes that willpower is something like a muscle in that it becomes
fatigued by overuse but also can be strengthened with the right form of exercise. Conscious
decision making, a staple of most lawyers’ days, depletes our supplies of willpower and
makes us more vulnerable to temptations that can distract us from doing what needs to be
done for our clients. Self-control, along with intelligence, turns out to be one of the two best
predictors of a successful career and a successful life. The next necessary skills is having and
excellent judgement. The ability to draw reasonable, logical conclusions or assumptions from
limited information is essential as a lawyer. You must also be able to consider these
judgements critically, so that you can anticipate potential areas of weakness in your argument
that must be fortified against. Similarly, you must be able to spot points of weakness in an
opposition’s argument. Decisiveness is also a part of judgement. There will be a lot of
important judgement calls to make and little time for sitting on the fence.

When you become a lawyer, you are committed to lifelong learning, according to panelist
Pat Nester, Executive Director of Texas Bar CLE, an excellent lawyer must take advantage of
opportunities to improve her knowledge and skills to improve the quality of their practice.
Lifelong learning has immense value to your clients and partners. Nester spoke of “a solemn
oath to stay abreast of all things that will impact your practice.” Furthermore, a lawyer must
have sharp analytical skills, both in the study and the practice of law involves absorbing large
quantities of information, then having to distil it into something manageable and logical. At
times, there will be more than one reasonable conclusion, or more than one precedent
applicable to resolving a situation. A lawyer must therefore have the evaluative skills in order
to choose which is the most suitable.

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The next important element of a lawyer is to acquire people skills if you are not born with it.
Law is not an abstract practice. Irrelevant of how well someone does academically, at the end
of the day lawyers work with people, on behalf of people, and the decisions that are made
affect people's lives. They must be personable, persuasive and able to read others. This allows
them to gauge juror’s reactions and the honesty of witnesses. This allows them to decide
upon the best approach to take in order to achieve the desired outcome: either clients taking
their advice or reaching a favourable negotiation with the opposition. Slick and unhinged are
words that qualifies the research skill and capacity of a good lawyer. One good lawyer must
be able to research quickly and effectively to better understanding the clients, their needs, and
to preparing legal strategies.

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” Even studying to
become a lawyer takes a great deal of perseverance and commitment – and that’s before you
even start work! Typically, a lawyer will do an undergraduate law degree, an LPC, and then
a training contract before qualifying. Most will also complete a vacation scheme or some
other kind of work experience. When working on a case, you must have the perseverance to
complete the work necessary to drive it to a successful finish. According to Richard
Susskind; I believe that lawyers, in order to survive and prosper, must respond creatively and
forcefully to the shifting demands of what is a rapidly evolving legal marketplace. The very
top lawyers are not only logical and analytical, but they display a great deal of creativity in
their problem-solving. The best solution is not always the most obvious and in order to
outmanoeuvre your challenger it is often necessary to think outside the box.

Many lawyers practice law without giving much thought to whether their aims are the right
ones. A good lawyer, at the very least, moves in the right direction. In the end, it is not the
size of the judgments we win, the number of people we send to jail, or even the bar
association rankings by our peers that are the best measure of our effectiveness as a lawyer.
Rather, your worth as a lawyer is determined by how well you serve the true interests of your
clients. Courtroom victories attract attention and might be the result of effective legal work,
but being a good lawyer is so much more than winning the big ones. As a profession, we have
placed too much emphasis on being “zealous advocates” and too little on being “good
counsellors.” It is from our counselling that we find our direction. The good lawyer, as

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counsellor, wrestles with clients’ problems in a deep and expressive way. The goal is to
develop strategies that not only meet the clients’ stated objectives but also might benefit them
in ways they might not have considered, preferably while doing no harm to the larger public
interest. Virtually every serious discussion between lawyer and client has moral con-tent.
From the many strategies that can be deployed to resolve a client’s problems, some are likely
to do less collateral damage than others. Some strategies might actually be “win-win”
opportuni-ties for all concerned. The good lawyer recognizes this and views visits with
clients as opportunities to offer moral insights.

Accurate intuitive judgments are often seen as akin to magic. There’s nothing magic about
them. Accurate intuitive judgments are hard earned, coming from a well-developed ability to
almost instantly recognize patterns. The influential social scientist Herbert A. Simon studied
the work of chess masters to understand how they came to play the game so well. His
conclusion? The success of chess masters came from practice, practice, practice. Thousands
of hours spent poring over chess boards gave the experts the ability to see the pieces on the
board in a different way from other chess players. They saw patterns where most players saw
individual pieces. Simon writes: “The situation

The Good Lawyer Pursues Justice with Integrity. Reminders of the importance we place on
justice are everywhere. Statues of Lady Justice, blind-folded, and holding the scales of
fairness in her right hand and a sword in her left hand, grace our courthouses. In many
classrooms across the country, children begin each school day by standing and pledging
allegiance to a flag and a republic that promises “liberty and justice for all.” Despite the fact
that we’re all hot for justice, we argue over what that means. “Justice” is a word of a
thousand meanings.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion according to
Aristotle. Every lawyer benefits from being persuasive. In fact, the ability to be persuasive is
arguably the best predictor of a lawyer’s success at least if success is measured by the results
a lawyer achieves for his or her client. And lawyers know this. It explains why plaintiffs’
lawyers flock to continuing legal education programs to learn how to persuade jurors to
award injured people millions of dollars, and why defence lawyers share strategies designed
to convince jurors to give people little or nothing for their injuries. Because their cases
depend on persuading judges that their view of the law is the correct one, appellate advo-

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cates agonize over every turn of phrase they intend to use in the thirty minutes or so allotted
for oral argument, while other lawyers wanting the best results for their clients yearn to
uncover the secrets of “getting to yes” in negotiations. Even lawyers drafting contracts are
acutely aware that they cannot include terms most favourable to their client without
persuading other lawyers that their proposed terms are fair or essential to completing the deal.

In conclusion, it is never easy to become a lawyer and even after starting to practice. If I find
myself in a situation whereby I badly need a good lawyer, I will choose the one unhinged,
slick and perseverant lawyer who will be able to twist the outcomes as it should be in a
courtroom. The word "profession" means something different than it used to. Today, when
plumbers have websites and paid athletes make more money than anyone else, "professional"
means you do something for hire. The members of the three traditional "learned professions”:
Law, medicine, and clergy were supposed to be different. Compensation was not the most
important part of being a professional. The point was to help other people. That included
taking your fair share of pro bono cases or doing other public service.

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References:

Books & Ebooks

Material type In-Text Example Reference list/ Bibliography

Example

Book 3 Authors Linder, Douglas O., and The Good Lawyer : Seeking
Nancy Levit Quality in the Practice of Law.
Oxford University Press, 2014.

Journal Articles

Material type In-Text Example Reference list/ Bibliography

Example

Journal article: James W. McElhaney Litigation, Vol. 19, No. 1,

Evidence (Fall 1992), pp. 51-52,
electronic database
59-60
Published by: American Bar
Association

Internet/Websites

Material type In-Text Example Reference list/ Bibliography

Example

Webpage: no author What makes a great

https://www.allaboutlaw.co.uk/
lawyer
law-careers/non-law-final-years/
what-makes-a-great-lawyer

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