Dealing with Hostile Adversaries in Contentious Litigation

Litigation is an inherently adversarial process. At times the contentiousness and acrimony become a challenge for the parties to address. Hostility increases the costs of litigation as well as the stress levels of all participants. For those reasons alone, counsel must be able to deal with aggressive and unreasonable adverse parties and continually develop these skills. In this episode, Kent Schmidt interviews Jennifer Coates and Ashley Repp on how to handle hostile adversaries in litigation, what courts are doing about a lack of civility and secrets to keeping a level head and maintaining mental health during the battle.

This podcast is not legal advice and does not establish an attorney-client relationship or create any duty of Dorsey & Whitney LLP or those appearing in this podcast to anyone. Although we try to assure that the content of this podcast is accurate, comprehensive, and reflects current legal developments, we do not warrant or guarantee those things. The opinions expressed in this podcast are the opinions of those appearing in the podcast only and not those of Dorsey & Whitney. This podcast is considered attorney advertising under the applicable rules of certain states.

Transcript

Voiceover

Welcome to another episode of the SharkCast on litigation risks management where we explore why businesses are so frequently sued, and how to mitigate and navigate the dangers lurking in these risky waters.  Join us now as we welcome our host Kent Schmidt, Litigation Partner at the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney.

Schmidt

Welcome again to another episode of SharkCast.  You know, if there’s one thing that I love about the legal profession, it is that it involves a lifetime of learning.  Once you decide to become a lawyer, you’re essentially signed up to keep learning your entire practice and beyond, and it’s not just the new developments that we often talk about on SharkCast, like new technology, new regulations and trends, and of course artificial intelligence, which is the buzz right now, but it’s learning about some of the basic things that we can always improve on, particularly as practitioners, including litigators.  And one of the reasons I enjoy doing SharkCast is that I’m always learning, including from my guests, including on these topics, and today I’m sure will be no exception.  I was told a few months ago by one of my partners that one of our two guests today, Jennifer Coates, has many skills and attributes as a lawyer and a trial attorney, but one of her outstanding skills is her ability to handle difficult opposing counsel.  And when I heard that, I thought I could always learn a little bit more from how to do this effectively.  There are times I feel at a loss on how to handle very uncivil, uncooperative, opposing counsel.  I’m sure this episode’s gonna have a number of those types of adjectives in it.  And so I thought what better way to learn than by interviewing Jennifer.  And Jennifer and I, who invited another one of our colleagues, Ashley Repp, who also has some interesting experiences to share and some insights.  And I think this will be a great opportunity to share some of our experiences.  Maybe while we were going through those experiences is very difficult and we didn’t think we’d ever be able to have a lighthearted conversation about those, but with most things you go through in life, as time goes on, you can learn and you can perhaps even chuckle about how ridiculous the other side was.  So let’s dive in.  Welcome to SharkCast both Jennifer and Ashley.  Both are attorneys in our Minneapolis office, and why don’t I just open it up and see if you have any sort of opening general thoughts on the topic of lawyer civility before we jump into a number of questions and subtopics.

Coates

Thank you so much for having us.  This is a wonderful opportunity I think to connect across practices and actually just to talk to people with different styles, frankly.  I think that when we talk about opposing counsel, I think in my career as a litigator, as a trial attorney, I just run across a lot of people that think talent is the same as being abstinent and difficult.  And it’s not.  The more difficult the counsel tends to be, the more I question, you really know what you’re doing?  Because, you know, and you really have a handle on your case and the law, and that kind of thing, because I just don’t find it necessary to be difficult.  Direct, yes, to the point, yes, but difficult, I don’t know.  So for me it’s been an interesting exploration of, you know, who I am and who I wanna be as a practitioner, and how I wanna be seen by the other side, but also, and by my counsel at large out among the bar, but also, you know, understanding that where that difficulty comes from, why people want to be difficult.

Schmidt

Ashley, any thoughts you’d like to share before we dive into some specific questions?

Repp

Yeah.  So I’d actually like to echo what Jennifer said.  I think I’ve noticed when people become difficult, don’t want to share evidence, start becoming challenging, you know that they’re missing something in their case and they might not necessarily understand what their end game is, or what that end game should be.  So I do find it interesting and it always gives me some pause when I meet someone that just wants to be difficult for the sake of being challenging in a case.  I think additionally for me my integrity really is all I have at the end of the day.  Who I am and who I hold myself out to be, that is what people will know me by when I’m not here anymore.  And so to that end, I try to make sure that I’m conducting myself in a way in this practice that I can feel proud of and know that I did the right thing, and I adhered to the rules, and I try to be a good person while being a zealous advocate for my client, because that’s what I’ve got.

Schmidt

Absolutely.  Well, those are some great opening thoughts.  I think it also would be helpful to get a judicial perspective.  And I mentioned earlier that this conversation with one of my partners is what prompted this conversation with Jennifer, and which we’ve invited Ashley to join us.  But it was also confirmed by a recent California Court of Appeal decision, which came down just a few weeks ago, and I’m not going to name, I’m not gonna give the name of the case because it has the name of the law firm in it and it’s a solo practitioner and I think this lawyer’s probably already been chastised enough by having a reported decision with his name that’s forever gonna be part of the California Appellate reports.  So I’m not gonna give you the name, someone really wants to get the name of the case they can e-mail me.  This lawyer brought down the wrath of our Court of Appeal with some antics that are not that uncommon in the profession.  He served some boilerplate discovery responses, and then there was a dispute before discovery referee, in which he tried to interject some materials to infect and prejudice the discovery referee about the other side.  And then he sent some rather nasty emails.  I mean, they’re not the worst emails I’ve ever seen.  The subject line was, are you joking?  And then he talked about his adversary’s position being the stupidest thing he’s ever heard of in 30 years of practice.  Very condescending.  And he concluded by saying that opposing counsel should knock it off and get a life.  So, you know, not the worst, but still very unprofessional.  And here’s what the court had to say.  The court has in the past had occasion to deplore the lack of civility that has flourished in the legal profession in recent decades.  Our profession is rife with cynicism, awash in incivility, lawyers and judges of our generation spent a great deal of time lamenting the loss of a golden age when lawyers treated each other with respect and courtesy.  More recently, another court has echoed this sentiment in upholding a severe reduction in attorney fee request.  Excellent lawyers deserve higher fees and excellent lawyers are civil.  Sound logic and bitter experience support these points.  Civility is an ethical component of professionalism.  Civility is desirable in litigation, not only because it is ethically required for its own sake, but because it is socially advantageous.  It lowers the cost of dispute resolution.  The American legal profession exists to help people resolve disputes cheaply, swiftly, fairly, and justly.  Incivility between counsel is sand in the gears.  Incivility can rankle relations and thereby increase the friction, extent and cost of litigation.  Calling opposing counsel a liar, for instance, can invite destructive reciprocity and generate needless controversy.  Seasoning a disagreement with avoidable irritants can turn a minor conflict into a costly and protracted war.  All of those human hours, which could’ve put, been put to socially productive uses, instead are devoted to the unnecessary war and are lost forever, all sides lose, as does the justice system, which must supervise the hostilities.  And then the Court went on to say that this opposing counsel, quote, didn’t get the memo on this, notwithstanding the fact that he bragged about his 30 years of practice.  So quite a chastisement from the Court of Appeal, and I’m sure that courts around the country would reflect that.  Jennifer, you’ve been in practice a long time, so maybe I’ll get your perspective over time.  Do you think the lack of civility is increasing in recent years compared to when you started practicing?

Coates

I do.  I think that not only is it the lack of civility increasing, but I sometimes worry that it’s celebrated by clients or shown as something that’s positive, and therefore people try to be less civil because that somehow says that you’re a zealous advocate.  I think part of it though has to do with the position I’m now in, as opposed to where I started.  So you know, I started as an associate, I went into government practice, then I came back out and I’m a partner in a private practice.  And obviously as a partner, you deal with opposing counsel, whoever the lead counsel is for that side, there’s a different dynamic.  And so sometimes people will be uncivil to me, but kind and polite to the associates or my team members that are reporting through me.  And actually, I don’t mind that.  I don’t mind if people are uncivil to me.

Schmidt

You’ll take the brunt, huh?

Coates

Right, absolutely.  But calling it one of my associates and sending an e-mail that says, you know, you’re an idiot, or how did you get that job, that is going to bring out the bear in me because that’s totally inappropriate because, and I think Ashley and I worked on a case together where somebody actually did this.  And I think my response to opposing counsel was I’m the person that makes the strategic decisions for this case, and so if you have a problem with the strategy, then call, come talk to the person with the strategy, who’s setting the strategy.  And sometimes people will talk to you, sometimes they won’t.  Sometimes I think there’s a cowardice to it.  You know, I’d rather pick on somebody that has less power on the team.  But that’s a long way of saying yes.  I think there is more incivility, and if I can just say this part too, which is often when I bump into people who say my daughters or my son is gonna go to law school, they love to argue about everything.  And I think you started off this podcast with the right phraseology, which is when you sign up to be a lawyer, particularly a trial attorney, a civil litigator, you’re signing up to keep learning.  How do seeds work?  Why is broccoli grown in certain regions and it’s not?  You know, how does, how do the markets work?  In whatever it is that’s the subject of our case, we have to learn fresh so that we can teach it to a jury.  And so when people say, you know, my kid argues a lot, that’s why they should be a lawyer, there’s this perception that that’s what makes a good lawyer.  And I think that it’s the opposite.  What makes a great lawyer as a trial lawyer or civil litigator on the other side, is somebody that can learn and knows their case and the law.  And so, you know, those are the things that are valuable.  That’s a little bit of my tangent and my high horse.

Schmidt

Yeah, Ashley, as a lawyer that is near the beginning of the career than Jennifer or I am, have you experienced that, you know, someone that’s 10, 15, 20 years senior to you in terms of years of practice, just pulling out the condensation card and playing that like you don’t know what you’re talking about because you’re only a few years out of law school?

Repp

I have been practicing now for seven years and I do think that it’s not just because I’m younger.  I think it’s also because I’m a woman.  And I do find that especially men that are opposing counsel are more likely to be condescending to me, or difficult or unnecessarily obstinate for the sake of it versus other women.  And so I find that frequently the most difficult opposing counsel that I have to work with are male opposing counsel.  I have been called sweetheart, I have been disregarded in a setting in which there’s other attorneys, I’ve gotten a lot of the puffery of I know my case, I know that this sort of case always has X sort of outcome, you don’t know what you’re talking about.  And I think as a younger woman, I frequently will panic for a second and gut check myself when I’m confronted with this incivility and be like wow, maybe am I wrong?  I think it’s a little bit of gaslighting.  I think I’ve gotten more confident and comfortable over the years as I’ve had successful outcomes in cases to trust myself a little bit and recognize that a lot of that is puffery.

Schmidt

And it’s, I’m sure it’s always difficult to know, is this an equal opportunity jerk, or is this someone who’s biased, which is a significant concern and issue in the profession, is manifesting through how they’re treating you?  And it’s there, and we deal with it, and we all take training to make ourselves more sensitive to it and become aware, and the more you focus on it, the more you realize there’s a lot of that out there, even in today’s legal profession.  Let’s talk about some of the varieties of what I’ll call the problem kids that we deal with.  We’re sort of lumping these all together and we’ve identified some of the things condescending, of course.  How about just super angry, aggressive, no courtesies, you know, extensions?  Jennifer, what are some of the ways you deal with that stripe or variety of difficult opposing counsel?

Coates

I think when you deal with someone that doesn’t want to extend courtesies such as extensions, or respond to correspondence, what you’re dealing with is somebody who feels that they hold your feet to the fire, that you’ll work on their schedule.  And I think it’s really important in those instances to set your own pace and to say, you know, look, I will respond to you within the rules.  So the rules tell me this.  So I’ll respond to you in the rules and not allow yourself to get swept up in their timing of the case.  So I think that’s hard to do when you first start practicing because you don’t have the confidence or the experience yet to set your own pace, but it’s really important that you do that.  For people that are angry, I find that the best defense to angry people is to just be sweet as sugar.  And just, you know, if they, if somebody sends me an e-mail that says Jen, you know, no courtesy, no greeting, no pleasantries, my response to that is, Dear Mr. Hunt, that’s not a real person.  I am so glad, thank you for your response to my e-mail.  And part of that for me is remembering who I am and how I want to be viewed.  I think for people who are just starting to practice, it’s important to remember that every communication you have, including voicemails you leave, will be attached to a motion at some point.  You need to think about it that way.  You know, is this going to be attached to a motion to compel?  And whereas your client, who maybe has litigation, high stakes litigation once every what five years, your client doesn’t care how you’re responding, but you work more than once every five years.  So that means if I send an e-mail that’s discourteous, rude, bigoted, unreasonable, whatever it is, that the court knows it, and I have to get in front of this court again.  So that’s one problem.  And then you have opposing counsel knows it, and you may face opposing counsel again.  So I think it’s really important to remember to be as sweet, as nice as possible is how I respond to it.  Getting down into the mud usually is not a good solution.

Schmidt

You know a moment ago we talked about condescending counsel.  But there’s something that is kind of the opposite of condescending that I’ve also experienced, which is sometimes a solo practitioner or someone from a small firm will do the oh, you’re a big, huge law firm and little old me.  It’s just where this false sense of like, I’m not sure exactly how to put it, but trying to make you feel like you’re in a bad position just because you happen to be part of a larger organization.  Sometimes that’s manifested when you’re trying to schedule something and they say I looked up and Dorsey has X number of lawyers and certainly a big, huge firm like you ought to be able to fend for yourself on this and have someone else cover.  Either of you ever experienced that?

Repp

I sure have.  Lots of people believe that attorneys are fungible and we’re not.  We are not interchangeable amongst ourselves and I think I encountered that much more frequently in my past life as a legal aid and public defense attorney.  As a public defender, you would frequently see someone making an appearance, or their PD was late, or something was going on because you have a crazy docket of people you need to attend to as a public defender.  And without fail once hearing, one of the prosecutors would say, well, couldn’t Miss Repp, or Miss whoever, or Mr. whoever step in and just cover.  And you pause because it seems so ludicrous that someone would think you should step in on this homicide you know nothing about and help this person make a high stakes decision about their life when you have nothing to genuinely assist them, aside from having an Esq at the end of your name.  We are not fungible.  We learn our client’s stories and their cases and to that end, we need to be the ones that are present in assisting them, not somebody else.  An emergency, fine.  But it should not be a standard operating procedure that we sub in for one another.

Schmidt

So that’s just one of the many varieties of unreasonable positions that opposing counsel take sometimes when they’re dealing with a large law firm.  Jennifer, what are your thoughts?  You’ve talked about sometimes just reducing the tension by compensating, by being extra courteous and kind.  What are the ways in which you’ve approached a decision on fighting fire with fire, not getting down into the mud, but oh, is this the way we’re going to be?  We’re not gonna do it?  You’re not gonna grant us extensions, so we’re gonna have to respond in kind, because we have to keep things even in terms of how aggressive we treat these deadlines going forward, and also if you could touch on at what point do you raise the issue with the judge or the arbitrator or the discovery referee?  So I guess I’m asking beyond the being extra courteous to a rather rude communication, what are some other ways that you handle these specific types of issues?

Coates

Well, first of all, I absolutely will call in the judge.  I’m not afraid to call a judge, call a CMC, or bring a motion.  I think that some attorneys have that fear, or your client has that fear that, you know, we don’t want to keep raising our hand.  Well, in Minnesota, where I practice, our state court has all these kinds of tools you can use before you have to file a motion.  We have something called a 11504 D conference, where it’s an informal conference with the court, you can send in a letter that says before I bring a motion, Your Honor, I just wanna tell you this is what’s going on.  And I’m, if we can’t solve this right now, we’re gonna have to bring a motion.  And usually those things kind of go away ‘cause you get, you know, the judge will tip their hand, as to, you know, which way they’re gonna go on this motion.  That gives me more information to advise my client.  So I think the first thing is, you know, don’t be afraid to use the tools that you have at your disposal.  I think the other part that you should not be afraid to do, is just say no and then just sit in silence.  What you mean no?  I mean no.  And then you look in the camera and you wait for counsel to respond to that.  You have put me in a position where I’m not gonna be able to advocate for my client.  So the other part is when you are representing someone as an advocate, you have to remember that you’re representing someone.  And so I have clients that come to me because of my style, how I represent counsel, how I interact with people, and you really do want to be mindful of that.  So if you have a client that’s a scorched earth client, generally I find they hire scorched earth attorneys.  If you have a client that’s you know most of my clients are clients that want to get to the right result, those clients can be talked off ledges, that kind of thing.  But you cannot adopt your client’s version of reality.

Schmidt

Yeah, that’s so important.  Well, I really echo that Jennifer, because, and you talked about this and made this point a couple of different ways.  You’re dealing with opposing counsel, but you also have to take direction from your account, from your client, and some clients get it and they recognize what that Court of Appeal that I read from earlier said, which is scorched earth increases cost.  And so most clients are concerned about the bottom line of litigation.  But some clients don’t get that connection and will push back against you for not being the junkyard dog is a phrase I hear, and so there are a lot of moving parts here, a lot of participants, the judge, opposing counsel, your client, and trying to navigate all of that.  And there’s a fair amount of diplomacy this calls for isn’t there?

Coates

There is, and you know, not all clients should be represented by all lawyers.  I think Ashley said that, you know, we’re not all fungible, and that’s true.  You know, sometimes you and your client are not gonna see eye to eye.  I want you to go after them and do this and do that.  And it’s like listen, I worked very hard for my law license.  I am not throwing it away for you.  And I’ve had that conversation with people.  You’re, you, this is not worth me throwing away my law license for.  Right?  Okay, maybe you need another lawyer.  I might not be the right lawyer for you.  And that’s a conversation that can be had.  But if you’re dealing with the other side and they’re saying, you know, you and your client are aligned and the other side wants to say okay, well, we’re not gonna do this, and we’re gonna go to the court, and let me call the court.  That’s when you pull out the phone number in the middle of the deposition and you say you know what?  That’s a great idea, let’s do that.  Let’s call the judge, and nine times out of ten when I had said that counsel backs down.  We don’t really have to call the court.  You don’t have to be this way.  Grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble.  And you’re like okay, well, I don’t know what you want me to say, because particularly when they’re in front of their clients, these types of lawyers, they’ve put on this persona.  So sometimes it’s even necessary to pull them away from their client and then you’ll get a different lawyer as well.  You know, it’s just a matter of figuring out so much of being a trial attorney, so much of being a litigator is about understanding human beings and people, and how they’re gonna react in certain circumstances.  And you have to pivot and adjust accordingly.  So, but I think that you and Ashley both have said it, which is what is my limit?  Where’s my line and am I willing to cross it?  And I have yet to see the opportunity where I’m willing to cross that line just to score points on my opponent.  There’s other ways to score points, one of them is to win.  Winning can take all kinds of forms, including the court and an informal conference saying to the other side are you kidding me, right now?  You’ve interrupted my day, my golf game, whatever it is the court was doing to referee this foolishness.

Schmidt

Ashley, there’s a lot of discussion in the profession about mental health and well‑being of lawyers, and certainly one of the great challenges for our own mental health is being in the middle of one of these difficult cases, with difficult opposing counsel.  Ashley, how have you been able to deal with the stresses that seem to inevitably come when you’re dealing with opposing counsel and whatever is happening in the proceedings, and whatever is gonna happen with this dispute over deposition schedule be able to unwind and not let it get the best of you mentally and psychologically?

Repp

Well, Kent, I’m gonna be candid with you.  I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask that question.  But no.  So Jennifer’s actually a mentor of mine, so she knows my story pretty intimately.  But one of the reasons I’m at Dorsey is because I was not good at tabling the mental health piece that came along with being a public defender.  I am not someone who easily lets go of the human story or the human element in cases.  And for me, I had case after case, I was on the felony team where people were, their lives were going to be ruined forever, and not just their lives, their family’s lives, alleged victim’s lives.  I mean, there was just a whole ripple effect of lives being devastated with many of the cases that I was dealing with.  And I think the final week for me where I knew I needed to step out and step away was I had very difficult opposing counsel on a very challenging case where an infant had shot and killed himself with a parent’s gun that was left on a table.  And there was possible Brady evidence that was being withheld.  There was challenging people, challenging factors, media involvement.  It was a really, really hard case.  And shortly thereafter, that same week, I had a client who had done really well and was getting out of treatment and starting his life over, and he was the victim of a homicide.  And so I kind of came to terms with, I had to come to Jesus with myself in that moment and I said I need to find a different place that still allows me to litigate because there’s something that I thrive being in the courtroom, and I thrive when I can develop strategy and figure out what my end game is.  But I need some distance from some of these human stories, and I think it’s a little bit easier working on some of these cases now at Dorsey, where at the end of the day, no one’s dying and no one’s going to prison.  We have to be creative and we have to honor our client’s goals and interests.  But I think at the end of the day, we’re able to take a pause and truly disentangle ourselves from the work that we’re doing.

Schmidt

Jennifer, anything that you’d like to add on keeping your own mental health in check while you’re going through very contentious litigation with difficult opposing counsel?

Coates

It’s very hard not to internalize somebody else’s anger.  I find it really hard when somebody is just being cruel, or mean, or difficult.  I find it really hard to say, well, it’s not personal, and just kind of goes off my back like water on a duck’s back.  I think when that happens, that’s why I’ve adapted the strategy I have, which is I will pull in other tools.  Why should I be the most unhappy person in this conversation when I deal with opposing counsel?  If I’m gonna be unhappy, so are you.  So that means that it’s not fighting fire with fire necessarily, but it’s saying, okay, what are the tools available to me so that I am not taking all of this fire onto myself?  So that’s one thing is using the tools that are available.  The second is, it is not weakness to take on the stress of litigation.  Our clients hire us for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons they hire us, is they don’t feel like dealing with it.  They don’t want to deal with the conflict.  It’s not that they can’t do it, that they don’t want to do it.

Schmidt

They want you on the front lines.

Coates

That’s exactly right.  They’d rather have you on the front lines than them.  And so when you understand that that’s your role in the litigation, you do have to take extra care to make sure that you are protecting your own private world.  And so that takes a lot of forms.  Some of it is, I might make opposing counsel sit for a response.  Not ‘cause I’m so angry, but just because you don’t deserve my attention at this time.

Schmidt

Yeah, the timing and pace of the back and forth, you know we talked about like the pace of the basketball game, slowing the pace down.  Pace is very important in dealing with these.

Coates

It’s not always a fast break, and sometimes you do have to just say, I’m taking a time out.  You send an e-mail that says look, your tone is not appreciated and call people out on it.

Schmidt

And sometimes that helps them to calm down, slowing things down, particularly the emails are going back and forth at a rapid pace into the evening.  Everyone should be enjoying dinner with their families, and it’s just a rapid fire back and forth.  Maybe everyone should just pause and regroup tomorrow.

Coates

Oh, you’re so right, you’re so right.  I think, you know, often what we do need to do is just say to ourselves not everything requires a response.  Not everything requires, I’m gonna take you to court and I’m gonna do this.  Okay.  I’m gonna do that.  Okay.  You know, again, you guys set the pace of your own race, because otherwise this profession will eat you up.

Schmidt

That’s for sure.  And on this issue of mental health, one of the things helps me a lot is to think about where all this might be coming from their perspective, and whatever else they have going on in life.  You just never know.  I mean, like, if you if someone cuts you off on the freeway, you don’t immediately think oh, maybe they’re having a bad day because they’re going through some horrible family issue or they’ve got a sick parent or whatever, and they’re just frustrated with life, and so they’re laying on the horn at me.  But sometimes it’s good to stop and think that.  Cut someone else some slack because what you may be experiencing in terms of a nasty gram e-mail or a real reaction may just be their life, and their insecurity, and their fears, and their frustrations.  This is like the last straw for them.  And sometimes as a case goes on you get to know opposing counsel and you learn like, they’ve got some tough things they’re dealing with.  And perhaps what happened a few months ago was just a manifestation of that.  And sometimes you never know.  And so you just perhaps give them the benefit of the doubt and try to rise above the fray.

Coates

You’re absolutely right.  I think grace is so important.  To give other people grace and to understand you don’t know anything about people.  You don’t, you just, you don’t know what people are going through.  You don’t know if their child just got put into a mental health institution for a while.  You don’t know if they deal with drug addiction.  You don’t know, you don’t know if their lights got cut off this week ‘cause they own their own firm and the money’s not coming in and, you know, they had to let go of their, and you just, you don’t know anything about people about what they’re going through.  And so sometimes it’s best just to say, you know what, I, you know, I’m gonna give you a pass today.  I’m gonna give you some grace.  And then when they do come you do occasionally have a lawyer that’s just a, you know, they’re just kind of a nasty, that’s just what they do, that’s their practice, that’s how, that’s their style.  But most often I have people through, you know, two or three-year litigation, they’re different people.  It just depends on, you know when they, when you catch them.  You catch them on a good day or you catch them after their divorce is finalized or, you know, whatever it is.  You catch them and now they’re ready to be civil human beings.  And I think it’s that time where you just you kind of just have to keep it moving and not hold a grudge.  That’s really hard to do, to not hold a grudge.

Schmidt

That’s for sure, ‘cause we’re all human at the end of the day.  Well, I think we’ve reached the end of our time to talk about civility in the legal profession.  At this point in our SharkCast episode, we like to take a few minutes to learn a little bit more about the lives and background, and facts about our guests.  And so we call this the Deeper Dive.  I’d like to ask you both a question to start off with.  If you weren’t a lawyer today, what profession do you think you would most likely be pursuing right now?  Ashley, you want to go first?

Repp

I don’t know I, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer from the time I was pretty little.  You know, I’m gonna say I would want to be pursuing becoming an ambassador.

Schmidt

And when you say an ambassador, this is civil service appointed by the President of the United States to a foreign country.  And can you tell us a little bit more about your interest in foreign relations and ambassadorship?  Do you have a specific country in mind?

Repp

No, I don’t have a specific country in mind.  I mean, it really was because I just had to think of something and, but I have my masters degree in international relations.  And for a very long time I thought I would do something that kind of integrated my legal education with my international, I guess relations, education in general and kind of find that intersect, maybe doing some law of armed conflict, maybe doing some humanitarian or human rights law.  But I think that’s where I’d probably end up, yeah.

Schmidt

Well, that’s a very interesting…

Repp

It’s lofty, Kent, it’s lofty.

Schmidt

Very lofty, yes.  But you know what?  Many ambassadors are chosen as a sort of second or third chapter of someone’s career later on.  So who knows?  Maybe at some point in time that might be on your horizon.  It’s always fun to keep those types of dreams alive.  I’ll say though that wasn’t the answer I was expecting.

Repp

Oh, no.  What were you expecting, Kent?

Schmidt

Well, just something that’s adjacent to law.  I suppose it’s somewhat adjacent, but that’s a very interesting answer.  Jennifer, how about you?

Coates

I have to tell you Kent, I, every time I walk in this office, I’m shocked that I’m a partner in a law firm.  It just is not what I expected to do with my life.  Frankly, I would love to own a breakfast restaurant and read during the afternoons.  That’s what I would love to do.  If I wasn’t a lawyer, I would be a serial entrepreneur and then just do different business things.  I have to say, I have a lot more confidence now in my life than I did when I was choosing my professional track.  With the confidence that I have and the understanding of who I am now, there are things that I’m good at, I assumed everybody was good at, but they’re not, everybody’s not good at.  And so I think that I would embrace those parts of myself.  Like I think I would be a good business school fit.  One of the reasons I didn’t go to business school is I don’t like group work.  I do really understand leadership, and I’m very good at leadership, and so I think that that could have been something that I was interested in.  The four walls of a corporation just shock me every day that I walk in here and I’m part of that.  So I would probably do something that did not have four walls like this.

Schmidt

Well, that’s very interesting as well.  And as I said with Ashley, maybe that will be a later chapter in your life where you open a coffee shop and who knows, before my life is over, I may be visiting Ashley at an ambassador residence in some far-flung location, and enjoying a nice meal at Jennifer’s restaurant or coffee shop, or who knows where else our paths may cross again.  Well, this has been an enjoyable conversation.  I think I’ve, I certainly have learned a lot from this dialogue back and forth, and that’s what makes this profession extraordinary, and SharkCast a real pleasure and delight for me.  You both have been terrific guests.  Thanks for being on and appreciate your participation.

Coates

Thank you, Kent, for having me.

Repp

Thank you for inviting me.

Schmidt

As always, I’m indebted to the extraordinary team at Dorsey for making this podcast and episode possible.  For more resources on this and other litigation matters, go to litigationrisks.com where more information can be found, including a book on managing litigation written by yours truly.  Until next time, my friends, this is yet another reminder that there are a lot of sharks swimming out there in the murky waters, so swim safely.

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