Legal Practice Notes No 1a

Posted by admin on July 29th, 2008 filed in General

An addendum to the previous post, something which I meant to blog about but forgot to.

Perhaps I have been made soft by the legal culture here in Melbourne, but the conduct and communications here by and between lawyers have almost always been collegial and professional. Which leads me to this point:

A. There is no need to act like an asshole be rude.

I find the tone taken in the above letter to be unnecessary. Why be so condescending? It is possible to be polite and firm, without having to resort to sounding like a complete douchebag be unpleasant. And yet, this is precisely the tone taken in the above letter. Repeat after me: it is unprofessional to be rude.

Further, I am not the only one who has noted the amateurish approach taken by the firm which sent the letter above. Professor Ang Peng Hwa himself has noted :

Secondly, if they insist on their day in court, they should confine the issues to minimise any ’spillover’ effects. For example, they should not demand that the loser must run an advertisement in all the newspapers in Singapore to apologise.

As I pointed out in my previous post, any lawyer worth his or her salt and having some basic grasp of the workings of the internet would not have made that demand.

Edit: In retrospect, I have been overly harsh with my words. Even worse, I have fallen prey to the very thing I’m arguing against; I sounded like a complete douchebag. lol. I should take my own advice.