Phone Pet Peeves

Published June 21, 2011

How well are you using your phone?

Traditional landline telephones seem almost quaint and antiquated technology when compared to today’s cell phones and smart phones with their multiple functions and hundreds of thousands of “apps.” Yet the phone remains at the core of your firm’s ability to serve clients. How well you use even the most advanced mobile phone technology deter- mines whether that technology is properly addressing the firm’s needs.

Cell phone misuse

That brings us to the issue of cell phone misuse. That there is legal liability from misusing a smart phone – above all while phoning or texting while driving – is shown by the many state laws criminalizing these activities. Lawyers who think such restrictions don’t or shouldn’t apply to them should remember the example of a lawyer from a large West Coast firm who several years ago struck and killed a Virginia pedestrian when making a business call on her cell phone while driving. The lawyer was ordered to serve a year in jail, surrender her law license and pay $2 million in damages. The firm also paid a major settlement under its insurance policy.

Annoying those around you

The other problem is sheer common discourtesy. Cell and smart phone users often seem so absorbed with their “apps” and the less than important conversations they hold that they become oblivious to all else and annoying to everyone else. They are drivers who hog the left lane while driving at half the speed limit, ignoring and disrupting everyone else on the road. If you’re honest, do you see yourself in any of these cell phone behavioral pet peeves?

• Shouting conversations as loudly as possible, presumably to show off wit or importance (and doing the opposite).
• Letting a mobile phone ring time after time anywhere that it is disturbing and annoying to others in the same space (such as the theater or medical office).
• Interrupting a current call to get another rather than letting the incoming one go to voicemail.
• Thinking that Bluetooth earpieces create a look of technical sophistication, while in fact they appear to be straight out of an old Star Trek episode.
• Walking and talking – but failing to avoid walking into others while doing it (and always looking down at one’s feet).

Lawyers should maintain professionalism at all times

Such behavior is bad enough when done by multitudes on the street or in an airport. For lawyers it is inexcusable. In the practice of law we should never forget that we are dealing with human lives. The law cannot be a profession unless we ourselves maintain professionalism and deal with others as we want to be dealt with.

Categorized in: Ethics, Management

Audience type: Large Law Firms, Small Law Firms, Sole Practitioners