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As an attorney in Vermont I have represented a wide variety of clients during my 25 years of law practice. I have assisted farmers trying to make ends meet, young couples trying to purchase and finance their first home, seniors with increasing health and mental acuity issues planning for their future, badly battered wives trying to balance their own safety with obligations to their children and family, couples trying to start their own businesses, county economic development associations working to attract more business to the area, and small and large business owners and corporations working to sell, buy or refinance their operations. I have helped relocate roads, build new water collection and treatment facilities, and protect important environmental habitats. Over the years I have come to believe that our current legal system encourages too much positional "win-lose" bargaining and not enough emphasis on "principled negotiation", mediation, and alternate dispute resolution. The inherent conflict between a lawyer’s role as advocate and negotiator has always concerned me. My own values and interests clearly lead me in the direction of negotiated or collaborative solutions to conflicts. The lawyer as advocate or "hired gun" is required to maximize the likelihood of success for the client and, in achieving this end is, within only mild limits, not accountable in any legal, professional or moral way for the methods used. We, the American public today have, as never before, the opportunity to see and evaluate for ourselves the fairness of the trial process and the justness of the result in high profile cases. This is largely due to increased in-depth television coverage of these criminal and civil trials. The O.J. Simpson trial was such a case. The highly controversial result, and the legal tactics and means used to achieve it by the defendant's advocates, led many in America, including myself, to question whether this system of advocacy produced a just result. I for one am uncomfortable that advocate attorneys are encouraged, even required, by ethical standards to create scenarios and arguments that, while extremely improbable (though theoretically possible) really do little more than attempt to obscure facts central to the case by raising multiple scenarios about largely unrelated and irrelevant, but often highly charged, emotional issues to mislead and distract the judge and jurors in their analysis and decision. Such improbable scenarios seem to be routinely allowed by judges who usually are trained in these same advocate tactics as trial attorneys prior to being selected as a judge and who therefore intimately understand and accept their place as part of the culture of advocacy. Since the American Bar Association has thus far chosen not to adopt proposed changes that would explicitly permit, or even require, a lawyer to balance the duty to advocate strongly for a client with the obligation to follow ethical standards of honesty and truthfulness, I prefer to avoid this role of partisan lawyer and seek to work with approaches that are more consistent with my values and interests as a citizen and an attorney. In recent years I have balanced my professional life as an attorney with healthy outdoor activities and a strong interest in making better public policy decisions. I have increasingly come to believe that there is too much partisanship in our national politics. In all human interaction, it is generally easier to negotiate with those with whom you have good relationships. To the extent that we demean and belittle those with whom we differ, we make it more difficult to successfully negotiate.
In negotiations, I believe it is much more effective to separate the person from the issues being negotiated. One can take very strong positions on issues being negotiated, without having to attack the person who holds differing views on issues. Unfortunately, many of our politicians do not practice this approach, which is sometimes called "principled negotiation". We as citizens all pay a very great price for this. Delay in resolving issues such as social security, campaign finance and tax reform continue policies in their present form until resolved. During this time, children do not receive improvements in education, senior citizens and uninsured Americans do not receive needed health benefits, younger Americans continue to lose faith in the financial solvency of our Social Security system and average American citizens fail to receive needed attention to their needs in order to satisfy special interests who heavily buy influence with large campaign expenditures. Negotiations can be more successful by using some proven techniques. By separating people from the problems and issues being negotiated, by focusing on identifying the underlying interests, rather than the positions, by working to invent options for mutual gain, and by measuring results according to objective criteria, the negotiation process is improved. This approach can lead to better decision-making in Congress, which will improve the quality of life for many of us, both in Vermont and across the country. This is a major reason I am seeking to represent Vermont as one of our United States Senators. THE END - for now! Thank you for reading my autobiography. The next chapter won't be written until after this campaign. Meanwhile, you'll be able to closely follow my progress on this web site! Rick Hubbard |
