Existence is Futile
Several years back, I was sitting across from the Medical Examiner. He was explaining how a 1 and ½ inch puncture wound caused all of the blood being pumped into a man’s heart to spill into the rest of his chest cavity. This was the cause of death.
Another time, the Medical Examiner was telling me about how tiny metal fragments had flown at an extremely high velocity through the brain stem of a man. The metal fragments were the size of finger nail clippings. This was the cause of death.
At times, it seems like death is all around us. And it seems so meaningless. Just inches and centimeters and, poof, somebody is gone.
In the legal world, death is everywhere. We see it in probate, plaintiff’s work, insurance defense, business contracts, and of course in the criminal context. We are constantly measuring what a life was and trying to decipher what life meant. We count the bank accounts, we analyze the commas, we look at graphs showing future projected earnings, we have experts tell us about angles of entry and make spread sheets over cell phone activity. We know all the circumstances.
We seldom knew the subject of our investigations before they died. But, usually, after a real study of a case, we collect huge amounts of information on the person. To lawyers, death is often not a matter of sadness, it is a matter of fact.
I write to explain that this is something I deal with. In my heart, I get troubled. I worry that life is just a circumstance. I worry that the court will view my client’s life as just another statistic. I worry that I might do the same.
I recently heard a woman testify. The woman, who lost her father in a car accident, described how her dad would call her every Sunday. She didn’t get to see her dad because she was overseas. Even though she was busy with her life and barely had time for herself, she would always answer the call. Her testimony ended with something like, “Now my phone doesn’t ring on Sundays.”
Until that moment, I didn’t know the man. Even though I knew every prescription drug in the man’s system and could give you a complete inventory of his vehicle, I didn’t know the man. I knew every job the man had and all the civic organizations he belonged to, but I didn’t know him. After hearing his daughter speak about their Sunday talks, I felt like I knew who the man was. From the daughter, I learned much more than the man’s things told me about him.
The practice of law gives us a great opportunity for insight into the immense detail of the world. Especially in this day of data collection. We can measure just about everything about everyone.
If I’m honest, I have been guilty of reducing people’s lives to metrics without pausing to think about it. When I do that, existence seems futile.
When people disappear like mist, what’s left is the people they loved. And this is where I see the truth: existence is important.
The Beatles said, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
I’m not sure about that…but the duty of the lawyer is to treat their client as if their existence matters. In court, you want the courtroom to think your existence matters. Without the lawyer caring, I’m not sure anyone else in the courtroom will care.