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Abstract

In the summer before their first semester, most law schools encourage students to read a host of books to prepare for the enterprise ahead. While their friends are lying on the beach reading escape novels, prospective law students are reading such classics as The Nature of the Judicial Process and lighter fare about lawyering like The Buffalo Creek Disaster and A Civil Action. Come late August, first semester students are already tarrying to assimilate the lawyer's tools of logical analysis and seeking to absorb The Rule of Reason. Meanwhile, their friends are still at the beach, perhaps reading pop psychology. One of these books, Emotional Intelligence, held a place on The New York Times' nonfiction best seller list for many months, and continues to be widely read. As far as I know, no law schools have yet to add it to their recommended summer reading list. Perhaps they should. Lawyers need emotional intelligence as much as they need the other skills that make them Good Lawyers. We are all simultaneously emotional and rational human beings, although some of us operate more comfortably at one extreme or the other. In order to do our work well, we must be in touch with what we are feeling - and why. This Article is about one aspect of the need for lawyers to confront their emotional side: their relationships with their clients. Specifically, it is about how that relationship may be enhanced by the lawyer's recognition and resolution of strong emotional reactions - positive or negative - towards a client. Conversely, a lawyer's inability to come to terms with such emotions may well adversely affect the representation.

Publication Title

Clinical Law Review

Volume

6

Issue

1

First Page

259

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