Ernest Svenson, aka Ernie the Attorney [LexBlog Q & A, part 2 of 2]
On Friday, we launched part 1 of our LexBlog Q & A featuring Ernest Svenson (better known in the blogosphere as Ernie the Attorney), a pioneer of legal blogging who documented Hurricane Katrina from his hometown of New Orleans and provides insights on a range of topics in his blog.
This post features the rest of our interview, in which Ernie discusses why lawyers can benefit from showing their “human side” – and why law firms sometimes may crack down on them if displaying such humanity involves use of a blog.
1. Rob La Gatta: You’ve said that people outside of the legal profession want to see the human side of lawyers, which is easily displayed through blogs. Can you see any potential harm that could come from lawyers displaying their “human side” to the general public?
Ernie the Attorney: No, I really don’t. I think that is one of the things that I was most intrigued by, and I still am. […] You go to law school, and your way of thinking gets molded and changed, and you start to question things more and look for the underpinnings and analyze things. And then you come out and you’ve kind of been imbued with this appreciation and inclination towards a lot of formalism that most people in everyday life don’t have. And it’s very difficult, I think, for many lawyers – maybe most – to keep that part going, while at the same time switching gears quickly into informality (or just combining informality with formality)
I picked the name “Ernie the Attorney” because there was a magistrate in federal court, and she used to call me that. [And] she was one of those people who could be extremely formal and yet be completely down to earth at the same time: she’d see me and say, “Hey, Ernie the Attorney, how ya doing?” If she was picking a jury and the juror told her, “Oh, I’m not married…” she’d say, “A good looking man like you, not married? I can’t believe that.”
That’s not the kind of thinking that most lawyers do or feel comfortable doing. We, for whatever reason, have this sense that we have to be very distant. Kind of like doctors probably feel like they need to be distant from their patients because they’re going to do these invasive procedures and so forth, and so they have to create this distance. And I think that’s a completely wrong perception. I don’t think you have to create distance or be overly formal just because part of your professional role involves that to some extent.
Can’t you just do that part and then be a human being? I think the answer for me is, “Yeah, you can.” I watch people do it. It’s totally possible, and in fact, I think it’s actually better, because it puts people at ease. If a lawyer’s job is to get their client to share confidences so that they can figure out how to help them, which one is going to be more likely to make that person want to share confidences with you? Being extremely formal, which people might interpret in the sense of being judgmental? Or is it more likely that they will tell you things that you need to know if you’re casual with them and make them feel at ease?
2. Rob La Gatta: So then why do you think so many big firms oppose the idea of being personal, and seem kind of resistant to that (if it’s done through blogging)?
Ernie the Attorney:
I don’t think they oppose the sense of being personal. […] All corporations, all big firms, all large gatherings of people – and large can be more than 2 or 3, in some cases – have expectations about how the group members are supposed to behave. And then they have concerns about certain kinds of behavior getting out of line. I think with firms that still adhere to dress codes, or who say, “Well, lets go with casual Friday, and we don’t do any other days,” their concern is that people will take advantage. And that’s a legitimate concern: I think people can take advantage of being given freedom. But at the same time, that freedom is necessary and it’s important.
I don’t think firms don’t want people to have [freedom]; I think they just don’t want to see mistakes. I think the reason why [organizations] are overly controlling of individuals is because, in their mind, they’d rather not have any mistakes and shut everybody down than allow everybody to kind of try and experiment with it (and then have a few mistakes). It’s just not natural for organizations to allow small bands of people to experiment, because experiment means “try/fail/try/fail.” They don’t like that idea, because it’s just not part of the way organizations think. And yet, there’s a value to it.
[…]
Lawyers are very conservative. Nobody who is a lawyer fails to see that; it’s a conservative profession. It’s a profession dictated by tradition, by precedent, by analysis of what’s happened in the past to determine how to act in the future. It’s not the kind of profession that takes its hand off the handlebars and just says, “Well, lets see what happens.” So I think it was pretty natural that they were going to be circumspect about blogging, especially within the realm of large law firms and organizations.
Interested in hearing more? Check out some of our other featured guests…Ernie is just the latest in our ongoing series of legal blog interviews for the LexBlog Q & A.