Don’t Shoot The Messenger

In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, the concept of blaming the messenger was raised when Cleopatra is told that Anthony has married Octavia. On hearing the news, Cleopatra takes revenge on the messenger. The messenger responds “gracious madam, I that do bring the news made not the match.” Actually, the desire to kill the messenger remains a viable response to bad news to this day. I call this problem transference, and clients should be mindful of blaming the messenger when their lawyer tries to tell them the truth.
In most cases when people go to a lawyer they are already in some kind of trouble. Either they have been accused of a crime or they may be involved in a civil dispute, which has the very great potential for ending badly. In either circumstance, the lawyer they go to for help did not cause the problem. I have a number of friends who are physicians. They tell me that doctors have the same problem. When a patient comes to them with a tumor they are just asking for the doctor’s help. The doctor did not cause the tumor. Sometimes tumors don’t end well despite competent or even the heroic measures taken by the doctor. Blaming the doctor for a bad result is understandable, but unfair. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. The same is true of lawyers and their clients.
I began to notice this problem when I first started practicing law. I found that it happened most frequently in divorce and child custody cases. I have my own theory about how it develops. The client comes to see the lawyer about a very emotionally charged issue like a divorce. The lawyer agrees to represent the client and the discovery phase of the case begins. During the discovery phase, the lawyer investigates the allegations on both sides to determine the unique facts of the case. In doing so, the lawyer and client must interact frequently but the client rarely interacts with the other side. All communication usually goes through the lawyers. In most disputes, there are two sides. When the lawyer discusses the case with the client he must inform them as to the positions being advanced by the other side. When this happens the person is hearing information they may strongly disagree with or which severely hurts their feelings. They are looking at their own lawyer when these strong feelings are elicited. In this instance, the lawyer is just the messenger. We all remember Pavlov’s dog. Ivan Pavlov was a Russian mathematician and scientist. He became famous for discovering a psychological phenomena he called the “conditioned response.” Essentially, Pavlov studied the saliva glands of dogs. Pavlov would ring a bell and then give the dogs food. After repeating this process over time, the dogs became conditioned to salivate before they saw the food. All the researchers had to do was ring the bell and the dogs would salivate. He called this a conditioned response. He confirmed the theory of conditional response on humans in later studies. His research demonstrated that people can become conditioned to react in a certain way to a stimulus without using critical thinking. They just hear or see the stimulus and then they react.
In a legal setting, the client comes into the lawyer’s office and talks to him. The client hears things that upset, anger or embarrass them. Sometimes the clients can become conditioned to feel badly by just looking at or listening to their own lawyer’s voice. His voice becomes the stimulus for hearing distressing news. Like Pavlov’s dog, the client makes the jump to associate his own lawyer with bad news. The lawyer is not the one who wants the divorce, it is the spouse. Yet, the clients can sometimes associate the lawyer with the painful feelings they are experiencing and thus they can begin to blame the lawyer for the pain which is actually being caused by the divorce.
I think that there are two important things to remember about conditioned responses. The first is that they happen automatically, and without critical thinking. Actually thinking about it can allow the client to avoid blaming his lawyer for the evidence in the case. The second is that conditioned responses are learned, and therefore, they can be unlearned. If you find yourself feeling angry at your lawyer it might be helpful to do some critical thinking about what you are really upset about and remember that your lawyer did not cause the problem. He is just the messenger.