I try to bring up my children on the basis that when they have done something wrong, they learn to say sorry.  We all make mistakes and the best and quickest way to deal with a mistake is to apologise for it and to say sorry.  Some people seem to live in a world where they don’t believe that they ever make mistakes, and are continually trying to blame others around them, rather than accept responsibility for their own mistakes, learn from them and move on.  Quite frequently those people will in fact be the first to say that they always apologise when they are wrong but as luck would have it, they are never wrong – although they don’t say that latter part!  

There is no doubt with modern communication we all get ourselves into even more problems than we should or would have in the past.  That instinct to reply immediately to a rude or aggressive e-mail that angers us so often leads to a reply that we would not have sent in years gone by when we had more time to reflect on what you were doing.  I, in particular, get very worked up on occasion by some of the e-mails that I have received in the past from clients.  It upsets me no end that some people, in an effort to achieve whatever their goals may be, are quite happy to absolutely ignore the truth of a matter, the facts as well as possibly their own actions in a matter and simply try to threaten to damage one’s name or reputation in an effort to achieve a result.  Lawyers are often threatened by clients or people where there is no real effective remedy for the lawyer, because the client has no money, and suing them for defamation is not going to achieve anything because of that.  I know some major firms have made policy decisions that they will not react to any complaints, for example on Hello Peter or on social forums and I sometimes think, even though we get very few of those, that that would be the appropriate way for me to deal with them as well.  Invariably, people who have genuine complaints will either sort it out with the firm themselves or go to other attorneys and it is somewhat frustrating trying to deal with somebody, who is totally to blame, but will not see it, and who tries to put a one-sided version up on a website in an effort to embarrass or extort you into taking certain steps.