Why the bad rep?

We are all familiar with at least one joke which speaks to the bad rep of lawyers. In researching this post, I wondered how long lawyers have been the butt of jokes. It turns out that even Socrates (470-399 BC) and Aristophanes (446-386 BC) couldn’t help themselves.

Research has illuminated some pretty unflattering statistics about lawyers. An American Bar Association poll conducted in the 1990s found that the most negative perceptions of lawyers and the legal profession are held by those people who deal with lawyers the most regularly. Successive Gallup polls measuring the perceived honesty and ethics of different professions over the period between 1976-2018 indicate that following metrics with respect to lawyers:

1-6% of participants rated lawyers’ trustworthiness as very high

13-25% of participants rated lawyers’ trustworthiness as high

36-53% of participants rated lawyers’ trustworthiness as average

18-31% of participants rated lawyers’ trustworthiness as low

7-17% of participants rated lawyers’ trustworthiness as very low

I do not believe that poor community perceptions of lawyers’ trustworthiness can be explained by any single factor, however a good place to start understanding these statistics is to look at the comparative emotional intelligence (EI) of lawyers. In basic terms EI refers to a person's ability to perceive, control, evaluate, and express emotions.

A recent US-study found that on average, lawyers have IQs of 115-130, well above the national average of 100. The same study also found that our EQ (emotional quotient) fell in the 80-95 range, well below the national average of 100. The traditional IQ test measures abilities like visual and spatial processing, fluid reasoning, working memory and short-term memory and quantitative reasoning. EQ is centred on abilities such as identifying emotions, perceiving and evaluating the others feel, emotional control, and using emotions to facilitate social interaction.  

As lawyers tend to have below average EQs, many people with whom lawyers interact on a daily basis – clients, witnesses, juries, members of the public – are all likely to possess higher overall emotional intelligence. If in our daily engagement with these people we are unable to identify their emotions, perceive and evaluate their feelings, or interact with them on an emotional basis we are going to come across as awkward and cold.

Not only do we generally have less EI than others but our work itself involves situations where we are the bearers of bad news. When we go about explain the prospects of success of a proceeding to an aspiring litigant what do we do? We go about delivering our advice in the most objective way possible, perhaps hoping that the thoroughness of our reasoning will provide our client with some measure of comfort. Unseasoned litigants may, however, be startled by how dry and monotonous we sound as we dash their hopes into the ground. A first step in countering perceptions that can attach to us in those encounters could be to identify, evaluate and acknowledge the emotions of the other. If you’re already doing this then great, you are demonstrating your EI!