The Empowered Paralegal

The holiday break has provided an opportunity to catch up a bit on various discussion forums and comments to posts on some of the blogs I frequent. Perhaps it is just the holiday spirit catching up with some participants, but the threads often seem to turn to discussions of the lack of civility on the part of many of the persons posting comments. This lack of civility – from simple name-calling to outpourings of pure vitriol – is common on political and news blogs and does not speak well of the state of political discussion in our country today, not only because it emphasizes what divides us rather than what binds us together, but because it seems to arise out of an inability of those persons to make their case based on facts, evidence and sound reasoning. This is bad enough when practiced by the general public, but of greater concern when it appears in legal and paralegal forums and blogs such as Paralegal Today and Above the Law. Indeed, the increasing lack of civility within the legal community has led some federal district courts to sponsor seminars dealing with the topic!

One problem with this lack of civility is that it the posts become a public record. Certainly, everyone who posts on the internet should be aware that anything they post on the internet can ultimately affect their careers. Several posts on this blog of dealt with this danger. However, it seems to me that the greater danger to those persons stems from what they say rather than where they say it, because what they say about others and how they say it, says much more about them, even if the say it anonymously. Those who will “make it” as paralegals are those paralegals who are professional. Persons who cannot not be civil when making a point are simply not professional. Those who hide behind the veil provided by internet discussions are even less so.

Professionalism is not just a way of behaving on the job. It is an attitude – a state of being. It requires the ability to work with others civilly. It requires the ability to listen to and communicate with others in a way that ones message gets through to them. It requires the ability to state your point clearly, concisely and rationally. It requires personal integrity even when there is no chance of “getting caught.” It often requires the ability to conduct self-examination and introspection. Those persons who cannot control what they say on discussion forums, need the latter in order to achieve the rest and become professionals.

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Tags: blog, civility, integrity, internet, Professionalism

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 9:12 AM and is filed under Professionalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.