I read this weekend's New York Times profile of Roy Den Hollander, the lawyer who law enforcement officials have identified as the shooter in the tragic killing of the 20-year old son of a federal judge, with an equal mix of horror and concern.

Den Hollander's body was found in a rental car on a rural road in New York's Catskills after an apparent suicide the day after the violent July 19 attack at the home of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas in North Brunswick, New Jersey. Officials say Hollander wore a Federal Express uniform as he shot and killed Salas' 20-year-old son, Daniel Anderl, and shot her husband, attorney Mark Anderl, leaving him in critical condition. Salas, who was in the home's basement at the time, wasn't physically harmed.

Officials have since linked Den Hollander, a self-proclaimed "men's rights" attorney, to the shooting death of another attorney in the anti-feminist movement, Marc Angelucci, at his home across the country in San San Bernardino County, California, a little more than a week earlier on July 11. 

I don't know what I find more disturbing: the tragic loss of life or the threat that the attack on the family of a sitting judge poses on our system of justice, especially at a time when our judiciary is facing unprecedented challenges to provide basic, Constitutionally-mandated functions. 

All that aside, what struck me about the Times profile was that Den Hollander was a litigator. He filed lawsuits, wrote briefs, and argued motions, much like you.

Please don't take this the wrong way. My noting that one clearly disturbed attorney was capable of such horrors is hardly a stain on you and your chosen profession. I know there is a wide gap between what you likely do and what Den Hollander has been doing of late, suing nightclubs claiming "ladies' night" promotions are discriminatory and pursuing a class action in Salas' court challenging the male-only military draft in the U.S. 

Still, you likely know lawyers with similar career trajectories. My friends at The American Lawyer report that Den Hollander spent time as an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in the 1980s before taking on work as a contract attorney for Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan early this past decade. "He was never a QE employee but worked on one firm matter several years ago through a temp agency, HireCounsel," a spokesman for Quinn told Am Law. More recently he handled document review for agencies hired by Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Shook, Hardy & Bacon; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; and Reed Smith among others, according to his resume. 

Let me say this: There's a reason I signed up to talk to litigators for a living. By and large, when I talk to you all out there, I get a sense of the decency and purpose that underlies the legal profession. You're natural storytellers, like folks in my profession tend to be, and you're every bit as competitive as we are. We journalists like a well-turned phrase and scoops. You litigators like a well-turned phrase and wins for your clients.

But there are points where both our professions face some tough questions about how we set people up to think in their down time—what little of it we all get these days. There are certain elements of the us-versus-them approach to problem-solving that we both employ which can become extremely unhealthy, even malevolent, when not grounded in civility and decency. 

So, how do you balance the need to be a zealous advocate for your client in litigation without letting the adversarial nature of the process creep into all elements of your life? 

Thankfully, many of you are already pretty good at answering that question for yourselves. But it's a question that I think is worth re-asking frequently—and one that the events of the past few weeks implores the profession to keep asking.