Mean Doesn’t Mean Good

Some people walk into a first meeting asking for the toughest lawyer they can find. I understand the impulse. When everything you have built feels at risk, you want someone who will make the other side afraid.

What they are usually telling me is that they are scared. That deserves a serious answer. It does not deserve a lawyer who confuses volume with skill.

Why I stopped leading with the fight

Twenty years ago, I made a deliberate decision to step away from high-conflict litigation as my default. It was not because I could not do it. I was very good in the courtroom, and I still am when a case requires it.

I stepped back because I kept watching the same pattern. The aggressive approach would generate motion after motion, letter after letter, and enormous bills. At the end, the client often landed close to where a composed negotiation would have taken them, except now they were exhausted, their children had absorbed months of tension, and the other parent had become an adversary for life.

That is not winning. That is paying a great deal to lose more slowly.

Firm is not the same as mean

There is a reason people call me the velvet hammer. I can be very firm. When a client’s business, their children, or their financial security is genuinely under threat, I hold the line and I do not apologize for it. I save Mama Grizzly for when it really matters.

But firmness has a purpose. Meanness only has an audience.

A firm lawyer takes a clear position, explains it, and stays there. A mean one insults opposing counsel, sends inflammatory letters, and turns every scheduling question into a battle. The first approach protects the client. The second makes the lawyer feel powerful and makes the case more expensive.

Judges notice the difference. So do the financial professionals, therapists, and other attorneys involved in the matter. A reputation for being reasonable is not softness. It is credibility, and credibility is leverage.

The agreements that last

Here is what three decades have taught me most clearly. The divorces that hold up years later are rarely the ones where someone was crushed. They are the ones where both people walked away with an outcome they could live with.

I do not ask clients to aim for “fair.” Fair is the four-letter F word, because no two people in a divorce will ever define it the same way. The word I use is “acceptable.” An acceptable agreement is one each person can honor, which means fewer returns to court, fewer disputes over the parenting schedule, and fewer surprises when a child turns sixteen or a business is sold.

When one side feels humiliated by the process, the agreement becomes a grievance with a signature on it. That is where post-decree litigation comes from.

Your lawyer sets the temperature

Clients take their cues from counsel. If your attorney treats every exchange as a war, you will start to see your spouse that way too, and you will make decisions from that place. If your attorney is calm, prepared, and clear about what matters, you will be able to think.

That is the real job. Not to make the most noise, but to keep the client steady enough to make good decisions about the rest of their life.