First-year students at Rutgers Law School in Newark got a lesson last week on attorney professionalism and relationships from the New Jersey State Bar Association and other state leaders in the law.
The panel discussion covered a wide range of topics on the importance of a lawyer's relationships – with clients, colleagues, judges and fellow classmates – and how managing those relationships is essential to become a successful attorney. NJSBA Trustee Katrina Homel and James J. Uliano, who chairs the New Jersey Commission on Professionalism in the Law, joined state Supreme Court Justice Douglas M. Fasciale, retired U.S. District Court Judge John W. Bissell and Union County Municipal Court Presiding Judge Cassandra A. Corbett on the panel.
Speaking to a class of more than 80 first-year law students, the panel touched on handling difficult clients, relationships with colleagues and adversaries and what advice they would give their young self on relationship building.
Justice Fasciale said when thinking about professionalism and civility, lawyers should always remember that they are interacting with people who are juggling life’s challenges. In court, across the table at depositions or in the classroom, no one knows what’s happening in the life of the person next to them, Justice Fasciale said. He encouraged students to approach relationships from that perspective.
“As lawyers, judges, law students, anyone for that matter, we should act with intentionality. Take time to listen to one another, recognize the humanity and then you live out the important principles that relationships matter, each person has value and we play a vital role in one other’s well-being,” Justice Fasciale said.
Homel, who chaired the NJSBA’s Young Lawyers Division, said a lawyer’s professional reputation begins in law school, where they establish a foundation for their career that will last for decades.
“You never know who will reach out to you or cross your path. In all likelihood there’s at least one person in this room who will be a judge one day. Some of you will become clients of each other or colleagues in a legal practice,” Homel said. “You just never know who you will see again. So treating your colleagues with respect is so fundamental.”
Uliano, also a former YLD chair, stressed the importance of building a brand. For an attorney, their brand is their reputation, he said. In a stressful and high-stakes profession, simple gestures like consenting to an adjournment for an adversary can go a long way.
“Practicing law isn’t a tennis match. We all have to advocate for our clients,” he said, “But the overall goal is not to score points. There are usually ways to go about that in a professional manner,” Uliano said.