Responding to a catastrophic event within one’s professional community
The lawyer, usually never at a loss for words, sat speechless. The lawyer’s heartbeat thumped, interrupting the silence as the brain attempted to process the information that had just come through the phone. Death and injury weren’t foreign. Helping clients through catastrophic loss came with the territory. A close loss though – that was different.
Tears in rain
In one’s professional life one has a close network and broader orbit. The closest? One’s coworkers. Every entity develops its own approach to how the individuals come together to form a team. The net result though is that the people within an organization cohere. Some entities follow the professional sports team analog while others describe themselves as a family. No matter how the unit comes together, deep bonds tend to develop among those who do the hard work litigation entails. That means we tend to celebrate personal wins. Even more impactful? Loss. While catastrophic events are (hopefully) rare within one’s own team, most of us will experience them during our careers.
One’s greater professional circle extends to experts, opposing counsel, legal community colleagues, and vendors (think one’s closest court reporters and the IT person who answers one’s frantic call over the weekend). While these relationships may not be as close as the individuals one works with on a daily basis, one does develop significant working relationships. A select few can become close friends, with relationships lasting decades. Others, challenging opposing counsel for example, might be more fraught but still professional. A loss within the firm or one’s broader network will have impact. In our time we’ve seen deaths within firms, colleagues lose children, experts die suddenly, opposing counsel hospitalized… all manner of catastrophic events.
That includes our own experience with our then young daughter’s cancer battle (she is fine now). We survived through our firm’s, partner’s, colleagues’ and opposing counsels’ universal grace. One notable exception: A local governmental agency, who opposed a continuance request while we remained in the pediatric ICU. The court and broader legal community were stunned. “Read with me in my library and stand always beside me so that today I shall not, to win a point, lose my soul.” The quote from the Lawyer’s Prayer to St. Thomas More provides insight on balancing zealous representation against professional courtesy.
Expect the unexpected
While one cannot plan for every unforeseen catastrophe, it helps to develop a broad framework. The approach splits into the human side and the operational side, with one being complex and the other being complicated. The human side is both simple and monumentally hard. Be there for those impacted, scaled in response to the depth of the relationship. A team member within the firm is run over by a big rig and killed in front of the office, leaving behind a family? This is not a random example: I worked at a firm where this happened. Firm leadership supported the family, created space to grieve for those needing it, and encouraged people who wanted to go to attend the memorial. For more attenuated relationships, say opposing counsel, scale the response appropriately. That can include stipulating to continuances and offering to help new counsel get up to speed on the case. In situations where the relationship, while external, was more personal, sending well wishes can be both meaningful and personally cathartic. We received several cards expressing sympathy from various opposing counsel while our daughter was hospitalized, and the sentiments meant a lot.
Simultaneous to the human side one must also consider day-to-day operations. While this focus on operations may seem hard-hearted, one must remember that no matter what happens one owes clients zealous representation. The ability to do this improves with processes, checklists, and redundancy. Simple concepts but full implementation is time-consuming. Yet the time investment is broadly transformative for firm operations well beyond responding to catastrophic events. One must develop written processes and checklists for significant firm operations. Many firms rely on oral tradition. This frequently means one person becomes the knowledge repository for performing various critical tasks. That’s devastating when that clutch player suddenly gets taken off the board. Redundancy complements written process. Make sure there’s someone else who can handle any task within the firm. This applies internally and externally. A good example? If you use an external IT vendor, make sure it is not a one-person shop. For those who understand the need to go further on operational development we recommend Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto.
Outro
Back to our lawyer, who we left having just learned about the death of someone near. The lawyer sat for a moment, wiped away the tears, and took a few deep breaths. Time to make a few calls and get things in motion.
Miles, Maryanne, and everyone at Coopers acknowledge Plaintiff Magazine’s Dave the Artist (David Knopf) for the decades he devoted to the magazine and extend their sympathy and support to his loved ones following his sudden passing.
