The Four Virtues.
November, 2024 — Written by Suraj S. Dhillon
The Four Virtues – The Principles of Gladiators At Law, PLLC
COURAGE. JUSTICE. TEMPERANCE. WISDOM.
What makes for a good attorney? — What makes you trust someone’s counsel in a time when you most need it?
Is it the fierce advocate who elevates his tone, in a manner they deem necessary?
Is it the bookworm who can justify the essence of written law and its precedents?
Is it the self-control necessary for one’s continued ability to help others in need?
Is it the pragmatic who must juggle two opposing perspectives at the same time?
Well, my friends – I believe it's a combination of them all.
COURAGE – Self Confidence
Firstly, an “advisor” must be able to trust their own ability and acknowledge the value they bring to any given situation. Courage is the ability to survive and persist within a variable environment. This confidence empowers one to execute when the time comes. This confidence is built on past hardships, in the times when one may have failed and/or the difficult lessons one has come to learn. Those very past hardships, failures, and mistakes were a prerequisite to our now unwavering confidence. The ability to accept that negative things happen, and that a negative mindset makes them harder. Going through failure without complaining is where we gain the confidence to face future obstacles. It won’t always be the most popular route; it may not always be appreciated. But it is a requirement for those who are in a position of making difficult but necessary decisions. Effective conflict resolution begins with self-awareness and clarity. This inner clarity fosters confidence and reduces defensiveness, enabling us attorneys to articulate our positions effectively without becoming reactive. Even the scariest of situations can be resolved with courageous reasoning.
My professor would always say “Be comfortable while being uncomfortable”. Courage is the result of seeking out discomfort, it is through this exploration of our fears that we find the courage to grow. We must do the low stakes stuff well so that we are prepared for the high stakes stuff. It’s the discomfort of articulating and altering our strategy that pays the biggest dividends. Real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges, gaining fluency in our abilities and skills. Courage is like a muscle, you have to build it. You don’t have to be particularly talented in any one field, you just have to try hard. – Personally, when a challenge is placed in front of me, I retreat to my thinking as an athlete getting paired with a tough competitor. It’s my willingness to fail and not lose my sense of enthusiasm. Failure is simply a mark of courage.
JUSTICE – Self Accountability
Justice occurs in each of our lives every day. Not only in the big moments, but in the small ones too. For instance, the manner in how we choose to treat a stranger, or the energy we bring to our daily work, and the standards we hold ourselves to; all these daily tasks give us the opportunity to exert justice. Sometimes injustice is ever present, it may be ingrained in one’s intent. But even if others aren’t doing what is right, we can still desire to make sure we are doing what is right. You may not be the cause of everything that happens to you, but you are responsible for how you respond to everything that happens to you. You may not want to see the opportunity within the obstacle but if we cannot cultivate the ability to let things be and let them go, we’ll never get anything done. Being on the right side of justice isn't just about proving one side is more virtuous than the other, being on the right side of justice is trying to do the right thing at the right time.
Justice is something that happens within us, not outside us. Justice is not something we demand of other people, but rather something we demand of ourselves. The law is not an end in itself, nor does it provide some destination, like a river's unending flow, the substance of law and its activities are continually changing. The law is preeminently a means to serve what we think is right. Lawyers simply serve as creators, interpreters, and enforcers of the rules that shape our society. – Justice is something that can spurt through all of us, not just those familiar with the law.
At Gladiators At Law, PLLC our task is to be a microphone for justice in action. As attorneys, we feast at the opportunity of practicing our craft, whether it’s recognized is beside the point, the oath we took was an oath we took to ourselves.
When we took that oath, we were someone who approaches justice not as an idea but as a craft. When we took that oath, we believed that the conduct of a lawyer should be characterized at all times by honesty, candor, and fairness. Truth is available to anyone willing to seek it outside their conditioned ways of thinking. Our job as attorneys is to help others see information beyond those pre-conditioned ways of thinking.
At Gladiators At Law, PLLC, we keep our word to ourselves in order to practice discipline. We keep our word to others because it's justice. It’s the type of justice that we enforce upon ourselves, for the benefit of others and of those we represent. As a practicing attorney, I have come to understand that Justice is the most important of these virtues because it’s what our courage, our discipline, and our wisdom must be directed toward.
Justice is not something that we find. It’s not just something we get from a judge or a jury. Justice is something we create each of us, brick by brick, all together. Together, in a fight to rescue justice from its narrow legalistic confines and to reestablish it as an internal compass that guides and directs us to reason. The law is the law. There is no magic show or big surprises. How we decide to approach situations will dictate the overwhelming majority of outcomes. As Donella Meadows once said, “There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair”. Justice is in our control. The Gladiators of Gladiators At Law, PLLC will make sure of it.
TEMPERANCE – Self Control
We’ve hinted at the notion that a level of confidence must exist for an attorney to be virtuous. However, we must recognize that courage/confidence when unchecked by temperance can quite easily veer into recklessness. A good advocate must know when to beat the drum and when to let someone else make the noise. In this back-and-forth battle, it is known that conceding a minor issue lends more credibility to our arguments regarding the major issues. We must remind ourselves that modern problems often have ancient solutions.
Other people want the same things we want. Respect. Freedom. Happiness. It’s possible to be both firm and compassionate. We must resist the temptation to add judgment or speculation on top of what we’re already dealing with. Many of the people you disagree with are not stupid, evil, or insane, but have had thoughts and experiences you haven't which led them to different conclusions. Because their world-view is different from that of yours, it will be foolish to believe that they may reach the same conclusion from your trying explanations. We must remember that we cannot control another person’s behavior, but we can always control our response.
Our aim in life is not to contribute to anyone’s burdens, but rather to lighten them when we can. In practice a successful appeal to emotion clarifies in a way that logic cannot. Communication can transform the way we approach conflict, enabling us to advocate more effectively while preserving relationships and promoting lasting resolutions. Each of us is constantly influencing and controlling the actions of those with whom we come into contact. Be kind. Every person you meet is fighting a difficult battle. The legal process is lengthy with often slow progress. We frequently find ourselves placed in a mentally taxing adversarial environment. Dealing with someone who is opposed to your interests is not easy, nobody likes getting bad news or being talked down to, but everyone appreciates clarity.
We know that all behavior is driven by the desire to solve a problem. I find purpose in solving difficult problems. Recognizing that not every difficult problem is solvable, it is the pursuit of maximizing those actions in our control. Every decision has risks, regardless of whether we choose to acknowledge them. When we choose the benefits of an action, we also choose the drawbacks, and without a commitment to rules and fairness, any perceived victory is meaningless.
Philosophy should serve as a tool for self-correction and a remedy for our souls, not as a weapon to demean others.
WISDOM – Self Knowledge
An understanding of one’s own strengths and weaknesses, knowing what one is capable of doing and what they may be unable to accomplish and/or promise. Wisdom is the virtue of recognizing the limits of our knowledge. Wisdom is the transformation of theoretical knowledge into real world competence. As Scott F. Fitzgerald once said, Intellect, in its most basic form, is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
Wisdom is especially valuable in chaotic times. It’s an understanding that many things are out of one’s control, but it’s also knowing that one’s response is an opportunity to exercise control over any given situation. Clients are generally in vulnerable moments when they seek counsel from a lawyer, they seek trust in our ability to understand their concerns and provide solutions. At this juncture, the lawyer's role is to listen, ask, and understand the client's problem before we provide solutions. For instance, a negotiator is aware that they cannot control the other person’s behavior, but they can control any response the person may have to a proposed solution. Wisdom is recognizing that, although we might know something about the chances of some event occurring, we are still not sure how things will turn out in any given instance. Scenario planning reminds us that the future is inherently uncertain. Imagining both positive and negative futures allows us to build a more realistic vision of the future, allowing us to prepare and plan for a wider variety of challenges.
In business, the word “fiduciary” is often thrown around, essentially when one has taken on a role of responsibility – to a company, to investors, to the customer – they cannot simply do whatever is best for themselves. In a 1928 case, the Judge ruled that a fiduciary is someone who is equivalent to that of a “trustee”, and such a trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the marketplace. Our job as a fiduciary is to be part of the solution and not the problem. Our job at Gladiators At Law, PLLC is to echo the wisdom of justice we seek to implement.
Our world doesn’t easily reveal the objective truth. Just because you are on the “right” side does always mean that you will win. All decisions are bets, and the best bet you can make in any given situation is determined by the level of information and experience you have at your disposal. Wisdom is knowing that it is prudent to listen carefully to most of the people we meet in life but not to give equal weight to all options. After all, we learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Self-righteousness only makes the fight harder. We must learn how things actually get done, and how best we can navigate the complicated world of power and influence. Wisdom is an endless pursuit. One never truly arrives at some final destination of education.
These Four Virtues, known as the cardinal virtues of life serve as the underlying principles of Gladiators At Law, PLLC.
We salute our clients, and our community for furthering the daily practice of such virtues in all that we do.
