Do You Have a Pair of Rose Colored Glasses?

I have an absolutely awful, no good custody case, filled with bad actors, alienation, child protective services, police, the works.  There is definitely a good guy and a bad guy.  Yet, if you look at social media alone, you would think that the bad guy and the good guy were reversed.  I hear you asking how that can be.  It's all in the story and how you tell it.  It's in what facts you include, what ones you leave out, and what ones about which you outright lie.  It's also in only hearing one side of the story, and in having a personal relationship of any kind with the one telling the story you hear.  None of us likes to think we're bad judges of character; it's sort of like Lake Wobegon, where our children are always the ones who are above average.  Therefore, if we've decided someone is a good egg, we view everything they do through those glasses, and it takes a long time for us to believe that the "good egg" is really rotten.

I must let you in on a secret - lawyers are people too.  As I've always said, for a successful attorney and client relationship, the attorney and client have to have some mutual respect, if not liking.  Guess what?  Our clients usually only tell us their side of the story.  It is an extremely rare client who provides an evenhanded and accurate portrayal of the situation which brings them into the Trenches.  In fact, for most of us who have toiled in the Trenches for any length of time, we are so certain we are only getting part of the story that we withhold judgment on the veracity of our client's portrayal until we hear from the other side.  Still........, even when we hear the other side of the case, we discount it if we like our client.  That's right, even seasoned professionals can be a bit deluded.  It happens more often than you might think.

Does it matter in the end?  Actually, yes.  You pay us for our objectivity, not our emotional enmeshment.  Although it feels really good to have your attorney like you, make sure it's not blinding them to the unvarnished truth.  You want an attorney who recognizes they might be deluded, who tries like heck to counteract the feeling.  You do not want an attorney whose feelings for you get in the way of their impartial judgment on your behalf.  You do not want an attorney who cannot see how to help you resolve the issues in your family law matter because they're too concerned with your feelings to be honest with you.   You have friends.  What you need is a professional who can see all sides of the story, tell you the truth even when it's unpleasant, and be able to help you come up with solutions that meet your needs, but are not necessarily what you want.  After all, it's impossible for all of our children to be above average, whether or not we live in Lake Wobegon.  Here in the Trenches.