The Sweet Hereafter

p. 90

Good negligence lawyers are, some of them, driven by greed. But more significantly, and more of them, by anger. The good lawyers, “the kind who go after the sloppy fat cats with their corner offices and end up nailing their pelts to the wall.

“. . . we’re permanently pissed off . . . and practicing law is a way to be socially useful at the same time, that’s all. It’s like a discipline; it organizes and controls us, probably keeps us from being homicidal. A kind of Zen is what. Some people equally pissed off are able to focus their rage by becoming cops or soldiers or martial arts instructors; those who become lawyers, however, especially litigators like me, are a little too intelligent, or maybe to intellectual is all, to become cops . . . . So instead of learning how to break bricks and two-by-fours with our hands or bust chain-snatchers in subways, we sneak off to law school and put on three piece suits and come roaring out like banshees, all teeth and claws and fire and smoke.”

One preaching connection in Col. 3:5-8: “anger, wrath, malice, slander” are things believers must “put to death” or “put away” after having been raised with Christ. But what if these things get me my biggest fees?