American Lawyer Covers The No Asshole Rule

American Lawyer Magazine, one of the Bibles of Big Law, has an article or review of the The No Asshle Rule by Bob Sutton.  I have blogged about this book before (see here, here, here, here, and here, among others).  I guess you can say I am a promoter of the book (although I get paid no money).  As Bob Sutton says in conjunction with the American Lawyer article:

I don't think that there are more assholes in the law than in other occupations, despite the popular stereotype.  In fact, although law gets the rap for having the most assholes, surveys of different occupations suggest that doctors are more abusive than lawyers, with nurses being their most frequent targets.  But there are some special challenges for law firms that want to enforce the rule.

Second, as I show in The No Asshole Rule, one of the primary causes of demeaning behavior, backstabbing, and an nastiness of all kinds is severe competition between individuals, when life is seen as an I win-you lose game.  Most partnerships divide up the profits every year among the partners in a zero-sum game, where if one partner gets more, the others get less. Moreover, the American Lawyer -- the most important publication in the business -- fuels this problem by ranking firms (among other ways) in terms of profits per partner.

Third, let's face it, one of the reasons that people hire lawyers is to help intimidate rivals in litigation and negotiation, yes partly through facts and logic, but also through demeaning interpersonal moves meant to unnerve and intimidate opponents -- dirty looks, put-downs, teasing, glaring, and intense eye contact.  The problem is that, although these very same skills may help in the courtroom, a deposition, or a negotiation when used at just the right moment,  when attorneys use them on their peers and underlings (and aren't stopped) the asshole poisoning spreads.