💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › replies › 8465 captured on 2024-07-09 at 02:11:12. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I've never cared for shows featuring dramatized court related crap. But I witnessed aspects of it with my own eyes in that ex-wife lawyer.
There I was, thinking I was going to be experiencing a formality, when suddenly some woman was bellowing, repeatedly pointing her index finger at me, basically performing an animated character assassination I'd never - and still haven't - seen in real life. Her somewhat big hair was flying all over the place. In the context of that display, it wouldn't have seemed unreasonable if the floor between her and where I was sitting had opened revealing the fires of hell, and I was dragged and thrown therein by bailiffs.
You don't forget something like that.
Nor have I forgotten her name.
And the judgement *was* essentially anticipated formality: assets split evenly, child support, no spousal support because we earned similar incomes.
But the hyper-dramatized behavior of that lawyer in court, matched by that of the ex- with former neighbors and friends? Absolutely, categorically vile.
It's very, *very* difficult to escape periodic "days of reckoning" fantasies....
That’s wild, but at least it doesn’t sound like it had much effect. It usually doesn’t, and is why most (good) lawyers don’t engage in that kind of thing. It just doesn’t help, wastes time, and makes you look like an asshole at best. The only thing it is good for is reinforcing a lot of negative stereotypes about lawyers. Meanwhile, other lawyers (including judges) are not generally impressed by that kind of performative behavior, which is really what it is: putting on a show for the client to the annoyance of everyone else.
When I did family law, it felt like about 80% of my time was spent reminding my client to be the non-crazy one. After all (and this ties into my previous paragraph), judges who deal with those cases have seen *everything*. You’re never going to out-crazy or out-manipulate them, so you’re far better off being the reasonable one and garnering sympathy that way. It’s a parallel phenomenon to crying wolf, ultimately.
Days of reckoning are funny things. I don’t really believe in “justice” as we usually conceptualize it, even if I’m as open to schadenfreude as anyone. Maybe that’s why I don’t find those kinds of fantasies cathartic, they just make me mad as I see them as something that’ll never actually happen. I don’t say this to suggest it’s a morally superior position, by any means (fantasies in and of themselves are not morally good or bad IMO).