Litigation
Cal. Litig. 2022, VOLUME 35, ISSUE 2
Content
- A Conversation With Ninth Circuit Judge John B. Owens
- Advanced Topics In Appellate Practice: the Path of Mastery
- Editor's Foreword
- From the Section Chair
- How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession With Rights Is Tearing America Apart
- It's Time To Fix Our Broken Discovery Civil Culture
- New Federal Legislation Raises Multiple Questions Regarding Litigation of Sexual Abuse and Sexual Harassment Cases and Affects Recent State Legislation
- PAST SECTION CHAIRS & EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
- SECTION OFFICERS & EDITORIAL BOARD
- Table of Contents
- Tell It To the Judge ... or the Jury ... or the Arbitrator? Before You Tell Your Story ... Know Your Audience!
- The Crest Opinions: Impeding Legislative Efforts To Diversify Corporate Boards
- The Power of Arbitrators To Decide Arbitrability — Delegation Clauses and Lessons From Caselaw
- U.S. v. NIXON, 50 YEARS LATER
- When May a Court Compel An Individual (Or Representative) Paga Claim To Arbitration?
- LITIGATION v. TRANSACTIONAL WORK: WHO'S THE "REAL LAWYER"?
LITIGATION v. TRANSACTIONAL WORK: WHO’S THE "REAL LAWYER"?
Written by Benjamin G. Shatz & Martin E. Steere*
Some age-old questions never seem to go away — and are simply fun to debate. Nature versus nurture? Should Washington, D.C. (or Puerto Rico) become the 51st state? Star Trek versus Star Wars? In the legal world, one such perennial topic is between litigators and transactional attorneys: "who’s the real lawyer?" A quintessential "¿quién es más macho?" legal smackdown. Both sides know they are right.
Among litigators, of course, there is a strong (natural?) tendency to think of their transactional brethren as something less than "real lawyers." After all, a license to practice law is a ticket to the big show: the ability to represent clients in court. Transactional lawyers, on the other hand (being, of course, the more grounded), understand that their hot-headed litigation brethren are just propping up their fragile egos and that the real business of the law is putting deals together and helping their clients avoid the miserable black hole that is litigation.
So, let’s kick-off this debate and see where it goes! What follows probably mirrors conversations held through the ages at water coolers around the legal world since the creation of barristers and solicitors.