Here’s the confounding irony: The lawyer on the other side told me that the guy who wrote these words was the “nicest litigator” he had ever had a case against. Gracious, cooperative, flexible. He postured like the tough advocate only when he stood in front of the judge or wrote something for the judge to read. Later, when he asked the judge for attorney’s fees, he was surprised by the judge’s curt response:

Negative references to counsel on a personal level are meaningless and in poor taste, and serve no purpose in the disposition of this or any other case. TTP’s request for attorney’s fees is denied.

Or how about the lawyer who called a lower court’s decision “‘ludicrous,’ ‘inane,’ ‘risible,’ and ‘disingenuous.’” Did she really think the appellate judges would jump in with her to stomp all over one of the brethren?

And here’s my favorite. Save it for when you’re tired of practicing law, but you just can’t quite bring yourself to quit. Let the judge do it for you:

Yet it is apparently not the ignorant psychopaths who appeared as plaintiffs, but the willfully perverse legal aid attorney Mathews, reputed to be a licensed attorney in this state, who truly bears responsibility for the offending proceedings.

Think about your impression right now of the lawyers who wrote these words, and know that this is what they were thinking as they wrote them: I am a tough adversary, and I am clever.