Secure Your Workspaces in the Office and at Home
If you haven’t been doing security training at your office, now is the time to start. Meet with your staff, if you have any, and discuss where all the exits are and what code word you will use to signify if this person arrives. Set up protocols, such as a barrier between the front and back office, visitor passes, and escorting all visitors in and out of your work area. Consider installing silent (or loud) alarms and better lighting in dark parking areas or sections of the building and arranging a buddy system or security for employees leaving at dark hours. Many police departments will do a free walk-through of your office to identify risks, and some do trainings on active shooter and security measures as well. Train your staff at least annually on emergency procedures. There are resources to help you with this endeavor at the end of this article.
When securing a home office, discuss these matters with your family as well. Prepare a plan for emergencies of all types. Know the exits, have off-site meeting places if you get separated, and talk about how to behave and how to call the police in case of an intruder or threat. The incident always produces chaos, but trained people naturally fall back on that training in an emergency.
Stay Safe During Depositions
Another tense moment can be a deposition of an opposing party or interested witness. Say you are sitting across from an angry spouse who is glaring at you, and you think they have a weapon. You may try de-escalation techniques, such as lowering and slowing your speech, not an using aggressive tone or physical posture, showing empathy and ignoring confrontational questions, setting boundaries and limits with the individual but giving them choices within those boundaries, and giving time for their cognitive mind to come back online and the situation to cool down.
But, again, don’t underreact. If you don’t feel safe, end the deposition quickly and definitively: “I have to call this deposition to a close. There’s another matter I must address. We can reschedule at a later date.” Get out of there and schedule the next one in a more secure and controlled location. You can hire off-duty police officers or other security personnel to guard you at an hourly rate.
Don’t Stay Silent
Finally, if you know something is going sideways, don’t stay silent. Stephen D. Kelson has said, “It is surprising how many incidents have actually been prevented because a lawyer or professional picked up the phone and warned about an imminent threat.” If, for example, clients say they going to go hurt opposing counsel or you see them stalking their office, say something. Kelson says, “It makes a real difference.”
Violence is the exception in a law practice. But it shouldn’t be thought impossible. Listen to your staff’s concerns and take them seriously, too. On average, 2 million incidents of workplace violence are reported annually. Workplace violence is defined as acts or threats of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, and other threatening or disruptive behavior. It can be threats, verbal abuse, or physical assault, all the way up to homicide. Employers are required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to offer employees a safe workplace if the danger can be mitigated (i.e., if “there is a feasible method to abate the hazard”). Make it a priority to care for your own safety and the safety of others, and don’t be hard on yourself if an angry voice mail shocks you. That’s a natural human instinct that has been protecting us for millennia.
Further Reading
- Read Gavin De Becker’s The Gift of Fear: Survival Signs That Protect Us from Violence (Little, Brown and Company, 1997) for more on intuition and avoiding dangers.
- For legal-specific statistics on threat and harm in the legal profession, look at Violence in the Legal Profession: A Study of Our Colleagues Nationwide, published by the Paralegal Division of the Utah State Bar, and The Threat of Violence: What Wisconsin Lawyers Experience (Wisconsin Lawyer, Vol. 92, No. 6, June 2019), both by Stephen D. Kelson.
- Watch the FBI video Run. Hide. Fight.
- Watch the State Bar of Arizona’s program recording Expecting the Unexpected: How to Prepare You and Your Staff for Violence in the Workplace.
- Refer to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s USDA Handbook on Workplace Violence Prevention and Response (Oct. 2001).
- Read the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Workplace Violence Strategies and Research Needs (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Publication No. 2006-144; Report from the Conference “Partnering in Workplace Violence Preventions: Translating Research to Practice,” Nov. 17–19, 2004, Baltimore, Md.).
- Visit the U.S. Department of Labor Workplace Violence Program website.