What a Week Back in the Classroom Reminded Me

Earlier this year, 26 years into practising law, one of my partners told me I needed to take a course.

That's not usually how these conversations go once you're a couple of decades in.

But Bob Creamer thought I'd get something out of the Intensive Trial Advocacy Program at the University of New Brunswick's law school, a week-long, hands-on program built on a model that started at Osgoode Hall in Toronto. Respecting Bob, I signed up – but was secretly skeptical.

The week was intensely collegial. Lawyers from across the province, representing opposite sides of the same kinds of disputes I've spent my career in, working together to sharpen each other's skills.

It reminded me why I still love this work. You can represent your client as hard as the case demands and still be friends with the lawyer across the table when it's over. That's not universal in this profession. I think it's fairly particular to New Brunswick, and to firms like ours.

Empathy Matters

It also reminded me what's actually at stake in a case, and how precise the work needs to be. In litigation, there are winners and losers, and the consequences for a client are rarely small.

The words you choose in a hearing, or commit to a document, are the tools of the job – if a surgeon's precision is measured in what they cut and what they leave alone, ours is measured in what we say and what we don't. You learn that early, but you keep relearning it.

I certainly did that week, at a stage in my career when I assumed most of my learning was behind me.

None of that works without the other half of it, which is empathy.

Lawyers are hired to be objective, and that matters – clients need someone who isn't caught up in the emotion of their situation the way they are.

Shape The Future

But objectivity without empathy is a disservice. Every client who walks through our door is carrying something specific: a financial pressure, a governance problem their board can't agree on, a regulatory question that could shape the future of their business.

Understanding what that issue actually means to the person in front of me is as much a part of the job as knowing the law.

That combination is a big part of why my own practice has shifted over the years. I still do the commercial litigation work I've always done – construction disputes, insolvency, debtor–creditor matters – but more of it now involves advising businesses, agencies, boards and commissions before a dispute happens, on governance, compliance and regulatory questions.

I've also built out a municipal law practice, working with various communities. It's a natural extension of the same instinct: understanding what's genuinely at stake for a client, and helping them get ahead of it.

I got into law for reasons I've written about before (hint: it involved my run-in with a police officer). The instinct toward service is also what pulled me toward WorkSafe New Brunswick, where I currently serve as chair, and the Imperial Theatre board, and years ago toward Saint John city council and the mayor's office.

Twenty-six years in, I'm still learning the craft from the partners who taught it to me, and I try to pass that along to the lawyers coming up behind me now.

Mel Norton is a partner at Lawson Creamer. He can be reached at mnorton@lawsoncreamer.com.