The latest from Work Matters
| Great minds teach how to sidestep nettlesome opposing counsel |
| I was deposing a plaintiff not long ago in a difficult and emotional racial harassment suit. The plaintiff's lawyer laughed at some of my questions, told me to move on, snickered — you get the idea. Once, I would have reacted and engaged him, but not now. Instead, I ignored him. Why? To engage would not have moved the ball forward for my client, and it would have derailed my questioning (which was getting me the answers I wanted, which in turn was making him apoplectic). Yes, it would have felt good to figuratively slap him by responding, but it would have been pointless. How to avoid the temptation to hit back? Think William Butler Yeats and Marcus Aurelius. In "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," Yeats wrote, "Those that I fight I do not hate/Those that I guard I do not love." That centers me. And Aurelius, a Roman Emperor and Stoic, taught us in his "Mediations" that we are not in control of how others act, but we are in complete and total control of how we respond. Aurelius in Book 8, 47-49 : "If you suffer pain because of some external cause, what troubles you is not the thing but your decision about it, and this it is in your power to wipe out at once . . . abide always by the first impressions and add nothing of your own from within, and that's an end of it. . . ." That focuses me. |
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