Assuming the Best in Others

When I worked at a large Madison law firm as a newbie lawyer, I was fortunate to have a kind, compassionate mentor. One of the things Marta taught me that stuck with me the most was this: Assume good motives (or, at least, try.)

Assume that the other lawyer is not a jerk, but is doing her best to advocate for a client in good faith. Assume that your client is calling you six times a day not because he’s a controlling ass, but because he was knocked flat by his wife leaving and doesn’t know where else to turn. Assume there may be a reasonable explanation for bad behavior before you fly off the handle. Assume people act for motives that we might not embrace, but that we could understand. Put in their shoes, we might do the same thing.

As a lawyer, this means you shouldn’t let your client’s case reside too close in your heart. Sometimes you have to take their words with a grain of salt, recognizing that they are telling their life story as they see it, but not as a neutral observer would. There are no neutral observers in divorce, at least not among the spouses. Divorcing couples see things in black and white, and part of the job of the lawyer is to recognize the spectrum of gray in the personal histories. The joke is that in a divorce, there are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and what really happened.

Marta taught me not to assume my client’s story was the only story. She taught me to couch difficult conversations with opposing counsel in terms like, “Mary says Rob didn’t pick Collin up from school four times in the last two weeks. What can we do about that?” rather than, “That SOB cares more about his golf dates than his kids! When is he going to learn to get to school by 3:10?”

I learned not to assume I have one hundred percent of the facts, and to accept that there may be a reasonable explanation, maybe even one that cast my client in a bad light. Maybe Rob works until four on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Maybe Mary knew that when she proposed the current schedule. Maybe Rob arranged for Grandma to pick up the kids instead but Mary doesn’t like Grandma, so she made it sound like nobody was picking them up.

Assume you might not have all the facts. Assume good motives on the part of your opponent.

It isn’t always easy. I’ve dealt with many lawyers who are perfectly nice people outside the work context, and who become snide, sarcastic pains-in-the-patootie when they are opposing counsel. I can choose to think of them as evil, or I can give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they are doing what they think best, for good reasons.

I’ve thought about this a lot lately, with the firestorm of anxiety burning through our country right now. It’s easy to paint people with differing view as jerks. Maybe they are racist, selfish, greedy jerks who hate the American Dream of equality. Perhaps they are socialist, naive jerks who hate the American Dream of self-sufficiency. Maybe they are ignorant jerks who believe everything they see on Facebook or Fox News.

But I think that most of us agree on a few things, things I would call “good motives for COVID times”:

• People want themselves and their loved ones to be safe.

• People want everyone to be able to work and support themselves and their families.

• Nobody wants to be in lockdown forever.

• Nobody wants people to get infected with Coronavirus, though people have different views as to an acceptable level of risk.

  
  

I’m not stupid. I know there are people who don’t have good motives, people who through their words and deeds demonstrate repeatedly that they do not share the good motives I list. I can’t see the good motives on the part of some of our politicians, and there are a few acquaintances in that boat as well.

But for my part, I’m trying in this stressful time to give people the benefit of the doubt until they prove they don’t deserve it. I’m correcting misinformation when I find it, even when the misinformation supports my own world view. I’m trying to promote peace by not responding to online trolls who just want to argue. It comes down to treating others with understanding, applying the old Golden Rule: treat others as you’d want to be treated.

Let us work toward more compassion and respect, toward assuming good motives unless you have strong proof of bad ones.