Have You Ever Witnessed a Meltdown in Your Office or in Court? What Did You (Or the Judge) Do?
This week at Divorce Discourse, North Carolina family lawyer Lee Rosen wrote about what to do when you find yourself with an angry client in your lobby. “This is not an extraordinary happening in a family law practice,” he writes. “If it hasn’t happened yet, it’s going to happen soon. It’s just part of doing this work.”
The thrust of his advice is for a staffer to get the person into a conference room, out of the earshot of other clients, and leave the room immediately to find the pertinent lawyer without himself or herself engaging with the angry client—because that is likely to only make things worse.
This post got us wondering: Have you ever witnessed a meltdown—of either a client or another lawyer—in your office or in court? If so, what did you (or the judge, if the meltdown was in a courtroom or chambers) do about it?
Answer in the comments.
Read the answers to last week’s question: Do You Ever Notice Copyright / Trademark Infringement? Does It Bother You?
Featured answer:
Posted by ThreeStateLawyer: “I am constantly running across copyright / trademark infringements, and I am actually proud of one that I brought to light. A small but up-and-coming microbrewery in the Washington, D.C., started selling one of their beers with a label that was uncannily similar to the St. Pauli Girl beer label, which is copyrighted / trademarked. I spent three weeks working my way up the Anheuser-Busch InBev legal structure trying to bring it to somebody’s attention in the hope of taking the case or something, and eventually handed over my documentation to an in-house legal counsel. They sent a rather threatening letter, and the microbrewery changed their label. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the case, and didn’t even get a thank-you—not even a case of beer for my trouble. But, it was an interesting education in intellectual property law. Not sure I would do it again without some incentive …”
