Lawyer Personalities

I once heard an excellent keynote at a professional responsibility conference by Dr. Larry Richards, J.D., who markets himself as an expert in “lawyer personalities.” 

As I wrote last year in Astrology for Nerds, I’m a little sheepish about my fondness for Myers-Briggs personality typologies. I realize the underlying science is dubious. (But did I mention I’m a classic INFP?) Dr. Richards offers some Myers-Briggs insights, but he also relies on the more rigorous “Caliper” test, which measures numerous separate traits.

According to Dr. Richards, lawyers start out pretty similar to normal people, at least with most attributes. A few anomalies stand out. For example, lawyers rank in the 89th percentile for desiring “autonomy,” and in the 90th percentile for “skepticism.”

Conversely, lawyers rank at the bottom for “resilience,” which Dr. Richards describes as 

the degree to which a person bounces back quickly from criticism, rejection or setbacks. High Resilience people tend to take these negative events in stride. They aren’t as easily thrown off course by them as Low Resilience people are, and when they are impacted, they recover more quickly.

Most lawyers are Low Resilience. However, there’s a caveat to this generalization. Two specific groups of lawyers rank in the highest range for “resilience”: rainmaker partners at major firms, and high-stakes plaintiffs’ attorneys. Both exhibit the relentless drive and tough hide that characterize most successful salesmen. Apparently the rest of us are a bunch of Low Resilience snowflakes.

Take that, Logoskeptics

Last week I finished reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s bestseller The Black Swan. It’s about how humans fail to anticipate highly unlikely but consequential events until after they’ve already happened. The world is filled with implausible patterns.

I am comfortable describing myself as a Black Swan Event. 

My most recent blog post, “My Best Friend Paul,” was about my childhood best friend from Vancouver who killed himself eighteen years ago. I began this particular essay last summer. Even though Paul died long ago, it took a little bit of extra time to process some aspects of the complicated relationships among myself, my friend, and my childhood home.

As I mentioned, for the last few years of his life Paul lived in a West End condo on Haro Street, between Burrard and Thurlow. I stayed in Paul’s guest bedroom whenever I visited Vancouver during the 1990s.

This was opening weekend for Vancouver Men’s Chorus’ spring show, “Gays of Our Lives.” (Dancing boys galore! Tickets for next weekend’s performances available at www.vancouvermenschorus.ca.)

As I wrote in “My Best Friend Paul,” this year’s concert on Granville Island presents entertaining and occasionally poignant views of gay life, including the infamous Divas Medley, as well as odes to both lesbian gym teachers and nearby Little Sisters Bookstore.

Rather than driving back and forth to Bellingham, I’ve been staying with a friend from the baritone section. His West End condo has a charming guest bedroom.  

Today is another lovely June day in Vancouver, where I'm wearing pajamas and typing on my laptop in a comfortable leather chair rather than at one of my usual coffee shops. I’m also enjoying the amazing view north from the 20somethingth storey.

And I just realized that this is one of just a handful of vantage points in the city where you can look down…  and see the window blinds a couple of blocks away at my best friend Paul’s old building on Haro Street.

Take that, Logoskeptics.

Postscript

As I was packing up the guest room in preparation for returning to Bellingham after tonight's concert, I mentioned to my host that I probably wouldn't be staying in town next weekend because of family. He asked if they were coming to the concert.

I told him Eleanor and my mom would be there. (My father and my other two children haven't been to a performance since the infamous "falling asleep" episode.) I mentioned the timing worked out for my little brother to see the chorus perform this year, even though he lives in Africa. When my host looked at me quizzically, I explained my brother is in the diplomatic corps.

"Really?" said my host, who is originally from the States. "So is my brother."

I said my brother works in international development.

"Mine too."

I said my brother is a lawyer.

"Mine too. He was posted in _______ for the last four years, but this summer they're moving to _____."

Which is where my brother and his family lived until their recent move to Africa.

Just sayin.

A flock of black Canadian Geese

My Best Friend Paul

Last weekend one of my daughters told me she would be hanging out with her “best friend.” I’d never heard this girl’s name before. Eleanor has a new BFF every week. She also has a new favorite TV show, a new favorite movie, and a new favorite color. (My own favorite color – green, duh – has never budged.)  

I can identify best friends from each chorus I’ve sung in, as well as best friends from high school and college, a best gaysian friend, best friends from Seattle/Chicago/______, etc. But in contrast with Eleanor, there’s only one person I refer to as “my best friend.” 

I met Paul Anzinger on the first day of first grade (or Grade 1, as we say in Canada). For the next four years, the school inexplicably placed us in the same class together, no doubt to the dismay of our teachers. We were precocious, creative, and fun. 

Paul had red hair and style. He lived on Eton Street, and we lived on Cambridge Street. Even when they finally put us in separate classes for a couple of years, Paul and I were partners in fun after-school adventures.

Unfortunately, the summer after Grade 6 my family moved from Vancouver to Brigham City, Utah. My parents wanted to be closer to family, start a business, and build their dream house. Presumably they didn’t also want to traumatize me. But that’s what happened. 

In addition to all my other Utah wounds, I lost touch with Paul. I didn’t return to visit Vancouver until I was in college, when my parents moved to nearby Bellingham. All through the 1980s, I would come home from college, mission, grad school, and law school. I reconnected with Vancouver, and with Paul.

I saw Paul for the last time in Fall 2000. He died a couple of months later. We were thirty-six years old.

Vancouver Men’s Chorus begins two weekends of concerts on Granville Island tomorrow. (Excellent tickets are still available at www.vancouvermenschorus.ca). This year's show is extra gay, with everything from angry and elegiac takes on the AIDS crisis, to lesbian gym teachers, to a “Divas Medley” where Team Gaga ultimately triumphs over Team Madonna.

One of our songs, “Climb the Stairs,” is about a bookstore.

Sadly, VMC’s bookstore song is not a much-needed pretext for shifting the focus from buff dancing boys to sensitive gay nerds. Or gay dads. (Maybe next year.) We’re singing about an actual bookstore – Vancouver’s Little Sisters.

Not the current incarnation of Little Sisters, with its harsh fluorescent lighting and scant inventory of tawdry magazines and sex toys. The real Little Sisters was originally located a block away, on Thurlow at Davie. This was before Amazon, big box stores, and general illiteracy drove most independent bookstores out of business.

In “Climb the Stairs,” we sing about how Little Sisters functioned as Vancouver’s queer community center. The bookstore and its proprietors were also towering civil rights heroes, standing against discrimination and government censorship. Little Sisters even survived a bombing.  

I wasn’t around for the explosions. Instead, my most vivid Little Sisters memory involves my friend Paul and the power of paradigm shifts.

After graduating from law school and moving to Seattle, I finally began the coming out process in earnest. I also began getting my Vancouver fix more regularly. Whenever I visited my parents in Bellingham, I would try to add a trip across the border. I would see Paul and other friends, and make my pilgrimage to Little Sisters, Numbers, and similar gay shrines.

When we were in our mid-twenties, Paul lived in the suburbs. One spring weekend I made a quick trip to the West End. I hadn’t told Paul I planned to be in Vancouver. So I was startled when I ran into him in the middle of Davie Street. On my way out of Little Sisters. 

I was mortified. My immediate reaction was alarm that Paul must have figured out from my location that I was gay. (That’s how the closet works, folks, messing with your mind.) Fortunately, Paul didn’t say anything. And obviously I didn’t leap to any new assumptions about him.

A few weeks later, we were talking on the phone in preparation for another excursion to Vancouver. Paul casually mentioned that he’d seen me from a distance in Seattle the week before – in Volunteer Park at the annual Pride Festival. 

Yes, I’m that clueless. You probably won’t be surprised when I describe the similar after-the-fact conversations I'd already had with my best friends from high school, college, grad school, and law school. Apparently I’m some kind of oblivious gay magnet. Or contagion.

Or maybe I’m just particularly likely to cling to outdated mental paradigms. Even in the face of experience and overwhelming contradictory evidence.

I’m fascinated by the many variations on “doppelgangers” you encounter in your life:  college roommates marching down the road you were afraid to take, repeated versions of the same patently unsuitable admirer, people you meet just once at camp or a conference who nevertheless manage to change your life, the nemesis who got the job you wanted, etc. I’ve already published several “doppeler effect” essays on this blog.

It was my relationship with Paul that first started me thinking about the phenomenon. Not just because my childhood best friend turned out to be gay. But because Paul died when we were only 36. Since then he’s been part of my life in a different way – like a phantom limb I can still sense as life goes on.

In recent years I’ve recognized how much Paul is my doppeler in another important way: both our lives were bent by mental illness. Paul struggled with depression and other disorders. During the 1990s I often stayed with Paul at his gay West End condo, first on Broughton and then on Haro. We spoke about mental health and his experiences on numerous occasions.

The summer after I moved back from Chicago, I saw Paul a few times in Vancouver. Then no word. 

At Christmas, a letter with a Canadian postmark arrived at my Seattle apartment. It was from Paul’s younger brother. Paul had killed himself.

A couple of years ago, I went back to New Haven for the first time to attend the 25-year reunion of the Yale Law School Class of 1990. Last year I started writing about our reunion, but I’ve been stuck for months. 

At first, I was alarmed that my writer’s block might have returned. But I realized I probably just had more mental processing to do first. In October 2015, I was at the peak of my professional career,¹but just one month away from my PTSD diagnosis and the beginning of the end.

¹[Ed. Note: Hopefully enough voters in Whatcom, Island, Skagit, and San Juan counties believe in redemption stories and exceptionally well-qualified appellate judges. Visit www.leishmanforjudge.com.]

In writing about my friend Paul, I identified a second reason my essay about the Yale Law reunion had bogged down: I’d written the sentence “I had never been to a high school, college, or law school reunion before.” That’s false. I happened to be in Vancouver the weekend of the 10-year reunion of the Burnaby North Secondary School Class of 1982, so I went with Paul.

It was fun. I recognized folks I hadn’t seen since Grade 6, and vice versa. And I learned about numerous Canadian life paths stretching into the future – if you hadn’t made the mistake of moving to Utah. It turns out Paul was my doppeler in another important respect. He represented a lost Canadian alternative to the diminished American life I was leading. 

One of the hardest parts of grief is realizing you will never have the bright future you used to dream of. And one of the signs of improved mental health is when you’ve learned to accept that particular loss.

Happily, I’ve reached that point. My life experiences – even the traumatic ones – brought me where I am today. I wouldn’t want to have arrived somewhere else instead. Even successful and PTSD-free in Vancouver. Because I wouldn't want to end up anywhere without my three kids and the strange lessons we’ve learned along the way. 

Among many other blessings, Vancouver Men's Chorus gives me a pretext to drive to Canada at least once a week. (Don't tell the border guards the chorus takes the summer off; I’m still planning on driving up every week.) Everywhere I go in Vancouver, I’m reminded of my friend Paul. They’re all happy memories. 

In my redemption story, Vancouver isn’t just a mythical lost paradise. It’s a real-life paradise, with layered memories, present-day experiences, and multiple rosy futures. It's where I drag my kids during school breaks, and where they want to go. It's where I sing and (rarely and ineptly) dance. It's been my refuge for the last two years as I gradually emerged from the fog. Contrary to what you may have heard about the climate, it's always sunny in Vancouver. At least for me.

 Eternal gratitude to my two favourite Canadians

Paul Anzinger, 1964 – 2000

and

Vancouver Men’s Chorus, 1981 – 

Here are links to more of my “Doppeler Effect” essays, describing other individuals whose lives have paralleled and/or crossed particular threads of my own story: 

"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Gay Mormons" (9/11/17)

“I am Rob Lowe” (9/20/17)

“Chorus Minivan Dad” (3/6/17)

“About my Yale Law School classmate Brett Kavanaugh” (9/24/18)

"Crossing Paths" (10/7/18)

"Crazy Mormon Mommy Bloggers"


"Beyond Bardolatry" (3/26/20)

This is what an appeal looks like....

For a January 2023 update of my story, including the current status of my lawsuits against the State and its co-defendants, go to “Starting Over.” 

Three years ago, I had a major health crisis. Most families eventually will say something like that. In my case, my doctor diagnosed me with PTSD. My symptoms were triggered by recent events, but they were rooted in trauma that occurred thirty years ago.

Fortunately, I’ve been blessed with a supportive family and excellent caregivers. My three kids and I are all thriving here in Bellingham. If my doctor or I had any doubts about my ability to be a candidate or a judge, I wouldn’t be running for the Court of Appeals. [www.leishmanforjudge.com] To the contrary, life is good. I’m together with my family, reading and writing, and spending an interesting summer passionately seeking something that matters to me. 

Unfortunately, some people, often with the best of intentions, responded to my disability with much less acceptance and support. With the help of an excellent disability lawyer, I eventually settled my wrongful termination claim with the State, including a release of any state employees who might have been involved. My family is doing well and moving on.

One major factor contributing to the problems with my former employer was that Human Resources engaged a Seattle private investigator to look into my original grievance. His name was Patrick Pearce, of the firm Ogden Murphy Wallace PLLC, “Seattle’s sleaziest bottom-feeding law firm®.”

After I settled with the State, in attempt to clear my name, I reached out to Ogden Murphy and asked for a meeting with their Managing Partner. They responded by lawyering up.

In the end my lawsuit against Ogden Murphy did not go well. At least, in the end so far.

The defendants’ second set of lawyers eventually convinced the judge to dismiss the case. They relied on an obscure Washington statute that protects citizen whistleblowers who report potential wrongdoing to the appropriate government agency, RCW 4.24.510.

At my last job in Seattle, I was the Washington appellate expert at a law firm that handled all kinds of complex litigation. I would often encounter a version of this situation: a lower court victory that was too good to be true, or at least too good to defend on appeal.

For example, one of my litigation partners would ask me to respond to the other side's appeal from our trial lawyers’ impressively won, judge-certified, un-reversible jury verdict. Easy enough. Then you open the record on appeal, and discover a pretrial skirmish where our side won an early ruling from a busy trial judge who in hindsight probably made the wrong call. Our side's legal victory won the initial battle, but on appeal now risked losing the war.

If I was Ogden Murphy’s appellate lawyer right now, that’s how I would feel. 

The audience no longer is an overextended Seattle trial judge with too many cases and zero support staff, frantically skimming briefs at home on weekends. Now it’s a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals, with long briefs from the parties, and law clerks to read them. And the most appellant-friendly legal standard possible.

I became an LGBT advocate 25 years ago, when society and the law were not as friendly to our community as they are today. 

Nowadays, I tell audiences it’s déjà vu all over again: disabled individuals, particularly people affected by mental illness, face exactly the same kinds of social and legal barriers the LGBT community faced a generation ago. Often we would go into court and encounter what came to be called “the gay exception”: we’d make an iron-clad legal argument that judges invariably applied to everyone else. But we would still lose. 

A couple of decades later, as judges and society began to listen, LGBT advocates achieved some great victories. Hopefully the moral arc for disabled folks also bends toward justice.

This is the first paragraph of my appeal brief:

In 1989, the Washington Legislature passed the “Brenda Hill” anti-SLAPP act to protect citizen whistleblowers who report potential misconduct to relevant government agencies. This appeal presents an issue of first impression under Washington law: when it enacted RCW 4.24.510, did the Legislature intend to grant absolute immunity from civil liability for injuries caused by government vendors in connection with their contractual engagements?

Here’s a link to my entire appeal brief. I’ll let the record and the parties' arguments and legal authorities speak for themselves. Respondents’ Brief was originally due in July. [Ed. note: after requesting a couple of deadline extensions, Ogden Murphy finally filed its brief on August 8. Hmm, that's the day after the Primary Election.] Here is a link to my Reply Brief. The Court will set the case for argument early next year.

In the meantime, regardless of the outcome of my appeal, there’s no reason this pending case – involving a narrow but interesting question of statutory construction – should interfere with my campaign. To the contrary, keeping the courthouse doors open for all should be a top priority for any judicial candidate.

Frankly I have a lot of other things on my plate right now. Nevertheless, I’m appealing this troubling ruling to protect my family. And to send a message on behalf of other victims – whether they’ve been denied employment opportunities because of their mental health or other disabilities; or they’ve been injured by government contractors in the course of their tax-payer funded engagements; or they’ve been frustrated by finding out how quickly the legal system can close its doors to outsiders, often without anyone realizing it. 

The very first topic I addressed on this blog was the importance of being out of the closet. It doesn't matter whether the temptation is to hide your sexual orientation or your disability. Someone has to speak out. Often, someone has to be first to speak up.

One year and 150,000 words of a blog later, you can see I’ve written about a lot of things. But I always return to the subject of not returning to the closet.

Hopefully I haven’t been too “in your face” along the way, as a couple of readers recently described several riffs and rants. Anyway, I’ve listened. I’ll be speaking in slow, judicious tones for the next few months. But I’ll still be out of the closet.

As soon as I felt the call to be a judge several years ago, I tried to figure out what it would mean for my family, and for my candor and sense of humor. I choose to work closely with multiple judges and justices when I was a bar leader in part because I wanted to see them up close.  

After a few years with the bar and bench, here is a useful takeaway. One reason I feel suited for the Court of Appeals is observing that it’s the perfect legal job for do-gooding intellectual introverts who want to mix with other people – some of the time. The best judges I’ve known fit that description. They’ve shown me what it looks like to be judicious, even in the most awkward social situations. For example, one of Washington’s current Supreme Court justices taught me the trick of standing at receptions with the same unsipped glass of pinot grigio for hours and hours. 

I’m comfortable with my ability to be a father, a judge/candidate, and a person, and also to tell the story of my roller-coaster ride so far. Judiciously.

August 2021 update

Subsequent developments in the Ogden Murphy Wallace litigation over the next three years are described in “This is what a lawsuit looks like,” together with links to each of the blog posts related to my lawsuit.

On September 3, 2019, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s ruling regarding the application of RCW 4.22.510 to government contractors. After accepting discretionary review, on January 28, 2021 the Washington Supreme issued a whipsawing ruling that agreed with the trial court regarding the statutory construction issue, but neglected to address my other claims.

On August 19, 2021, the Washington Supreme Court entered an order reconsidering the impact of their January 2021 decision. Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud substituted an entirely new opinion. Her original concurrence is now a partial dissent. Justice Gordon McCloud’s thorough analysis reinstates most of my claims against Defendants Ogden Murphy Wallace and Patrick Pearce. 

The parties will now return to the trial court and start all over – but this time with the benefit of the mountain of incriminating evidence I uncovered while lawyers and judges procrastinated. I am grateful for Justice Gordon McCloud’s willingness to examine important details that other members of the bench and bar were prepared to overlook.   

For a January 2023 update of my story, including the current status of my lawsuits against the State and its co-defendants, go to “Starting Over.” 

Photographic Memories

On a clear day the first thing I see is Canada.

My bathroom window faces north. From Bellingham I can see a line of distant mountains. Somewhere up there the Cascade Range ends where the BC Coast Range begins, divided by the Fraser River.  

A couple of jagged snowcapped peaks are particularly prominent, due north of Bellingham. The other day I tried to identify the mountains. I got out a detailed topographical map of the region, but I couldn’t translate the images in my brain into the spatial information on the map. 

To the contrary, this is how my memory visualized the peaks:

I usually have a good map sense, but this time my memory didn’t give it much to work with.

Other mountains have become so familiar that my memory generates a detailed image of the whole mass – such as Mount Rainier and Mount Baker, or the twin lion peaks above Stanley Park. But even those images are pretty blurry. 

Supposedly there are a handful of people with “photographic” or “eidetic” memories that allow them to visualize objects with the same high resolution as the brain receives from direct visual stimuli. But that’s not how most memories work. Definitely not mine.

Don’t get me wrong. I have an excellent memory, stuffed full of trivia and experiences. I also have a gift for making mental connections. (Or maybe it’s a curse – both logomania and our lazy brains can inspire us to see patterns that do not correspond to reality.) However, humans’ ability to retain and retrieve pictures is quite limited. Keep that in mind if you’re ever on a jury, and the prosecutor calls an eyewitness who emphatically insists she saw the defendant running away from the crime scene.

Instead, faster than we can sense, our brain retrieves information about an object – including both what we retain from our original observations as well as from our subsequent associations and memories related to the object. Our brain then presents itself with a composite visualization, like a computer-generated animation. It’s like I have a personal Mountain App creating graphics inside my head.

One my most cherished choral memories is singing Herbert Howells’ Requiem at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle years ago. Howells’ stunning twentieth-century composition alternates Latin texts from the traditional requiem mass with three hopeful psalms from the King James Bible. 

Psalm 121 begins “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” As I look out my window towards Canada, my brain's soundtrack usually starts playing Howells. The baritone voice in my head (it’s Vernon, the soloist from Saint Mark’s) begins the movement. He and the choir alternate lines (“My help cometh from the Lord,” etc.), until the choir takes over with a joyous “Behold!”   

I try to meditate every day. I’m terrible at mindfully breathing and maintaining focus. But on a clear day, I can usually count on at least one moment of zen as I lift my eyes to the Canadian hills.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve looked to the mountains for relief. Until now, it’s usually involved looking to the west – whether I’ve been enjoying sunsets across Utah valleys, the Olympic Mountains from Seattle, the view from Wreck Beach, or sitting alone in the hot tub on Whidbey Island. 

My parents' house across town also faces west towards the San Juan Islands. In contrast, all the kids and I see to the west of our house are trees. During this season of riotous plant growth, the rain forest practically touches the house. The only real view is the second-floor vista facing north towards Canada. 

Recently I realized the only other time I regularly faced north was from the bedroom of my childhood home in Vancouver. I vividly remember taking comfort from that same blue-green Coast Range I now see in the distance.

Then all my reading about brains and memory planted doubt. It’s been four decades – could I really see mountains from the window of my childhood bedroom? 

When I tried to sketch the image from memory, all I got was a lumpy blue mountain with a cravat of ski slope: 

I resolved to investigate. 

On my way up to Vancouver Men’s Chorus retreat a couple of months ago, I stopped by our old house. As with most Vancouver neighborhoods, the bungalow across the lane has been torn down and replaced with a huge stucco monstrosity. But there’s still a peak-a-boo view of the ski slopes. 

Back home in Bellingham, I compared my memory drawing to photos I took nearby. Looks pretty close to me: