I will fight if I have to. It’s part of the job. But I fight calmly. Many another attorney has lectured me – or even yelled at me. Or lectured my client during a four-way meeting. I don’t lecture back. I don’t yell back. I lay out my position as calmly as I am able under the circumstances. If that doesn’t work, I shrug my shoulders and say “we’ll let the judge decide.” (I do, however, tend to get a bit sarcastic in my briefs for the judge.)
I would much prefer to look upon litigation – particularly family law litigation – not as a battle, but as a problem to be solved. I think that’s why so many litigants whom I have opposed have later come to me for representation.
Several years ago, another attorney and I had a case in front of Judge Gordon Baranco when he was sitting in family law. He called the two of us up to the bench and said, “I’m glad you two are on this case. It looks like it could get really nasty, but I know you won’t let that happen.”
Probably not a year goes by that I don’t get a call from a husband or wife whom I opposed in a dissolution action some years back, asking if I would represent him/her in a new matter. “You were so fair and so calm – unlike my attorney – that I want you to represent me now,” is the usual refrain.
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Many of my clients also become life-long friends. Until she died, an elderly Portuguese client would bring me homemade wine every Christmas. Another one brought home-baked cookies, and another one homemade chocolate treats. Louie, an elderly Chinese client, always brought sprigs of magnolia blossoms. They were beautiful and smelled wonderful for about five minutes, and Louie never knew that we had to toss them outside into the garbage can almost as soon as he left because the scent was so overpowering.
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My favorite story about former adversaries also involves a grateful tip of the hat to a now- retired family law attorney.
Louie’s daughter asked me to represent her in her divorce. Prior to her marriage, she had owned a house in her own name, but she had placed it in joint tenancy with her husband out of love and trust. This all occurred prior to 1994, when the law was different from today, and it was legally assumed that her house was half his. And – unlike today – there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
Husband’s attorney was the most renowned and respected female attorney of her day in Alameda County, a lady who played strictly by the book and who seldom gave a sucker a break. Most attorneys liked her and respected her, but nobody underestimated her toughness. But when the four of us met during the obligatory “four-way conference,” she told Husband he really should give up his interest in Wife’s generous pension plan. Although he was greedy enough to demand that his wife pay him for the half-interest in the house which she had given to him in the first place, he agreed to let her keep her entire pension, which pretty much evened things out. It was a fair settlement, morally, even if I could not have gotten the same result following a trial. My high admiration for his attorney rose even higher.
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About two years later, Husband’s brother asked me to represent him in a divorce. Husband had recommended me.