The Emotional Intelligence of the Lawyer
If you don’t know yourself, it’s impossible to do good things. Making a mistake is human, it is part of the most elemental condition of the human being: imperfection. Knowing ourselves better, perhaps we will avoid that certain mistakes are repeated. The warning comes from lejos. None other than the oracle of Delphi, in the temple of Apollo. This enigmatic phrase has been used with much frequency in the cinema. The image we remember best is certainly that of Neo, at the time of consulting the oracle on the film Matrix.
Knowing how to react to the person with whom we interact is basic to not sufrir en vano. For example, if you are a calm, appeased, calm, shy, reflective person, and you come across as a client who speaks loudly, nervous, aggressive, authoritarian, it’s better to be serious if you accept his case. Before your first customer, your first demand, your first report, your first judgment, trust in you. This does not mean that you act confident. An excessive confidence has invisible traps. Don’t improvise. Think, reread, meditate, reflect, calculate. The best improvisation is the one that is well prepared. Think about how you would like it to be your professional meal, and which way you want to go. Lawyers hay miles. Customers, too. Ask what class of lawyer you want to be. And, even more important, what kind of lawyer do you want to be.
Along your professional career you will find yourself with difficult, uncomfortable, unpleasant, dramatic cases. With a good knowledge of Law and a fair dose of emotional intelligence, you will be able to solve them satisfactorily.
However, there are cases that come from the hand of customers whose treatment is difficult, and the management aún más. Other times, cases come from the hand of clients whose lawyer makes it difficult for us to work. Insults, humiliating treatment, dirty words, vulgarity, provocations: terms that should never be present in the performance between partners. Lawyers are rivals in the legal fight, and to combat this fight, the Law gives us procedural weapons. Among them, there is no vulgarity or lack of respect.
Working with illusion is key to exercising the Abogacía. Taking on each case with desire and ambition helps to feed the fighting spirit needed to face combat. Of course, it is convenient to have a good time, of course, working with greed and ambition does not guarantee victory.
The illusion, understood as confidence in oneself, is a fundamental ingredient. Y es un ingredient de cosecha propia; If you don’t find it, you won’t give it to another person. For that reason, it is so important to apply the mandate of “know yourself”. If you fall apart easily, little strength you can transmit to your client. How are you going to ask someone to trust you, if you don’t.
Bored, anger, rage, arrogance, frustration… belong to the scope of the invisible, to the world of sensations. It is the duty of the lawyer to know how to manage them: their own, and their hands. Because good or bad management will depend in part on success or failure.
El Abogado knows the laws. El buen Abogado combines the knowledge of the laws with an effective management of emotions. The first step is to ask yourself what the customer feels on the other side. And even though we shouldn’t allow his passions to show through the toga, a lawyer has to know what the client feels and what his perspective is.
Humani nihil a me alienum est, says Terencio hace dos mil años.
“Everything that affects human beings matters to me”. As a lawyer, everything that affects the client must be imported. And so he must see it from the moment the customer enters through the door.
Elena Regulez
Lawyer specialist in Family Law and Criminal Law
18/08/2022
