Confessions of a Sociopath (22 page)

The stereotypes about the bloodlessness of lawyers are true, at least about the good ones. Sympathy makes for bad lawyering, bad advocacy, and bad rule-making. The prosecution and the defense would both benefit from a little hard-hearted sociopathic lawyering. Whether you’re a down-on-your-luck welfare recipient or a billionaire corporate executive, you’d be best served by a sociopathic counselor like me. I won’t judge you or your supposed moral failings; I’ll just stick to the letter of the law and ruthlessly try to win by working every angle I can—and I like to win as much for me as for you.

Lawyers deal with issues that most people would rather turn away from. Neuroscientist and sociopath researcher James Fallon has lauded sociopaths for performing “dirty work”—work that most people have no interest in doing themselves but that needs to get done, like providing legal representation for people whose behavior is (allegedly) abhorrent or disgusting. Somebody has to defend the Bernard Madoffs and O. J. Simpsons of the world. Not only are the sociopaths willing to do the dirty work, they are often better at doing it than others. Working the slippery spot between right and wrong to my advantage is not only personally satisfying but has the additional benefit of being good lawyering. Lawyers know that a fact can only be made fact if wrestled from a sea of strenuously argued maybes. And like all sociopaths, lawyers recognize the self-interest that hides in every heart, ferreting out the hidden motivations and dirty secrets that underlie criminal acts.

In law we have a word that is rarely used in other contexts:
dispositive. Dispositive
means “relating to or bringing about the settlement of an issue,” so a dispositive point of law or a particular fact is one that will allow a party to either sink or swim on a disputed issue. For instance, let’s say that I walk past someone hurt and bleeding on the sidewalk a mere twenty feet away from a hospital and I do not stop to help. The fact that I have no previous relationship to the victim is dispositive; the law would say that as a stranger I had no duty to help and I am absolved of any legal liability. Case closed. All other facts are worthless: that the victim screamed for help, that I had a phone and could have called 911, that I even had a first aid kit and surgical gloves with me at the time.
Dispositive
is a word that is rarely used outside of law because almost nothing in regular life is so final. Most of life is made up of vague moral and social norms that are annoying in their complexity and their ineffectiveness. Law is straightforward: a flush always beats a straight, and the specifics of each hand are irrelevant. Because of this, law is also powerful. If the law says you did not murder someone, for all intents and purposes you did not, as the O. J. Simpson case famously illustrated. Although the law is fallible, we pretend it isn’t. This makes the law a trump card, as long as you can manage to manipulate a situation to where the law is on your side.

Perhaps because it is so high-stakes, the courtroom is the scene of the greatest human drama. But I believe it is to my advantage that I am relatively unfazed by the emotion that seems to sweep up many of the players. In particular, I seem to be immune, if not blind, to the extremes of righteous anger. As a child, my siblings and I would occasionally be shamed and chastised for what, I’m sure, were infuriating infractions. My mother could justify her acts of violence and indignity as
discipline and punishment, the prerogative of a parent. It was as if the prickly edges of cruelty could be bundled up in moral righteousness, and in this insulated state, they could be trotted out for their day in the sun when petty child thieves were caught in the act.

It wasn’t until law school that I was able to identify this thing and know that I had no real part in it. In every course we took, our casebooks were filled with outrageous stories of fraud, deceit, and oppression, demonstrations of how deeply and creatively human beings can wrong each other. Once in a while some story would prove too much for my classmates, and they would collectively become incensed, getting visibly upset over things that had happened decades or centuries ago to dead strangers. Watching them, I was fascinated but nervous. These people apparently felt something that I did not. From such outrage, I heard the most ridiculous suggestions for my classmates’ illogical, knee-jerk calls for vigilantism, in complete disregard for the carefully balanced scales of justice. When my classmates could no longer identify with the child molesters and the rapists in the pages of our casebooks, they allowed righteous anger to determine their decision-making, applying a different set of rules to those people they considered morally reprehensible than they did to people they considered good, like them. Sitting in class, I saw how the rules changed when people reached the limits of empathy.

This impulse plays out not just in the rarefied space of the law school classroom but much more palpably in the public square. Almost every action movie constitutes the enactment of darkly violent wish fulfillment. A son avenges his mother. A father avenges his daughter. A husband avenges his wife. Each act of vengeance is more gruesome than the last. It isn’t enough that the bad guy is prevented from doing his bad
deeds; he must suffer as much as possible. It is as if the existence of evil—or something that can be designated as such—provides a safe haven for the good to engage in evil. It’s a safe space to indulge in inflicting harm, to experience the sublime of suffering.

I do not understand or participate in the rush to judgment and punishment that seems to sweep up empaths, even in their roles as attorneys, judges, and jurors. If you have been falsely accused of a horrific crime, wouldn’t you prefer to have a sociopath defend you, or sit in judgment of you? The nature of your presumed crime is of no moral concern to me. I am only interested in winning the legal game we play in sorting out the truth from the jumble of facts, partial facts, and misunderstandings.

Practicing law in front of a jury and judge is much more satisfying than slaving away in an office as one of many anonymous, highly educated drones. Trial is the culmination of everything that came before it, and after it little else matters. It is the quintessence of “dispositive.” Trial is do or die—successfully persuade twelve jurors to vote how I want or lose. At trial, I get to perform. I am a lion tamer, the center of attraction in the three-ring circus that is the modern courtroom. It requires me to understand what people want to hear, not one-on-one, but on a grand scale. Trial forces my people-reading skills to go into overdrive, which in turn requires me to use attention deconcentration—focusing on everything at once. To get what I need, I must spin together a convincing narrative. I play off people’s hopes and expectations, their preconceptions and biases. I use everything I’ve learned from a lifetime of lying about what makes a story plausible, even believable, to make my story seem like “the truth” and the opposing attorney’s story seem like a pack of lies. And finally, because I don’t
trust people’s rationality (particularly in issues where morality is implicated), I play off the one thing that you can always trust people to respond to—their fear. And I am like a cancer-sniffing dog when it comes to finding exactly which buttons to press to tap in to someone’s ready supply of fear.

During jury selection, and depending on the laws of the state, the lawyers are allowed to question jurors about any prejudices before they are empaneled. Jury selection is a juror’s first chance to form an impression of me. It is seduction in suits, and like any good seducer I start out casually. I first ask about their occupation, nodding simple approval for those jobs of which the juror is neither proud nor ashamed. For the jobs of which I can sense the juror is ashamed, I make a remark like “That job must be in high demand” to indicate my approval before the rest of the jurors. With this comment, I become his ally and champion. I’ve done him a favor for which he owes me a certain amount of allegiance. If I can tell that the juror is especially proud of his job, I express surprise and amazement at his accomplishments. The best predictor of whether someone will like you is whether they feel you like them. I like to optimize my chances.

Being a juror is a hard job. Evidence is not presented linearly and is limited in all sorts of ways before trial for unknown evidentiary and procedural reasons. Witnesses show up according to their availability, each telling a story that makes up only a small piece of the puzzle. Often, the purpose of their testimony might not even be apparent.

For this reason, jurors often direct the bulk of their attention to the drama occurring between the attorneys. It’s only natural. Lawyers are present the entire time and seem to be running the show. Jurors spend the whole trial watching from the jury box as we move, speak, and act, knowing that there
are invisible rules governing our behaviors. They understand that important things often happen in the courtroom while they are sequestered in the deliberation room. And even more maddening are the sidebars in which lawyers and judges conduct whispered conferences out of their earshot. Even in the halls, jurors are not allowed to speak to the lawyers. All of this makes us walking mysteries to them—celebrities starring in the only show in town.

I am always polite to opposing counsel, but never so much so that it would appear I like them. In the halls, I smile lightly and with ever-so-slight coquettishness, signaling that I share with the jurors embarrassment at the awkward situation in which we find ourselves. I am never ingratiating to the judge.

Inside the courtroom, I am likable, too, but armed with power, authority, and knowledge to which the jurors are not privy. People can be afraid of having power. Asked to choose between having power and giving up power to a “trusted” entity, people often prefer to give it up rather than have the responsibility that comes with that power. This is particularly true if they don’t feel like they have a specific expertise and are worried about making a mistake, like deciding if a defendant is guilty or innocent. I know that they are unsure of themselves and are looking for someone to trust, to take away the burden of power. I make myself that trusted repository of power by exuding confidence and authority. I make meaningful eye contact with them when I discuss certain disputed issues in the case. I want to convey to them that they aren’t hearing all of the story, and that if they knew what I knew they would come to the same conclusions I have about the case. I always make a more compelling character than the other attorney. I imply that, outside of the courtroom, I am a lot like them—the type
of person you could turn to when you have a thorny problem you need help solving.

This alliance with the jurors is key when jurors reach the deliberation process. Jurors are instructed that they must reach consensus based on their rational understanding of the evidence presented. If one differs from the rest, he must make his case to the other jurors. The worst thing that can happen to a juror is to appear a fool for believing something that is clearly not credible to everyone else. Good attorneys use this peer pressure in two ways. First, I make myself into the most reliable and powerful ally a juror could have, making him believe he is not the outcast, because his alignment with me, the most popular girl in school, makes such a prospect impossible. I become the invisible juror in the deliberation room, controlling my puppet jurors by ensuring that they respond to any challenge by saying: “But remember when the prosecutor said this?” If I have done my job presenting my story in a way that it seems like “the truth,” this should be sufficient to ensure a verdict in my favor.

But because people cannot be counted on to act rationally, I also engage their fear centers by subtly shaming them into believing my version of the story. The message I want to be broadcasting at all times is “You would be an idiot to believe the defendant’s version of events.” People do not like to feel like they were duped, so a juror’s fear of looking stupid overcomes any anxiety about sending a fellow citizen to jail. I’m not a bully about the shaming; rather, I suggest to each and every juror that I believe he or she sees it my way because I can see that he or she is an intelligent, reasonable person. The juror and I are on the same team, and it’s the winning one.

I enjoyed being a trial attorney, and I was successful at it. I loved the sensation of risk, for instance the risk of making
a misstep that could result in a mistrial or the possibility of being waylaid by a witness changing his story on the stand. There was the seductive aspect of winning over the jurors and judge, not to mention the feeling of power I got from being the center of attention. Instead of seeing trial as a big moral issue, I played it like a game of poker—both sides dealt a specific hand and determined to play their hand better. Law is great that way—there really are winners and losers in clear, defined ways. Doing justice is fine I guess, but beating someone is its own reward. Luckily the justice system was designed exactly for this type of partisanship—an adversarial system in which our closest approximation of truth can only be reached if both parties are putting forth their best efforts at winning.

Indeed, there are a lot of careers for which the skill set of a sociopath is particularly well tailored. Jim Fallon mentions surgeon and investment banker. Sociopath researcher Jennifer Skeem has suggested that the protagonist in the film
The Hurt Locker
, a bomb-disposal specialist in Iraq, is a classic example of a sociopath due to his lack of regard for the rules, his boldness and fearlessness in defusing IEDs, and his trouble relating to the emotions of his team members. By looking at the list of characteristics, I could also add professions like military officer, spy, hedge fund manager, politician, jet pilot, underwater welder, firefighter, or many others. A high risk tolerance allows people like me to take opportunities that others could not, providing us an edge in competitive environments.

And as Al Dunlap, the former CEO and possible sociopath, describes it, those sociopathic traits can be a real boon in the corporate workplace: unemotional, ruthless, charming, confident. Lots of sociopaths are ambitious or are hungry for power or fame—all traits that are lauded in the business world. Joel Bakan, author of
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit
of Profit and Power
, argues that if corporations have “personhood” under the law, then it makes sense to question what kind of people they are. He posits that corporations behave with all the classic signs of sociopathy: They are inherently amoral, they elevate their own interests above all others’, and they disregard moral and sometimes legal limits on their behavior in pursuit of their own advancement. Organizations of this type would thrive under the leadership of people who have the same traits: sociopaths. And, indeed, a study for a management development program discovered that managers at the highest levels of their companies were seen as “better communicators, better strategic thinkers, and more creative”—and they also scored higher on measures of sociopathic traits. Though they weren’t popular with their staffs and were rarely seen as “team players,” they were generally believed to have leadership potential. The authors concluded that “the very skills that make the psychopath so unpleasant (and sometimes abusive) in society can facilitate a career in business even in the face of negative performance ratings.” Perhaps it can be argued that there is something wrong with corporate capitalism, but that is the system society has settled on, and it’s one in which sociopaths can excel.