If you’re willing to look a monster in the eyes, you just might find that he has no teeth.

There are all kinds of lawyers …. civil right attorneys, lawyers hired by corporations to limit rights of employees, corporate lawyers who protect corporate rights at the expense of others who can not afford lawyers, judges, criminal lawyers (where that term is all too suggestive ), defense attorneys.  We all have relatives who are lawyers … in my own family  one is a corporate attorney whose job it is to protect the rights of large corporations, another specializes in the intellectual rights of creative artists, a third is an attorney in the US airforce.   

Each of these does a very different job.  From my point of view, however there are traits that divide all attorneys.  A few, like the ex judge who writes here as “Roger Rabbit,” have a strong devotion the law. His class is the best of the profession.  These people are heroes.  A second class is just doing their jobs.  I call these lawyers “von Brandts” because they remind me of the Nazis who were just doing their jobs.  These people have no interest in justice, they do what they are hired to do. The third class, the one that scares me, are the hired thugs.  These are lawyers are for hire. They see the law as having no justice.  Their only goal is to get whatever the client wants done .. irrespective of law or morality.

Judd Weiss has written a fascinating take on legal thugs.  He compares these intimidating lawyers to the monsters in the movie “Monsters Inc.”

(adapted and shortened)  In earlier times, when a dispute arose you would hire some muscle, or even a hit man to take care of it. In civil society we hire attorneys. They are the modern day muscle men. Unfortunately the law is often unjust or unclear and attorneys are therefore able to exact injustice, sometimes terrible injustice, on behalf of their clients.

THE APPROACH: After a busy day scaring people, when a monster enters your bedroom to scare you, you need to scare HIM. He should open the door, step inside, THEN you close the door, lock it, terrify the living shit out of him until the monster begs you to let him out.

A threatening attorney must be made to realize that his life is much better returned to intimidating average people. He should want nothing to do with you. You are the pig who enjoys getting dirty. When your name is mentioned to him, it should trigger a recurring nightmare and sudden stomach pain.

That’s my approach anyway. And it’s worked well for me.

Back in the glory days of my career as a Commercial Real Estate Broker, I would receive a very threatening attorney letter at least once a month, but often about once a week. They are like toilet paper to me, the words on the paper didn’t concern me.

That’s because involving attorneys is such a common negotiating practice when dollar values rise and several million dollars are at stake. The attorney letter is always written to sound as terrifying as possible; threatening enormous amounts of money, threatening life as we know it, threatening to sue everyone and everyone’s grandmother.

The more threatening the letter, the more references to precedent case numbers, the more terrifying the tone, the more they’re covering up. The more they are compensating for lack of a legitimate case. Learn to smell a bluff.

What I do next depends on the attorney’s tone on the phone when I call him. I’ve noticed 3 types.

TYPE I: The Nice Guy

My approach assumes the other side has something to lose personally and won’t find it in their interest to pursue legal action against me at any cost. I can imagine this approach wouldn’t work at all with a government agency run by bureaucrats spending taxpayer dollars. Even if their case is weak and trivial nonsense, they go all the way, and they appeal if they lose.
Also young attorneys looking for experience can often be stupid and reckless and willing to ruin everyone’s life by pushing cases forward on their client’s dime that shouldn’t move forward. The same fundamental principles apply, but it can call for different approaches outside the focus of this article, which may include discrediting the young attorney in the eyes of his client, causing his client to fear representation from him, and bypassing the young attorney altogether.
Also this article refers to attorneys I’ve encountered in the business world and has nothing to do with attorneys who help plan estates, engage in criminal law, etc. I’m only talking about dealing with attorneys threatening you, not about dealing with attorneys you may hire to defend you.

It’s true, and it is rare, sometimes you call a lawyer and his tone is actually warm and a little friendly. That’s good. He might actually be a reasonable guy and might try to make a fair situation out of this. Go ahead and work it out fairly. Getting an attorney involved is a hostile act, but see if there’s still an opportunity to resolve the matter cooperatively.

Usually his tone is cold and technical. That’s just fine. I usually cut right to the chase and tell him “the letter I received is without any merit whatsoever. You’ve given us 1 month to send your client $350,000 before you file a lawsuit. That’s nice of you, but let’s not drag this out and create movie suspense. Go ahead and file the suit tomorrow if that’s in your client’s best interest. But if I receive any more communication from your office beyond that this matter is dropped, I will sue your client and sue you personally for malicious prosecution according to CCP 128.7” Surprisingly, often enough that got the attorney to drop the matter.

Remember, attorneys do not want legal problems resolved.  Resolution of conflicts dries up his billable hours. He wants as much chaos and destruction as possible. That way he becomes more important. However, it’s amazing how despite a tolerance for causing pain for others, he will usually have a very low tolerance for pain himself. Most attorneys have no balls. They aren’t businessmen and they’re usually unwilling to take even the slightest personal risk. Attorneys are very uncomfortable about being attacked personally, and they’re not used to it. You have a lot of leverage over them by going after their license and their reputation, two things they guard dearly. They just won’t risk anything important on a bluff.

TYPE II: Hanging Up

I’ve even had attorneys hang up on me mid sentence realizing it’s not worth their time speaking with me for another second, let alone pursuing further nonsense legal action. That is a good outcome.

TYPE III: Nasty

The third type of encounter is when, often enough, the tone of the attorney picking up the phone is rude, nasty, and extremely condescending…..The nasty rude condescending attitude usually comes from the big fish lawyers that charge $500 to $900 an hour. His client went through pains to find the biggest baddest most expensive weapon to fire at me. Someone really wants me scared. The attorney just received a fat retainer and must justify his cost.  They may dress expensively, speak eloquently, be well educated, but make no mistake, they are not that sophisticated, they are savages. The way I deal with them is I think about how to deal with a 3 year old throwing a temper tantrum for attention. If he behaves, I’ve got a cookie for him. Otherwise he’s going to enjoy some discipline.After all that puffery and bravado, he really really doesn’t want to have nothing to show for himself but to relay a message to eat shit and go fuck yourself.

  has a reputation to uphold among his profession and beyond. Everyone knows him as a big shot. He does not like to doubt himself. His wife, children and friends ask him how things are going. No one speaks to the king of the jungle like that! But what can he do about it? Someone paid him a lot of money to scare me and I’m not scared.

 This situation now merits my favorite legal response.

I tell him “We’re going to keep this short and sweet. Do you have a pen and paper? I don’t want to send back any letters or emails, I want you to write down my formal response. Are you ready? Good. The formal response to your client is, ‘Eat Shit and Go Fuck Yourself’. Did you get all that, or should I repeat it?” That should catch him off guard. Always, he’ll quickly ask me why I’m behaving so unprofessionally. I don’t tell him to please look in the mirror when he asks these things, I just tell him to “Be a good professional and pass along the message. Goodbye.”

That is a powerful approach for so many more reasons than you can quickly realize. In a fight you want to limit your opponents moves and force him in the direction you want him to go. The other side is now forced to carefully consider their options, their options have just been drastically limited.

s crazy and deliberate. ll usually demonstrate that clearly by doing something that will not look good in front of a judge. Because IT WILL NEVER GET IN FRONT OF A JUDGE. As I said earlier, most legal cases are without much merit. The bible is interpreted in a million different ways, and unfortunately our legal code is even more widely interpreted.

Attorneys need your cooperation to intimidate you with the law. If you’re not cooperative, there’s no way the other side will take a questionable business dispute all the way to court, spending a couple hundred thousand dollars doing so, with a very shaky chance of winning. It’s not a smart business move, and ultimately there is a businessman paying and authorizing the attorney’s actions. So when an attorney gets hostile with me, I remain very uncooperative and demonstrate that clearly by doing things that could look terrible in front of a judge.