Courtroom acrimony makes for great theatre, but is it good advocacy? Sure, delivering a barbed comment at the expense of your adversary might momentarily impress your client, and it can even feel pretty good at times, especially if the guy on the other side of the well has been delivering a few himself, but will that well-aimed bon mot actually help your client?
No. Years of presiding as an arbitrator over too many needlessly bitter skirmishes has inspired in this writer a profound empathy for the legions of judges who are daily (if not hourly) thrust in the unenviable position of referees wading through verbal jousting matches to get to the substance of an issue. Indeed, the appalling fact that our tireless state judges have been waiting a dozen years for a pay increase might appropriately be rectified by awarding them combat pay. Vituperative exchanges between opposing counsel add nothing to the case; they simply reinforce the negative public perception of lawyers as advocates whose clients’ interests take a back seat to their own.
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