Do Arguments Work? It’s Debatable.

I went to law school because I was good at arguing and, like most people, I thought that was what lawyers were supposed to do. Today, I spend most of my time helping my clients understand how little can be accomplished through arguments.

Arguments by lawyers are generally no more successful than the arguments most of us have in our homes. Yet, somehow they are hard to resist. It has taken me many years to accept that fact. During the first 20 years of my legal career I spent a lot of time impressing clients with my skills in argument. Clients would come to me and describe some wrong that their spouse had committed and ask me to “do something”. I often responded by writing great argumentative letters and my clients loved it. They did not realize they had just paid me $250.00 per hour to do something that was actually going to make it harder for them to achieve their goals.

Helping my clients achieve their goals usually means helping them convince their spouse to agree with them on many key issues. (More than 95% of all cases settle, so it generally comes down to persuading the other party.) The letters I sent, (and most letters sent by attorneys in these situations), failed to change anyone’s mind. To the contrary, the best arguments simply caused the other spouse to become more entrenched in their r positions and resulted in the other attorney writing a similar letter “arguing their case”. These return letters, of course, always caused my client to become even more entrenched in their positions as well, driving both parties farther away from achieving their goals.

When I reflect on the impact of my arguments in my personal life, the results are
about the same; (at best harmless, at worst damaging to my ultimate goals.) So, what does this mean? Should we abandon our efforts to advocate for ourselves and should I, as an attorney neglect my obligation to advocate for my clients? Of course not. The problem is that we have all come to equate arguments with advocacy so we fail to notice that most arguments are actually very weak tools for standing up for ourselves or others.

The subject of just want constitutes effective advocacy, (or standing up for ourselves), is a subject for another day. For now, I will simply fall back on the old adage that we “catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” When I recently reminded a friend of this old saying, he was quick to point out that “in fact, you can catch even more flies with manure.” Can’t argue with that.

Too Easy to Get Divorced? (Or too Easy to Get Married?)

People often ask me if it is too easy to get divorced. I usually reply that I think it is really quite difficult to get divorced. But, I know what they mean. They wonder if more people would stay married if divorce was more difficult to obtain.

I doubt that creating legal barriers to divorce would keep couples to stay together and, even if it did, I don't think many of us would be happy with results. Couples who stayed together long after the relationship has failed do not necessarily do themselves, or their children, any favors.

Unless we can find better ways to make longterm relationships work, forcing people to stay married will only be window dressing. I am not wise enough to hold the secret to preventing the deterioration of relationships but I am convinced that helping people strengthen these bonds is truly worthy of our attention.

I also think that the success of these efforts will depend, in large part, on our ability to address these problems as early as possible. Too often couples find that at least one spouse has reached a point of no return long before any serious effort has been made to rehabilitate the relationship. When I hear these stories from my clients I often wonder if they might have had a chance to save the relationship if there has been some type of constructive early intervention.

How early should couples confront the challenges of divorce? I suppose we could all stand to learn a bit more about relationships from the time we first start yelling "mine" in the sandbox. But since my focus has been primarily on learning how to sustain longterm relationships, I am wondering more about how we can help people when they are considering making a true commitment. It seems there is much there is more we could be doing to help couples prior to marriage. Couples who enter marriage understanding that even the best marriages will be difficult and who prepare themselve to confront these challenges will likely have a better chance to avoid the pain uncoupling that I witness each day.

Does that mean we should make it harder to get married? I doubt that creating legal barriers to marriage would will have any positive effect. However, I do think that we are capable of developing a culture that focuses on helping our friends, neighbors and family members think about marriage,(and child bearing) differently. Maybe if we can, at minimum, create a collective "speed bump" that helps people slow down and reflect on the depth of their commitment before they put that big deposit down for their wedding bash.

Letting Go and the Peril of Southeast Monkeys.

I am convinced that most of our happiness, and our peace of mind, comes from learning to let go. Most of our life difficulties are not related to things we lack but by our attachments.
In the classic book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig talks about the lessons learned from the Southeast Asian monkey trap.
In Southeast Asia, monkeys are sometimes such a nuisance that they need to be trapped and moved farther out from the cities. The natives have come up with a clever way of capturing them through a homemade monkey trap.

“The Monkey Trap consists of a hollowed out coconut chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside which can be grabbed through the small hole. The hole is big enough so the monkey’s hand can go in, but too small for his fist with rice to come out. When the monkey reaches in, he is trapped — by nothing more than his own rigidity. He can’t revalue the rice. He cannot see that freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it.”

— Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

As ridiculous as it seems to imagine a monkey who cannot get free because he simply refuses to let go of rice, I know that I am constantly clinging to things that are just as certain to keep me trapped. Letting go is frightening and unfamiliar but generally brings peace.