Filing a grievance against a lawyer 8: answering the response

I’ve been responding to the statements made by a lawyer retained by Dinkes & Schwitzer,  who answered my complaint/grievance to the Disciplinary Committee.

It’s been a lot more work than I imagined it would be. Because there is so much I disagree with. For one thing, you know I’m not a lawyer, right? I’m a layman, probably just like you. The man who answered my complaint is a lawyer.

But my complaint — which, as I advised you and everyone to do when writing a complaint — was modest, unexaggerated, precise and stripped of emotion. Yet the answer I’m responding to is anything but. It makes big gestures and indulges in a few personal attacks upon me and my narrative. He (the lawyer who wrote it) sneered at my memory, called what I wrote “hyperbole.”

Suggesting that my memory has faded is an especially awkward mistake: not only have I compiled a day by day fact chronology, I have this, the blog, to support my contemporaneous recital of the events. I’m now playing with the idea of printing out every blog post that refers to this unfortunate series of inadequate lawyer-client communications, and including these as an exhibit in support of my story.

Oh, maybe not. Maybe I’ll just give the Disciplinary Committee my url and tell them what to search for.

I’m really startled. Instead of defending his client’s ethics, this guy is accusatory. And in being so, he opens up the field to my like response, even as his statements open up big holes in his defensive reasoning. So I find I’m pulling out my entire writerly and intellectual arsenal in answering him. And I am answering him, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, phrase by phrase. I wager I can out-sarcasm him any day of the week.

I say all this not to brag (although I guess I am bragging) but as a bit of further advice: if you do file a grievance against a lawyer, prepare yourself to be attacked. It’s yet another reason to strip your complaint of personal accusations. Just narrate the actual events.

Because I think there’s a universal truth here. The Goliath who wields huge legal weapons against one little David layman is a gentleman who protests way, way too much.

And if I’ve noticed, I’ll bet the Disciplinary Committee will also notice.

 

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