Violence Against Attorneys
Defense attorney injured after courthouse argument with DA investigator
Personal safety is primary. Simply going about your everyday business requires you be alert to potential situations that may present differing degrees of threat. This is true of encounters on the street as well as professionally.
In a worse case work-related situation, you could face hostile actions from a violent client or an enraged adversarial party. Legal professionals who interact with persons who have criminal pasts, especially violent ones, may become dangerously inured to certain kinds of behavior that would otherwise be perceived as a red flag. An every day routine puts you on autopilot. Without everyday situational awareness, leaving home and arriving at work at a habitual time, leaving work and arriving home at a routine time, or parking in the same place at work or at the courthouse may make you highly vulnerable to a violent ambush.
If you are unable to preclude a threat by avoiding or de-escalating it, then instinctive, objectively reasonable self-defense proficiency may be required. Israeli Krav Maga (Hebrew for “contact combat”) provides all of the training needed to successfully handle a full range of physical threats. Krav Maga is both easy to learn and designed to handle problems directly, minimizing risk. It provides a range of escape measures from moderate danger all the way up to attacks on your life.
In June 2019, the Wisconsin bar published an insightful article, “The Threat of Violence: What Wisconsin Lawyers Experience,”[1] documenting the threats to both attorneys and judges using a 29 state survey. After 29,000 attorneys responded, the article presented:
12,744 threat/violent incidents were reported by the respondents.
In a 26 state compiled survey, approximately, 42% of all attorneys who responded had experienced violent threats or assaults.
Of Wisconsin lawyers, 510 (49.1 percent) reported that they had been threatened or physically assaulted at least once.
Acts of violence reported in these state surveys include numerous shootings, stabbings, assaults, and batteries, as well as vandalism to businesses and personal property.
The results of each of these state surveys show that violence and threats of violence against the legal profession are much more prevalent than reported by the media or commonly perceived by lawyers:
“I’ll kill you.”
“I’ll get you.”
“Watch yourself.”
“We’re watching.”
“I’ll blow you up.”
“I’ll shoot the place up.”
“You won’t get out of the office alive.”
“I know where you live.”
“Hope your kids aren’t home.”
“I know what you drive.”
“Watch your back.
“I have lots of guns.”
This comprehensive defense and safety-measure training is suitable for people of all shapes, sizes and physical ability, while promoting life skills such as how to fall down safely and fully seize situational awareness. Israeli Krav Maga is a proven tool to improve teamwork and enhance a firm’s esprit de corps. Liability mitigation and incident avoidance are key elements in our program. Any corporate safety program should emphasize the following principles and strategies:
Threat severity assessment
Legal considerations (re: use of force)
Verbal and physical de-escalation
Escape and evasion
Skills and precautions that involve observation
Analyzing potentially hostile body language in concert with speech
Core self-defense principals against the most common unarmed attacks
Irrational reacting vs. rational responding
The criminal interview that can lead to selecting a victim
Social/territorial violence vs. criminal violence
Social mores relating to violence
In short, every attorney’s office, large or small, should have a written workplace violence policy outlining preventive practices and a personnel action plan in the event of workplace violence. I look forward to interacting with you about potential training for you or your firm.
[1] https://www.wisbar.org/NewsPublications/WisconsinLawyer/Pages/Article.aspx?Volume=92&Issue=6&ArticleID=27059
