An earlier LinkedIn post of mine explored a simple advocacy principle: meeting pressure with immediate resistance can leave you fighting on someone else’s terms.
The idea is easy to admire when nothing important is happening.
It becomes harder when opposing counsel sends an insulting email, a client questions your judgment, or a negotiation suddenly turns hostile. The impulse is to answer immediately - to correct the accusation, establish authority and make it clear that you will not be pushed around.
Sometimes a prompt, firm response is necessary. But urgency and emotional activation are different things.
The professional question is whether your response advances the client’s position or primarily relieves your own discomfort.
Pressure can redirect your attention
Imagine an email that combines a legitimate procedural request with an unnecessary attack on your competence.
The procedural issue needs attention. The insult demands attention.
If the insult takes over, your response may become longer, sharper and less useful. You spend paragraphs defending your record while the decision that actually matters receives a sentence.
The other person has effectively chosen the subject of your reply.
This is the practical value of emotional control. It preserves your ability to identify the issue, assess its significance and choose a proportionate response.
A lawyer can disagree forcefully while remaining precise. Ontario’s Rule 7.2-1 requires courtesy, civility and good faith in professional dealings. Those obligations provide a professional baseline for communication under pressure.
Composure needs to produce a decision
Calmness by itself is not a strategy.
A lawyer can sound composed while avoiding a necessary confrontation. They can postpone a difficult conversation until the client’s options narrow. They can tolerate behaviour that requires a clear boundary.
The useful sequence is to recognize the pressure, identify the decision and act deliberately.
That might mean refusing an unreasonable request, correcting a misleading assertion, documenting a concern or taking an appropriate procedural step.
Composure should make those actions more effective. It should never become an excuse to overlook a deadline or leave the client exposed.
The question is not “How do I appear unbothered?” It is “What response serves the file?”
Clients may ask for a performance of strength
A frustrated client may want an aggressive letter because aggression feels like progress.
That creates a second communication challenge. Counsel must address the underlying concern while explaining what a particular response is intended to achieve.
Simply telling the client to calm down can sound dismissive. A more useful conversation connects the proposed action to its purpose:
“We can challenge that position directly. I want the response to focus on the disputed obligation, the supporting documents and the next step we are requesting.”
The client can then evaluate a strategy rather than a tone.
Strength becomes visible through preparation, clear boundaries and follow-through. A restrained response can be forceful when it states precisely what is disputed and what will happen next.
Five habits for responding strategically
1. Separate the issue from the provocation
Before drafting, identify the question that requires an answer.
What is being requested? Is there a deadline? Does an assertion need correction? What instruction or decision is required?
Treat personal criticism separately so it does not automatically become the centre of the response.
2. Name the objective
Write a private sentence describing what the communication should accomplish.
Perhaps you need documents, confirmation of a position or agreement on a timetable. Review the draft against that objective.
A paragraph that does not help may be unnecessary, even if every word is defensible.
3. Create a proportionate review pause
Where timing permits, reread a difficult message before sending it.
Check for speculation about motives, unnecessary accusations and language that obscures the requested action. For a significant communication, a colleague’s review may help.
Keep the pause proportionate to the matter’s urgency.
4. Explain the strategy to the client
When choosing a measured response, explain why.
Discuss the intended result, the risks and the circumstances that would justify changing course. Clients are better positioned to give instructions when they understand the reasoning behind counsel’s approach.
5. Review what triggered you
After a difficult exchange, consider what made it difficult.
Was it the substance, the delivery or a personal sensitivity? Did you feel compelled to answer every allegation? Did the response achieve its purpose?
Use that review to improve the next decision.
Emotional control is a professional skill that can be practised in ordinary moments: an uncomfortable call, a disputed invoice, an email that invites an argument.
Those moments create habits that travel into higher-stakes work.
Do not let another person’s provocation write your next move.
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Source: Law Society of Ontario Rules of Professional Conduct, rule 7.2-1.