BUT THEY SHOULD PAY

My mom, who was a family law lawyer in Saskatoon, had a client who left her to be represented by someone else. My mom heard through the grapevine that the client had gone to another (male) lawyer, looking for someone who would be tougher in court. As my mom heard it, that lawyer responded to the client, “Tougher? You’ve already had the dragon lady!”

And my mom was tough. In a male-dominated world of law and litigation, she was a trail-blazer for women lawyers in the province. I remember telling her a story about a lecturer I had in my family law class in law school, a practising lawyer who seemed like he would be so scary to be up against in court because of the way he pounded the lectern, raised his voice, and stared at us menacingly in class.

Totally unfazed, she heard my scared voice and just rolled her eyes, like I was talking about a show that she was used to seeing and had become very tired of. “Oh. Him.”**

People often come to lawyers looking for exactly that: someone who will pound the table and yell, or at the least send some very condescending emails. “Please fight this fight for me,” they say. “I want to make them pay!" Or, what lawyers everywhere know as a recipe for suffering: “I don’t even care about the money. It’s the principle!”

We learned in law school about the dangers of taking up someone else’s battle for them, but it’s an easy trap to fall into. It’s still what many clients are looking for when they have a conflict that they want solved in the courts.

It’s natural, I think, to want vindication. I do too, sometimes.

But what we don’t talk about enough is that by buying into this retribution-based model we think we want, we are giving over control of our lives and well-being. It becomes: someone hurt me so I want to hurt them back so that I can feel better.

Over time, getting back your peace and well-being relies more and more on this expensive, delay-ridden system and on convincing someone else about the full extent of how you’ve been victimized.

When this is resolved, I will be able to sleep.

When this is over, I’ll be more engaged with my kids.

When this is over, I will feel so free.

I’m going to make them suffer the way I’m suffering now.

This kind of thinking amounts to self-sabotage. Not just because the payoff may never come in the way that you want it to or believe it should, or because in litigation there are rarely any true winners, but also because by keeping your thoughts and attention in a state of opposition you miss the opportunity to help yourself address the feelings of hurt, anger, and frustration and move forward on your own terms.

My mom, though successful, retired from her practice of law as soon as there were grandchildren around for her to take care of. She told me that for most cases of family law disputes, she thought that any file that made it to an actual hearing had someone with a personality disorder on one or both sides. She wasn’t sad to stop being a lawyer. Who really wants to fight all the time?

If you have been victimized, standing up for yourself may involve a legal battle, but it may not. Either way, you can move forward with more peace when you honour your feelings, your integrity, and your self first.

Because it’s not actually about getting the dragon lady. It’s not about making them pay (though sure, that would be nice).

The law is actually pretty bad at resolving personal problems.

That part is on you. Really.

And you have so much more control than you think.

** She said his name though.