Clients Want Results, Lawyers Need Emotional Intelligence

Abstract

Clients Want Results, Lawyers Need Emotional Intelligence Abstract Lawyers are highly educated and trained to think on a cognitive level devoid of emotions. Clients are not familiar with the legal system and operate on an emotional level when dealing with legal issues. Lawyers may view clients as emotional, lacking focus, and inconsistent, whereas clients may view lawyers as lacking emotions, insensitive, and time focused. To obtain the best results for the client, a lawyer needs emotional intelligence. This article is the first to fully examine from a lawyer’s perspective how lawyers who integrate emotions into their thinking achieve better results for their clients. Thinking requires emotions and emotions enhance thinking. An emotionally intelligent lawyer is more likely to serve the needs of clients and the legal community than a lawyer who has less understanding of, and control over, emotions. The emotionally intelligent lawyer perceives emotions accurately, uses emotions to facilitate thinking, understands emotions, and manages emotions to attain specific goals. By using emotional intelligence, lawyers make better decisions which result in better outcomes for their clients. To demonstrate how lawyers effectively use emotional intelligence in their actual practice, this article first depicts two emotionally “unintelligent” lawyers who think without emotions when representing their clients in different stages of litigation. This article next depicts the same two lawyers representing the same clients but with different results. This article also incorporates a series of other vignettes as well. Because the lawyers have integrated emotions and cognition, they are emotionally intelligent and are more effective at obtaining better results for their clients.