Something incredible happened last week. I’m not sure “epiphany” is the right word, but what happened had a deeply profound effect on me….to the point it completely, totally changed my perspective about something I thought I understood.
What happened? On Friday morning last week, my mom came to watch me in court. That was the first time anyone from my family did that. And it changed everything.
Here’s why —
I graduated from law school in May 2000. During the last 25+ years, I have never had a family member come to court with me.
It’s not because they don’t care. People are busy and have their own lives, and my family is scattered around the country. I’ve also done many high-profile cases that were covered by the media, and I’ve done lots of TV interviews, which my parents usually watch. Because of that, no one from my family has ever come to personally observe me in court. They didn’t need to.
Despite what you may think, this seems common among lawyers. I’ve never heard any of my lawyer friends talk about having their family come to see them in court. While there is no specific ethical rule against it (other than ER 1.6) there is an unwritten rule that says this is usually a bad idea. When a lawyer is in court, the ONLY thing they should be thinking about is doing the best possible job for their client.
For that reason, it’s rare for lawyers to have family watch them in court. I know tons of lawyers. I’ve never heard any of them mention having mom/dad go watch them in court. Same deal with me. Until last week.
This was not planned. My mom is in town visiting from Florida. She booked the trip months ago, before the hearing last week was scheduled on short notice.
I could have let her sit at home for a few hours. Instead, I asked if she would like to finally come watch me do my lawyer thing. And yes, I got client consent BEFORE I made that offer. I also stopped and thought about whether having family attend would have ANY impact on the case (good or bad, large or small). Given all the circumstances, I didn’t see any issue with it.
I assume most people would like to share this sort of take-your-mom-to-work experience with their parent. If you play pro baseball, of course your parent is going to come watch you play. Probably every single game.
Our parents raise us, teach us, and help us grow to become successful adults. It’s normal and natural for kids to share their interests with their parents. We want to make our parents proud.
But in my case, there was another reason to invite my mom to court: in addition to raising me, she paid for my law degree. In fact, she not only paid every penny of my tuition, she also covered my rent and living expenses for all three years of law school. Considering I lived in San Francisco, those costs were not small. The total (including tuition + rent) was easily more than $200,000…..almost 30 years ago. I was one of the only kids in my school to graduate 100% debt-free, all thanks to mom.
My mom’s generosity is why I frequently help people at no charge. I’ve done this numerous times during my career. I’ve handled entire cases for clients at no charge. It’s not because I’m a loser who can’t get real paying clients. It’s because I feel so much gratitude for the incredible gift my mom gave me. I feel I owe a debt to the world that I try to repay by giving free legal services to those in need (something my mom supports).
I thought having my mom come watch me in court would be moment of pride. Finally, I could show I took her gift seriously. Yes, I wanted to make her proud, but I also wanted to show her the $200K gift she gave me wasn’t wasted. It was money well-spent.
But after the hearing ended, something unexpected happened — I went home, took off my suit, and I went out for my daily 5.5 mile walk. As I walked and decompressed, I started to replay the events of the day. I thought about what happened in court. And I noticed something…..
When I do hearings like this, I always get insane tunnel-vision. ALWAYS. Every time.
I am so completely focused on the work, I tune out everything else that’s happening around me. A bomb could go off behind me and I’d never know it. I’ve argued cases in front of packed courtrooms, but to me the room feels empty.
When I’m in the moment, everything else fades into the background to the point I am completely unaware of anything else but my client (or whoever is on the stand). There is literally a tunnel going from my face to the witness on the stand. Nothing else exists outside of that tunnel.
Except for Friday. On Friday, as I stood there asking questions and talking to the judge, I was NOT standing in an empty room. I stood there with full awareness that my mom was sitting 10 feet behind me.
This wasn’t just any random spectator, like the tattoo-covered lady who furiously scribbled notes.
This was the woman who gave birth to me. The woman who packed my lunch when I nervously walked off to my first day of kindergarten (yes, I walked to kindergarten because our house was across the street for my school). The woman who threw every birthday party, wrapped every Christmas present. This was also the woman who went back to work, started a company, sold it for $25 million, then gave me $200K so I could get a law degree.
My mom was (still is) a ROCK STAR. After watching all her success and achievement, I finally got to show her some of my skills.
Folks, let me tell you why this simple event shook me SO much — I previously commented about a certain judge who allowed her father to secretly attend an extremely high-profile trial. When I criticized that judge, at the time my concerns were not primarily focused on her father being present. Trials are public proceedings. People are allowed to come watch them. No big deal, right? Because of that, my criticism was mainly focused elsewhere (not just on her dad being there).
At the time I said those things about Judge Mata, no one from my family had ever come watch me in court. Because I never had that experience, I didn’t know how it felt to have a parent sitting there, watching me, live. So my comments about the judge were based more on my assumptions about what I thought that experience might be like.
Now that it happened, this has COMPLETELY changed my mind. In fact, I will confess — I was completely wrong.
In what way? In this way — I said before there was nothing inherently wrong with a judge allowing her father to attend a high-profile trial. Now that I’ve had my mom in court with me, I can see….my perspective was 100% wrong. It is ABSOLUTELY improper for a judge to do this, at least in this situation.
There are two reasons for this new view.
First, when I was standing there in court, I could feel my mother’s eyes staring at the back of my head. This woman paid a HUGE sum of money that allowed me to get a law degree so I could have the privilege of being a lawyer. I also love her to the moon and all that. So of course impressing her mattered. It added pressure I wouldn’t normally feel.
Knowing she was there, I felt differently about every word I said. Every move of my hand. Every gesture. Every comment. They all had to be PERFECT.
It wasn’t enough for me to do a decent job. It wasn’t enough for me to be competent. I had to be at my VERY BEST. I had to be a remarkable, outstanding lawyer who made my mom proud.
This was the woman who made my biggest dream possible. How could I NOT be affected by her sitting there?
Of course, I was not there as a judge. I had no power to rule in favor of one side or the other. So in that regard, my mother’s presence did not and could not have changed the outcome of the case in any way. That’s why I think it was fine (ethically) for her to be there.
A totally different rule should apply to judges. Their role is not to be an advocate for a client. Their role is to judge, and to do so neutrally, blindly, and dispassionately. Their job is to ignore EVERYTHING except the facts and the law. That awesome power carries a duty and responsibility that far outweighs any right of a parent to come watch the proceedings and cheer on their child.
That is my opinion, but it is not just speculation. I have acted in a judicial capacity many times in the past. I have worked as an arbitrator, both for the Superior Court and for the State Bar of Arizona. As an arbitrator, I have presided over hearings in basically the same way a judge does. I have been given the incredible power of making decisions in favor of one party and against another. I have ordered people to pay money (sometimes), and I have rejected claims as groundless at other times.
Those rulings directly impacted the lives of the parties. I was EXTREMELY aware of that every time I’ve acted as an arbitrator. If you’ve never done this, trust me – you can feel the weight of the job.
Knowing this, I have now completely changed my view – a judge should NEVER, EVER be allowed to have a family member come watch a high profile trial. NEVER. NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EVER.
It is just too perilous, and it presents too great a threat to our legal system….because it severely undermines confidence in the judicial system. Again, I understand that if a judge rules in favor of the side you already support, you probably don’t care. But what about the losing party? Is it really fair to let them wonder — did I lose because the law or the facts required it, or did I lose because the judge was trying to impress their parent?
No one should EVER ask that question. Our justice system is not a reality TV show, and it’s not a sporting event.
Doubts over judicial neutrality and integrity have no place in our legal system. That’s not my view. That’s literally written into the Code of Judicial Conduct:
An independent, fair, and impartial judiciary is indispensable to our system of justice. The United States legal system is based upon the principle that an independent, impartial, and competent judiciary, composed of men and women of integrity, will interpret and apply the law that governs our society. Thus, the judiciary plays a central role in preserving the principles of justice and the rule of law. Inherent in all the rules contained in this code are the precepts that judges, individually and collectively, must respect and honor the judicial office as a public trust and strive to maintain and enhance confidence in the legal system.
Judges should maintain the dignity of judicial office at all times, and avoid both impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in their professional and personal lives. They should aspire at all times to conduct that ensures the greatest possible public confidence in their independence, impartiality, integrity, and competence.
See that line — a judge must avoid impropriety, simple. But that’s not enough. Public confidence in the neutrality of judges is SO important, it is not enough for a judge to just avoid actual impropriety; they must go further and avoid anything that even appears improper in the slightest way (even if it’s not).
That’s why I stand by my previous comments about Judge Mata. If anything, knowing what I know now, my comments did not go far enough.
She engaged in ACTUAL impropriety (by talking to her father about the case; something she has never denied, and which was the subject of multiple witness accounts). She also engaged in conduct that raised an appearance of impropriety (by allowing her father to secretly attend a high-profile case without disclosing that fact and allowing the lawyers to raise objections).
NOTE – although I still believe Judge Mata engaged in other misconduct like reviewing social media (which is only an opinion I formed based on fully disclosed facts), I have come up with a new theory about how she reached the conclusion about Planned Parenthood being closed on Sunday. I previously said I believed she must have gotten that information from social media, perhaps even from comments posted on my personal blog. I think at one point, I also mentioned other possible options, like her sister telling her, or maybe a member of her staff.
With the benefit of more time and reflection, I have reached a new conclusion about what probably happened — her father attended the trial, but he did not sit in court (wonder why not?). Instead, he sat in the overflow room, although he apparently also chatted with multiple people in the hallway.
I wasn’t in that overflow room, but I am going to make a guess — I bet people in the room were on their phones during hearing, looking at Discord or Twitter or whatever. My guess is that someone in the crowd saw a comment about “Planned Parenthood is closed on Sunday”. That person told someone else — “Look at what they just said on Twitter! Planned Parenthood is closed on Sunday!!!” Judge Mata’s dad overheard the discussion. Dad then shared that information with his daughter after the trial. That’s how that information got into the final ruling.
Again, to be clear – I don’t know this for a fact (yet). This is my belief, based on a hunch. But that’s why I am going to ask Judge Mata and her dad to answer questions, under oath, to see if that theory is correct. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that it is.
If that’s what happened, it means my initial theory was wrong, but that doesn’t change a thing. I’m allowed to be wrong. The rule doesn’t punish lawyers for forming a hunch. I can only be punished for saying things I knew were false, or which I said with “actual malice” (meaning I had a HIGH degree of awareness that what I said was false).
Ultimately, whatever happened, the rules still prohibit a judge from basing decisions on evidence obtained outside of court. So it does not matter whether Judge Mata looked at social media herself, or whether someone else shared that info with her dad, who in turn shared it with her (which I now believe is the most likely explanation).
In any event, I understand certain fans of a TV show don’t care how the court reached the result it did. You don’t care if the rules were followed. You don’t care if the law was broken. You only care about the outcome. That’s not a view that any serious member of the legal system should or would have.
Anyway, now that I’ve had the privilege of letting my mom come to court with me, I know my decision to criticize Judge Mata was not only correct, it was mandatory in my role as an officer of the court. My duty as a lawyer is to protect the law and the legal system as a whole, not individual members of it. My duty includes an obligation to report misconduct by anyone involved in the system, even judges (especially judges). I take that duty seriously, and I stand by every word I said.
And yes, my mom was proud.❤️
P.S. Since I’m always falsely labeled a misogynist who hates all women, let me say this – I think the judge (Lindsey Coates) was excellent. She was friendly, polite, helpful, and she seemed to be listening VERY carefully. She gave us extra time, and she seemed to go overboard to let both sides say everything they needed to cover. Obviously I hope she rules in our favor, but even if she does not, I will respect her decision and won’t question that we were given a fair hearing with a fair judge. Felt good for a change.
Also, FYI – she isn’t a judge. She’s a commissioner. That position is kind of like a “baby judge” (or maybe a judge-in-training). That’s not a derogatory term. Lawyers who want to become judges normally apply to serve as commissioners. This gives them experience and a chance to show they can do the job (Mata was a commissioner for 7 years before she became a judge).
Also, I didn’t realize this, but I found a post that said Commissioner Coates worked for the county attorney’s office for 9 years. I assume that means she was a former prosecutor (bearing in mind the county attorney’s office also deals with civil issues).