I see a lot of this on social media these days.
Daily, we are treated to a surfeit of self-generated pictures, Tik-Tok Videos, Facebook Posts, Twitter Tweets, Instagram LinkedIn Posts and whatever else by lawyers bragging up or lyrically wa-waxing about a lawyer’s exciting or dramatic working life, a lawyer’s hardship, a lawyer’s work life and all that go with it. Much of these are the efforts of young lawyers in an attempt to gain publicity and get themselves known to the general public and professional colleagues.
Although their videos are short and pictures plentiful, the effort spent in preparing, acting, posing, coordinating, shooting (multiple takes, no doubt), sorting, producing and curating for their uploads can be inferred from them. I tried my hand at it to get a sense of it. I was surprised at how much effort, coordination and thought I had to put in just for a short few seconds of a well-shot and produced video. It was probably doubly hard for me since I have no skill in those respects.
There are always newer applications to make it easy but we still need to spend time, effort and energy to learn them before becoming skilled with them. I was interviewed in studios before and in those settings, it is easy to see how many people, how much coordination and expertise are involved in making even a short well-made production.
When I watch lawyers on self-made self-promotional social media artefacts there is a part of me that cannot help but ask, How much time do they spend refining their legal craft compared to creating artefacts of advertising and publicity? It’s an important question because there is a limit to the day (and our lives), and so there is a limit to how we spend our time. As an employer, it is important because I am only interested in those that want to develop their legal craft, not compelling social media content.
We have 24 hours in a day. More or less 16 conscious hours for it. More or less 8 hours dedicated to work. The rest of it is for our private lives and everything else. More or less. If we are fortunate. Because each moment is a fork in the road we have to make a choice. Not choosing is also a choice. Each choice we make defines and refines us.
Each hour spent fashioning a video about our legal exploits, is one hour we could have spent learning or refining our legal skillset or knowledge. If I spend a couple of hours on close critical reading of a Federal Court decision, I have no time or energy to think about never mind doing a photo or video shoot. There is the inevitable trade-off.
If I want to get better at making compelling videos, catchy posts, scintillating pictures or viral social media artefacts, I need to spend more time and effort doing these things. Although I would like to be better at such things, spending my efforts there does not support my legal competency, which is what gets the bills paid.
I know being able to market and be social media savvy will make me more competent at marketing, advertising, curating and selling but being good at those things does not and will not make me a better lawyer. I cannot sell an argument to a judge the way I sell to the general public or a certain segment. I cannot produce a Tik-Tok video and upload it in place of my online Zoom-video court hearing. Not yet, anyway. A judge is not going to be impressed by the tastefully lighted photos I took and uploaded on Instagram instead of my written submission.
The time we spend on our legal work or activities that supports our legal work (reading, writing/drafting, discussing, thinking, advocating) is what makes us a more skilful and better lawyer.
The more cases, articles and law books we read, the better we know the law and how to think about it. The more varied our reading, the more refined and nuanced our discussions. The more refined our discussions, the better the quality of ideas and conversation. The more we write, the better we read and more we think. The more we think and reflect, the more refined and mature our thoughts. The more cases we do, the more experience we pick up.
These skills take time, effort, energy, space and dedication to develop, sustain and improve. The right nurturing hastens the process. It does not lessen the need for commitment and serious interest in the practice of law instead of matters secondary to it. To be good at the law, we have to immerse ourselves in it.
Presently, my sense of it is the younger and fresher set of lawyers concern themselves too much with salesmanship and self-promotional efforts and not enough on self-development where legal practice and competency is concerned. Not all lah, of course. But many do. They are good at the sell. They can sell themselves far more with less than I can with more.
But their delivery often falls far short of the sell, often not even knowing elementary law. They fail to appreciate that although the sell gets the client through the door it is our legal competency that makes them stay. Few things are more disappointing than being let down by a built up expectation.
That is why I tell my lawyers and those that work with me, please don’t glamorize legal practice. Please no pictures or social media artefacts about how much we love our work, how much fun we have at work or how grateful we are to be lawyers doing meaningful legal work. No one needs to know. Let’s savour that privately, celebrate it with each other and keep focused on the work. And anyway, I have no interest in and find it tiring to be constantly taking pictures of solo, in pairs or groups, choreographing them and then curating them for the public. All that just gets in the way of enjoying each other, the moment and the fun.
I have a suspicion about people who are more concerned with their social media posturings about their lawyer life and efforts than they are about their legal competency and credibility. I think deep down they have no real or serious interest in the law or legal practice. That is why they prefer to spend time on self-promotion. The law is a platform to sell themselves. Getting publicity is the aim of the game. Wanting others to know about me is the excuse. That or they actually love the idea of being a lawyer but their natural abilities and competency falls short of their ambitions for legal practice.
Whatever the case, it is often these kinds of lawyers that are well known on social media. Not the ones that prefer to spend their hours primarily on their legal craft. Because getting better at our legal craft is a mundane, personal and tedious exercise.
It means quietly reading the documents to understand and make sense of the case and the potential applicable law. It is read, read, read, think, think, think, distil, formulate, revise. From an action perspective, there is little happening. All the action is internal. If you watched a lawyer working, it is very boring. But that is the nature of our work. Lawyers are not visually exciting to watch during our prep, which is where we spend most of our time. If you saw me at work, you will just see me staring at the screen and typing all day. Yawn. The exciting part, the advocacy, the public performance is only a small part of the entire legal effort. Most of our work lies unseen, and therefore unappreciated.
We will notice that those often on social media are not the ones arguing the important legal cases or handling the significant corporate deals. Serious clients that want their work to be handled by skilled and competent lawyers do not trawl Tik-Tok or social media to find them. These clients choose their lawyers after doing their due diligence. They want a lawyer that will provide a good legal solution for them, not a social media posting about a good legal solution. The top Malaysian lawyers are not busy producing ‘content’ for their social media accounts. It is likely they don’t have one or couldn’t be bothered. They are busy expanding or refining their legal craft or legal business.
I don’t think lawyers should be glamourizing their work, their profession or themselves. Leave that to the film makers, the documentarists and marketeers. Lawyers should practice law and spend their time and efforts on skills that support their practice of law. Once they achieve a certain degree of competency, they may venture beyond that. But until then, stay close and stay focused on the law. Well made and produced social media artefacts do not a lawyer make.
Clients hire lawyers for their legal competency and experience. That is what we, as lawyers, must provide. Also, if we cannot perform the legal work that we sold ourselves as being able to do, we would be no better than a fraud. That is not in keeping with the interest of justice and the dignity of the profession.
Glamourizing the legal profession is the same. It does not serve the interest of justice. It does not serve the dignity of our profession. It does not uphold the interest of our client. It only serves the narcissism of second-rate lawyer. It only serves to mislead the public as to what competent and credible lawyer looks like. Glamourizing the legal profession does a great disservice to everyone, and most of all the lawyers themselves.
1 thought on “Glamourizing Legal Practice”
Not all of us are cut out to be mall Santa. I mean, i have the girth certainly but none of the warmth nor the timbre to Ho-ho-ho my way through the year end.
But let us not forget that for all Rudolph’s shiny red nose, there is no Santa without the elves. There are sellers and there are makers but the end of the day what is under the gift wrap and ribbons that counts. One cannot sell what one does not have.
It is by Fate the address of the fabled factory is not made known lest parents would cut out the merry middle man and deal straight with the supplier.