My Dear and Beloved Francine,
Sigh. This all began some time ago, as you may have already imagined. It began, as do most things with regard to Western culture, about two thousand years ago in the cradle of civilization, with a man whose familiar initials, J.C., still bring a renewed sense of direction, ambition, and, yes, I’ll admit it, downright adoration to my otherwise icy little heart. That’s right. I know you’re sick of hearing about him, but I look for any excuse to bring up his name in conversation: my man, Julius Caesar himself.
Unfortunately, this story doesn’t begin with Caesar’s life; it begins with his death. Imagine if you will, Caesar’s great general, Mark Antony, speaking before throngs at the forum. Caesar’s body, washed and wrapped in white linen, rests on the funeral pyre behind Antony. Antony is handsome, roped with muscle, with shining dark eyes and strong hands, and well-spoken on top of it all. He’s known for his joviality, but on this occasion, he is deadly serious, which makes him all the more compelling. At the end of his heart-rending, emotional recounting of Caesar’s accomplishments and attributes, he suddenly throws out the newly dead Caesar’s blood-soaked toga into the crowd, who tear the garment to pieces and explode in a violent eruption of grief and rage. In a second, mobs light the pyre and there’s the intense ripping sound of air being sucked into flame, and people weep and wail and tear off their clothes, throwing sticks and furniture and everything they can into the pyre. Antony backs up, as Brutus and Cassius run for their lives. Antony lets the crowd consume the Forum, knowing all the while that as the fire grows, so does his power.
Time would show that Antony was a brilliant orator and a stunning battlefield tactician, but when he became a leader of nations, he struggled and bungled the job. Promises that were probably made in earnest went unfulfilled. Allies became frustrated and annoyed at his flakiness and impulsivity. And people all over the Roman world suffered.
Similarly, I have noticed that good lawyers, quite frankly, rarely make good leaders, and I share your intense frustration, Francine, with the fact that bad leadership in criminal justice agencies is incredibly harmful—to clients, to the public, and to the lawyers who are in these systems. I also feel that there’s an intense level of misogyny and racism in most office hierarchies, though I will admit that, as a Caucasian woman, what I notice the most is the sexism.
In an office within my awareness, not very long ago, a male chief booked an outside male attorney to come and speak to his office at a CLE. The male attorney frequently boasted about his legal prowess, his famous battles, his observations of life and law. Many of these observations about life and law had to do with female attorneys and their “different abilities” than male attorneys. A female attorney in attendance asked for clarification and then, briefly and professionally, took exception to the clarification. The chief defended his speaker and his own pride, muted the female attorney’s microphone, and suppressed further discussion about what had just happened. Does the female attorney stand a chance at promotion? Does it appear that she does?
In another office, there is little training provided to new attorneys, except for training on cross examination and voir dire techniques, largely provided by the chief himself, who was himself a formerly celebrated trial attorney. I can see that it’s appealing to teach what you know best, but newly minted lawyers, armed only with their bravado and secondhand knowledge of largely performative skills, are sent into felony courtrooms with no understanding of negotiation skills, local practice, or criminal procedure. Promotions and case assignments are based largely on personal relationships rather than professional ability, or, at least, that is how things appear to be delegated.
I once worked under a man who told me he routinely apologized to judges when he had to take bad cases to trial, so they wouldn’t be “mad” at him. He would interview people based only on their unique or funny-sounding names. Once he interviewed a candidate for an attorney position who had no law degree, only a background of mental illness and work in fast food, because the man’s name was “Don Juan.” He was afraid of everything and everyone and crept around the courthouse in his too-big jacket, hoping no one would see him.
And another chief, despite his best intentions and great ideas, was crippled in his ability to do anything by lack of funding and inability to retain staff in a rural location. He told me once that he had had to get seven crowns in his teeth in the five years he had run that office because of how much stress he was under. He was a kind and dedicated public servant but had no tools to run his office.
I feel beleaguered many times with the idea that even in the best-run offices, the most progressive and well-funded in the country, there are still these serious issues with nepotism, mismanagement, and bigotry. Part of me feels like the system is just so broken from every angle, and I’ve spent these last eight years trying to untangle a delicate knot while the rest of the world keeps kicking my elbows and the knot just keeps getting worse and worse.
That said, I come here to bury this type of management, not to mourn and whine about it. I think about “The Peter Principle” of management, at first a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that has actually been studied and found to be literally true: Employees are promoted to the level of their incompetence. Someone who does a good job as a line attorney is rewarded with a leadership position. They do a bad job in the leadership position and get no further promotions but continue on doing poor work and mucking up Egypt and most of the rest of the Western part of the Empire until they eventually die there.
Document it. Speak up about it. Every time I’ve had a bad manager, I’ve had a group of brilliant attorneys around me who all have stunningly good ideas about how to run a more effective practice, and sometimes I think the biggest issue with bad management is that they just don’t listen to other ideas. Make them listen in whatever way you can, in whatever forum you have available to you. Send them an email. Talk to their boss. Write a column. These things fester in the dark. Light a fire.