I find it unlikely only 25% of attorneys are bullied.
Displaced aggression is arguably the most common form of aggression in the animal kingdom. I think that’s what a lot of bullying behavior is when you peel back the onion and think about it.
Is it bullying to respond to an act or omission that should cause ire with anger? I tend to think it may not be an optimized management strategy but it’s a different issue than bullying behavior with a different remedy.
I wonder how often the target of anger is able to distinguish between the two forms of aggression. Because the truth is: It can be hard to get out of our own perspective.
That said, I do think there are a lot of times where the offense is real but the response is disproportionate in this profession. There are elements of displaced aggression in that behavior too.
I think a lot of times what is going on is that displaced aggression is a reflection of the high stress nature of this job. And it only gets more stressful. The aggressor has some stress acting on them and they pass it on in the form of displaced aggression.
Because the thing is: Displaced aggression does, actually, work to make the aggressor feel better and reduce their stress levels.
We have all this training in this profession on the not to do’s. The hours and hours and hour of CLE and insurance mandated courses is unending.
But how much time do we spend teaching people how to do it better and why it’s in their own interest to do it different than was modeled for them?
In any given instance — Maybe what’s perceived as bullying is bullying. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it kind of is.
Regardless: Engaging in behavior that is reasonable to interpret as bullying is not in the long-term interest of anyone. There’s science out there as to why. Perhaps because we are creatures obsessed with risk and downside, we focus an incredible amount of attention and conversation on how to avoid stepping into traps. And the laundry lists of “do nots” can feel like a Byzantine maze that ultimately gets discounted as impracticable or ignored.
It seems like a little more attention on “How to manage” and “How to interact with colleagues” and “Why this is in your own interest to learn these skills” might be a better approach that has more stickiness.
It is very hard to figure out how to create a culture of accountability and excellence that is also kind. And if there’s an underlying theme in this profession it’s that absolutely nothing is taught. You have to teach yourself.
Terrible way to run a talent management business.
Now, notwithstanding all of what I just said acknowledging there is an issue and suggesting a different approach: I do think things have gotten a lot better over the years. Things that used to be considered bullying when I was coming up are now considered felonies or misdemeanors.
DL's report was interesting so I took a quick look at the study. It is disappointing.
For example, in the one regression analysis mentioned (p. 31) it mentions only race/ethnicity and does not provide any of the regression results. We are left wondering what other factors were controlled for - firm size seems relevant, as does type of practice, and sex. This is a warning flag to me to not put a lot of weight on the study - good statistical work is "hands above the table." You report full regression results, for example, since if you misspecify the regression the results by leaving out important independent variables correlated with the dependent variable aren't valid.
Other red flags: they don't provide numbers as well as % which would enable readers to spot very small cells in tables from which drawing conclusions might not be particularly useful, and they don't situate the study in the universe more clearly than was done here (the Illinois State Bar surely knows the breakdown on most of these variables of lawyers in IL and so the sample could have been compared to the overall bar membership).
Biggest red flag of all: There's very little detail in the methodology section, for example. it says 6,010 responded - but how many were asked? To take just one problem here, this doesn't sound like a random sample, and it seems likely that far more people who were bullied would respond to a survey about bullying than people who were not bullied. Yet we get no methodological discussion of how the authors addressed selection bias. If you just surveyed the entire IL state bar and these are the responses you got, there's a selection bias issue here.
My criticisms don't mean there isn't bullying going on - it's just that this seems to not be a best practices study so we need to be cautious in interpreting it.
This study was probably pretty pricey to do - and they certainly put a lot of effort into a nice layout for the report - so it is a shame that they didn't give us a very good basis for evaluating it. Perhaps there is more to this than I am giving it credit for, but I don't see it and there's no link I could find to a more thorough methodology and results somewhere else. All that leaves me with the feeling that it would be a mistake to conclude from this anything beyond what we already knew - there are plenty of jerks in the legal profession who behave badly toward their colleagues. I'm not sure this study tells us much more than that, which is too bad.
Big caveat - this is a quick reaction, not the result of hours of study, but I don't think this is a good enough analysis to merit hours of study on it, so I didn't want to invest a great deal of time in it. If others spot more information that I missed (I did search in it on a bunch of key statistical terms and found little, and I looked at all the tables), please point it out.
Thanks for this! You make some important points (which I, as someone who's not very knowledgeable about statistics and study design, wouldn't have come up with).
"On September 27, 2023, the Survey was emailed to 55,295 lawyers, all of whom were
registered as active in 2023 with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary
Commission (ARDC) and were based in Illinois. The Survey was closed on October 12, 2023.
A total of 6,010 lawyers who were actively practicing law in Illinois responded to the Survey."
So I see your point about selection bias. I don't know how this is normally addressed in studies like this. Maybe you'd have to require lawyers to complete the survey. Or perhaps offer some kind of financial incentive (e.g., I know some surveys offer you a gift card of a small amount if you complete them).
I would have to agree that the lack or deficit of accountability for judges is a major factor. Consider how gangs of federal judges publicly declared they would discriminate against law school students merely because (in the judges’ eyes) the students are tangentially associated (merely because it occurred at their universities) with expression and assembly that offended the judges. The judges' conduct was pure bullying and purely unconstitutional abuse of power. Even so, other judges recently said their conduct did not violate their ethics code.
In striking contrast, in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 600 U.S. 570 (2023) SCOTUS emphasized that “the First Amendment tolerates none of that.” Our Constitution commands “commitment to the freedom of speech" and "ideas,” even those which “we consider” to be “unattractive,” “misguided, or even hurtful.” Our Constitution commands “commitment to protecting the speech rights” (and freedom of thought and conscience) “of all comers, no matter how controversial—or even repugnant—many may find the message.” “A commitment to speech for only some messages and some persons is no commitment at all.”
“All manner of speech” is under “the First Amendment’s protections.” “The First Amendment” (freedom of religion, speech and press) secures for “all persons” the right to be “free to think and speak as they wish,” so “all persons are free to think and speak as they wish.”
“The framers designed” the “First Amendment” (freedom of religion, press and speech) “to protect” Americans’ “freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think.” “They did so because they saw the freedom of speech” (and freedom of thought and conscience) as “end[s]” and “means.” As “end[s] because the freedom to think and speak is among our inalienable human rights.” As “means because the freedom of thought and speech” is “indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.”
So “t]he First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak his mind regardless of whether the government considers his speech sensible and well intentioned” or egregiously “misguided” and even “likely to cause” judges “anguish” or even “incalculable grief.” Our “liberty [necessarily] means” the “right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Judges being bullies teach lawyers and law students (and many other purported public servants) to be bullies.
If we're saying a quarter of lawyers are bullied, there's obviously some "defining bullying down" going on here. Look around. It's kind of like people claiming that they're suffering from poor mental health when they're stressed out - these are terms that used to be more meaningful and serious when invoked.
Is it possible that the groups mentioned just whine and complain more? Andy in TX notices lack of details how the study was conducted. What if it was done that way on purpose. Legal professionals is competitive. It sees a like the generation of instant gratification and participation trophies isn’t used to real world when parents are not around to protect them. The word “expert” lost its meaning during COVID. So did journalism and progressivism.
I find it unlikely only 25% of attorneys are bullied.
Displaced aggression is arguably the most common form of aggression in the animal kingdom. I think that’s what a lot of bullying behavior is when you peel back the onion and think about it.
Is it bullying to respond to an act or omission that should cause ire with anger? I tend to think it may not be an optimized management strategy but it’s a different issue than bullying behavior with a different remedy.
I wonder how often the target of anger is able to distinguish between the two forms of aggression. Because the truth is: It can be hard to get out of our own perspective.
That said, I do think there are a lot of times where the offense is real but the response is disproportionate in this profession. There are elements of displaced aggression in that behavior too.
I think a lot of times what is going on is that displaced aggression is a reflection of the high stress nature of this job. And it only gets more stressful. The aggressor has some stress acting on them and they pass it on in the form of displaced aggression.
Because the thing is: Displaced aggression does, actually, work to make the aggressor feel better and reduce their stress levels.
We have all this training in this profession on the not to do’s. The hours and hours and hour of CLE and insurance mandated courses is unending.
But how much time do we spend teaching people how to do it better and why it’s in their own interest to do it different than was modeled for them?
In any given instance — Maybe what’s perceived as bullying is bullying. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it kind of is.
Regardless: Engaging in behavior that is reasonable to interpret as bullying is not in the long-term interest of anyone. There’s science out there as to why. Perhaps because we are creatures obsessed with risk and downside, we focus an incredible amount of attention and conversation on how to avoid stepping into traps. And the laundry lists of “do nots” can feel like a Byzantine maze that ultimately gets discounted as impracticable or ignored.
It seems like a little more attention on “How to manage” and “How to interact with colleagues” and “Why this is in your own interest to learn these skills” might be a better approach that has more stickiness.
It is very hard to figure out how to create a culture of accountability and excellence that is also kind. And if there’s an underlying theme in this profession it’s that absolutely nothing is taught. You have to teach yourself.
Terrible way to run a talent management business.
Now, notwithstanding all of what I just said acknowledging there is an issue and suggesting a different approach: I do think things have gotten a lot better over the years. Things that used to be considered bullying when I was coming up are now considered felonies or misdemeanors.
DL's report was interesting so I took a quick look at the study. It is disappointing.
For example, in the one regression analysis mentioned (p. 31) it mentions only race/ethnicity and does not provide any of the regression results. We are left wondering what other factors were controlled for - firm size seems relevant, as does type of practice, and sex. This is a warning flag to me to not put a lot of weight on the study - good statistical work is "hands above the table." You report full regression results, for example, since if you misspecify the regression the results by leaving out important independent variables correlated with the dependent variable aren't valid.
Other red flags: they don't provide numbers as well as % which would enable readers to spot very small cells in tables from which drawing conclusions might not be particularly useful, and they don't situate the study in the universe more clearly than was done here (the Illinois State Bar surely knows the breakdown on most of these variables of lawyers in IL and so the sample could have been compared to the overall bar membership).
Biggest red flag of all: There's very little detail in the methodology section, for example. it says 6,010 responded - but how many were asked? To take just one problem here, this doesn't sound like a random sample, and it seems likely that far more people who were bullied would respond to a survey about bullying than people who were not bullied. Yet we get no methodological discussion of how the authors addressed selection bias. If you just surveyed the entire IL state bar and these are the responses you got, there's a selection bias issue here.
My criticisms don't mean there isn't bullying going on - it's just that this seems to not be a best practices study so we need to be cautious in interpreting it.
This study was probably pretty pricey to do - and they certainly put a lot of effort into a nice layout for the report - so it is a shame that they didn't give us a very good basis for evaluating it. Perhaps there is more to this than I am giving it credit for, but I don't see it and there's no link I could find to a more thorough methodology and results somewhere else. All that leaves me with the feeling that it would be a mistake to conclude from this anything beyond what we already knew - there are plenty of jerks in the legal profession who behave badly toward their colleagues. I'm not sure this study tells us much more than that, which is too bad.
Big caveat - this is a quick reaction, not the result of hours of study, but I don't think this is a good enough analysis to merit hours of study on it, so I didn't want to invest a great deal of time in it. If others spot more information that I missed (I did search in it on a bunch of key statistical terms and found little, and I looked at all the tables), please point it out.
Thanks for this! You make some important points (which I, as someone who's not very knowledgeable about statistics and study design, wouldn't have come up with).
On methodology, this appears on page 21 of the full report (https://civility.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/2Civility_BullyingReport_Full_FN.pdf)
"On September 27, 2023, the Survey was emailed to 55,295 lawyers, all of whom were
registered as active in 2023 with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary
Commission (ARDC) and were based in Illinois. The Survey was closed on October 12, 2023.
A total of 6,010 lawyers who were actively practicing law in Illinois responded to the Survey."
So I see your point about selection bias. I don't know how this is normally addressed in studies like this. Maybe you'd have to require lawyers to complete the survey. Or perhaps offer some kind of financial incentive (e.g., I know some surveys offer you a gift card of a small amount if you complete them).
I would have to agree that the lack or deficit of accountability for judges is a major factor. Consider how gangs of federal judges publicly declared they would discriminate against law school students merely because (in the judges’ eyes) the students are tangentially associated (merely because it occurred at their universities) with expression and assembly that offended the judges. The judges' conduct was pure bullying and purely unconstitutional abuse of power. Even so, other judges recently said their conduct did not violate their ethics code.
In striking contrast, in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 600 U.S. 570 (2023) SCOTUS emphasized that “the First Amendment tolerates none of that.” Our Constitution commands “commitment to the freedom of speech" and "ideas,” even those which “we consider” to be “unattractive,” “misguided, or even hurtful.” Our Constitution commands “commitment to protecting the speech rights” (and freedom of thought and conscience) “of all comers, no matter how controversial—or even repugnant—many may find the message.” “A commitment to speech for only some messages and some persons is no commitment at all.”
“All manner of speech” is under “the First Amendment’s protections.” “The First Amendment” (freedom of religion, speech and press) secures for “all persons” the right to be “free to think and speak as they wish,” so “all persons are free to think and speak as they wish.”
“The framers designed” the “First Amendment” (freedom of religion, press and speech) “to protect” Americans’ “freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think.” “They did so because they saw the freedom of speech” (and freedom of thought and conscience) as “end[s]” and “means.” As “end[s] because the freedom to think and speak is among our inalienable human rights.” As “means because the freedom of thought and speech” is “indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.”
So “t]he First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak his mind regardless of whether the government considers his speech sensible and well intentioned” or egregiously “misguided” and even “likely to cause” judges “anguish” or even “incalculable grief.” Our “liberty [necessarily] means” the “right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Judges being bullies teach lawyers and law students (and many other purported public servants) to be bullies.
If we're saying a quarter of lawyers are bullied, there's obviously some "defining bullying down" going on here. Look around. It's kind of like people claiming that they're suffering from poor mental health when they're stressed out - these are terms that used to be more meaningful and serious when invoked.
Is it possible that the groups mentioned just whine and complain more? Andy in TX notices lack of details how the study was conducted. What if it was done that way on purpose. Legal professionals is competitive. It sees a like the generation of instant gratification and participation trophies isn’t used to real world when parents are not around to protect them. The word “expert” lost its meaning during COVID. So did journalism and progressivism.