At this point, it should be clear that this research uncovered two apparently contradictory accounts of the lawyers' attitudes towards their clients.
Across Radical and Sausage Factory firms, lawyers claimed in interview that relations with clients were positive, despite the fact that the participant observation suggested that they were negative.
This discussion is tasked with attempting to reconcile these positions and, in so doing, is offered as an evaluation on that which has gone before. As such, it seems crucial to pose the question; how can lawyers claim to hold positive attitudes yet actually display negative attitudes?One approach - which might seem obvious to many - is that a party has lied. In a case of such divergent findings, this would offer an immediate means of understanding the schism. First and foremost, it could be suggested that I was lying. The lawyers' accounts in the formal interviews represented the truth of the situation; they had positive attitudes. What I disseminated from the participant observation was at best, distorted, or at worst, fraudulent. By this line, there was a healthy lawyer-client relationship; it was all sweetness and light. I have twisted things for my own ends, perhaps bent on some lawyer-bashing crusade; the idealised - negative - depiction of lawyers which Travers (1997a: 370) criticises McConville et al (1994) for constructing.
These would not be charges I could conceivably defend. I might offer my notebooks - the dozens of volumes collecting the events that I witnessed. However, that would prove little more than that I had at some point handwritten the words that appeared in this chapter. Instead, I must leave it to the judgement of those of you reading the book. All I can contribute are sentiments, the foremost of which is the assurance that I have sought to abide by the rigorous ethical code of the university law school from which the research was undertaken, as well as working within my own moral framework to be as honest as possible.
In so doing, I worked tirelessly at collecting the data for this research - from 8.00 am to 5.00 pm each day accompanying the lawyers, then late into the night (frequently on into the early hours of the next morning) transcribing the accrued notes. However, this was not a task I complained about; rather, it was something I wanted to do successfully. The level of commitment I devoted to this fieldwork must be seen as a sign of my desire to produce research that was genuine and as close to the reality as I was able to capture. Frankly, I don't see the point of putting in all that effort when I could have just stayed at home with a nice cup of tea and made it up in a fraction of the time. More so, it should be recalled that I entered into this endeavour with a conviction in the importance of access to justice, to encourage more support, materially and philosophically, for legally aided representation. I set out hoping to find examples of noble and exemplary lawyering; that was one of the reasons I purposively sought Radical firms. As such, I write this book with the same fear that informed the work of McConville et al (1994); that it might be used against legally aided criminal defence despite authorial intention to the contrary (Bridges et al, 1997: 378). Ultimately, though, any external evaluation is out of my hands.The others who might be accused of lying were the lawyers themselves. The negative attitudes that I reported from the participant observation were accurate; however, the lawyers' response in the formal interviews was an attempt at deception, subterfuge. This would run the common sense line that friends and colleagues typically comment on hearing of my data: what else would they say? It would be inevitable that lawyers would seek to justify what they did and protect themselves from criticism - the lawyers knew they had not met the standards demanded of them. These expectations can be gauged from the Solicitors’ Code of Conduct (Solicitors Regulation Authority, 2007) which duly posits their central responsibility to clients.
Although this document provides the lawyers' official regulatory document, it need be recognised as but a vague and general outline of practice. In contrast, the more effusive Public Defender Service Code of Conduct (Lord Chancellor's Department, 2001) captures the specifics of practice far more evocatively, providing a better insight into the presumptions made of these lawyers as professionals. Indeed, Cape (2006a: 62) shows the manner in which testimonial that ostensibly applies to that particular organisation can be appropriately applied to the wider Criminal Defence Service they work within. Hereafter, it is this latter publication that this book uses in discussions around professional obligations. Accordingly, this code can be used to discern the manner in which protecting client interests is the ‘primary duty' of lawyers, as they are tasked with providing ‘fearless, vigorous and effective defence to secure the best outcome for the client' (Lord Chancellor's Department, 2001: 4). Considering that lawyers were charged with such duties, it is likely they would be alert to the need to deflect any claim that they neglected their commitments.There may be some validity in this position, and the preceding sections can conceivably be read in this manner. Lawyers were off-guard for much of the extended period of participant observation. They accepted me and largely acted naturally. The lawyers had little control over how or when - or even whether - what they said or did was documented in my field notes. They did not know what I was recording about them, but the formal interviews offered a chance for them to paint themselves in a positive light. These were audio recorded meaning that lawyers were to be captured for posterity speaking on tape and, as a result, could be played back to anyone who cared to listen; all that they said here clearly counted. In this artificial setting, they bore witness to this evidence collection so were highly attuned to my role and, thereon, what they should say.
In these circumstances, they fed me lines to portray themselves as they wanted and so took control of managing the image I saw. In particular, they would expressly avoid disseminating negative attitudes towards their clients, aware of the bad light this would cast on them professionally. Accordingly, it was eminently foreseeable that I should be told something different from what I saw; lawyers would not knowingly contribute to their own mortification.There are problems with this explanation, though. Its wholesale adoption would make me feel uncomfortable at a personal level. This may be evidence that I have gone native, or simply that I am hopelessly naive, but I trust these lawyers with whom I spent so long and developed genuine friendships. I am not convinced that they were consciously deceiving me. More significantly, perhaps, is that, on an academic level, the lying lawyer strikes me as a rather hasty, knee-jerk attempt at an explanation anyway. Sometimes the simplest answers are the right ones, but that truism should not prevent more measured exploration, in the hope of a more nuanced and, ultimately, persuasive understanding of the data.
As such, in this section, I explore a proposition which can be either read alongside or in place of the suggestion that lawyers were deliberately lying. This discussion, then, entertains the possibility that lawyers were able to profess positive attitudes while concomitantly displaying negative attitudes. They could do this without being, necessarily, cognisant of the contradiction. This notion rests upon the lawyers learning to distinguish between the client - in general terms - and a client - as particular example.
In so doing, I describe attitudes in psychological terms, positing that lawyers learnt to adopt specific attitudes towards their clients. This is followed by a discussion of how the lawyers might have come to develop these attitudes, focusing on their self-image and the manner in which this was challenged by their position within the legal profession. Ultimately, I use this to suggest that positive and negative attitudes could co-exist but that this jeopardises the health of the lawyer-client relationship.