I am looking forward to the opportunity tomorrow to speak at a seminar put on for, and sponsored by, the young lawyer’s division of the Tennessee Bar Association. I will get to speak about ethics issues that can arise when dealing with difficult counsel. I’m hoping I haven’t been invited in order to be the example for the crowd of what constitutes a difficult lawyer to deal with.
With luck, I’ll manage to spend a some time exploring the persistence of variations of the “golden rule” as guidance in almost all cultures, remind folks about the restrictions a variety of ethics rules (including RPC 3.5(e)) can impose on conduct in discovery, and let those in attendance walk away with a list of six practical ideas to keep in mind at all times when dealing with the kind of opposing counsel that makes this job more stressful than it has to be.
In the meantime, if in reading this you think you might be one of those difficult-counsel types, this recent news article offers an object lesson of how your conduct can not only make the underlying case more difficult to deal with but can spawn further unpleasant litigation (and negative publicity) down the road.