Ayn Rand, founder of the objectivism philosophy she named, brought her views to life in traditional philosophy writings and novels, including The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. It is unusual to publish in two formats, and when asked whether she was primarily a novelist or philosopher, she replied, “Both.”
As she wrote in For the New Intellectual, “In a certain sense, every novelist is a philosopher because one cannot present a picture of human existence without a philosophical framework; the novelist’s only choice is whether that framework is present in his story explicitly or implicitly, whether he is aware of it or not, whether he holds his philosophical convictions consciously or subconsciously.” Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand vii (Random House 1961).
Some attorneys have become very successful authors; John Grisham and David Baldacci come to mind. In a 2022 interview with the ABA Journal, Baldacci recounts his departure from Big Law, having been in private practice in Washington, DC. See https://tinyurl.com/49zem24z. He tells of countless questions from attorneys who want to follow his path and suggests they discern whether the story is law-themed because it is compelling to them or because it is a subject they know about. In the latter’s case, he suggests that without a passion for the plot, their “creative fuel tank is going to be empty” after about one hundred pages.
It strikes me that, as attorneys, we are much like the novelist Ayn Rand describes, even if we aren’t trying to become authors. Our novel as counselors at law is embedded in the advice we give, how we prepare documents, and how we develop a strategy for a court case. Naturally, we do so out of our philosophical framework. This raises a question: Are we aware of our framework and its effect on how we understand and counsel clients?
As attorneys, we often bring a value system, knowingly or unknowingly, into a meeting. We likely have a preferred approach to given situations —consciously or not. We inherently bring this paradigm into the meeting, a prism through which we interpret the client’s facts and goals and render legal advice.
To be the best advisor possible, we should know how our frameworks can steer clients. Yet, therein lies the conundrum. How do we use our experiences and framework to advise clients without distorting the client’s goals? The answer may be a paradigm shift.
The late Stephen Covey wrote a wonderful depiction of a paradigm shift:
I remember a mini-paradigm shift that I experienced one Sunday morning on a subway in New York. People were sitting quietly—some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with closed eyes. It was a calm, peaceful scene. Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly, the whole climate changed.
The man sat beside me and closed his eyes, oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people’s papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing.
It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe he could be so insensitive to let his children run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no responsibility. It was easy to see that everyone else on the subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, “Sir, your children are disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?”
The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either.”
Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly, I saw things differently…
Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People 30 (New York: Fireside, 1989).
The takeaway is that there may be times when we need to shift our perspective to focus on the fact that we may have a predisposition due to our philosophical framework. Doing so could allow us to pause and listen to the client fully before providing the novel that is our advice and legal opinion. This puts us in a position to be precise (and objective) in our expression.
When we write a best-selling novel, insightful legal treatise, or advise clients, our framework is always present. In many ways, it enriches our wisdom and understanding; however, a failure to know our framework or a lack of awareness of its presence could diminish our effectiveness. So, be a novelist and a legal philosopher, but coupled with awareness and attention, your advice will be even more understandable.
