I recently read an article about the Gottman Institute’s famous “Four Horsemen” – four patterns of behaviour that relationship researchers have identified as powerful warning signs of marital breakdown: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling.
The research is not presented as a prediction that every relationship displaying these behaviours will end. Rather, the Four Horsemen are a pattern-recognition tool: warning signs that the way people are relating to one another is beginning to erode the relationship itself.
As a family lawyer, I could not help but see the irony. We spend our professional careers dealing with the consequences of relationships that have deteriorated. We see, usually in extraordinary detail, how communication broke down, trust disappeared, resentment accumulated and two people who once regarded each other with affection eventually became incapable of sitting in the same room.
Yet family lawyers can fall into remarkably similar patterns with one another. And perhaps there is a lesson in that. What if family lawyers applied to their professional relationships the very relationship principles that we wish our clients had learned before their marriages broke down and retained us?
Family law is adversarial by design, but professional relationships do not have to be. Indeed, I would suggest that the most effective family lawyers understand something that is easily forgotten in contentious litigation: the lawyer on the other side is not the enemy. They are a professional colleague performing a role within the same justice system, often under the same pressures, trying to advance a different client’s interests. If Gottman’s Four Horsemen can destroy marriages, perhaps they can also tell us something about how professional relationships between lawyers deteriorate and, more importantly, how we can prevent that from happening.
Horseman #1: Criticism: In relationship psychology, criticism is different from raising a legitimate concern. It occurs when a complaint about behaviour becomes an attack on the person. The distinction is important. There is a substantial difference between saying “We need your client’s financial disclosure to give my client advice and get reasonable instructions on settlement” versus “You are deliberately delaying this case by withholding financial disclosure.” The first addresses process with diplomacy. The second attacks character with accusation. The underlying relationship research describes criticism as shifting from a specific, potentially solvable problem toward personal attack. That type of communication tends to escalate conflict rather than solve it. Family lawyers should recognize this pattern immediately because our correspondence can easily drift in precisely that direction.
Sometimes there may be legitimate frustration behind these statements. But once criticism becomes personal, the communication stops being about solving the problem and begins to redefine the relationship between counsel. The other lawyer is no longer a colleague with whom we disagree. They become the problem. That is usually when productive communication starts to deteriorate. The better approach is the same one relationship experts recommend to couples: describe the specific need, explain its impact and identify possible solutions.
Instead of:
“You never respond to our Request for Information”
Try:
“We wrote to you on June 4 and June 12 asking for financial disclosure so we can work on an Offer to Settle, but have not yet received a response. Could you please let us know by Friday whether your client accepts the proposed disclosure timetable for both sides?”
Same problem. Different messaging.
Horseman #2: Contempt: Contempt is more dangerous. In Gottman’s research, contempt has been identified as the strongest of the Four Horsemen. It appears through sarcasm, mocking, belittling, eye-rolling and communications that convey superiority. Anyone who has practised family law for long enough has seen its professional equivalent. The condescending letter. The unnecessary adjective. The sarcastic email. The performative copying of multiple people (mediator, assessor, associates) on correspondence intended to embarrass opposing counsel. It is written not because it advances the client’s case, but because it feels satisfying to write. And perhaps the most common modern form of professional contempt: the email sent in ten seconds that would never have been said face-to-face.
Family lawyers must be particularly careful because we practise in an environment where conflict is contagious. Our clients are often frightened, angry and grieving. They may desperately want their lawyer to hate the other spouse – and sometimes the other lawyer – as much as they do. But counsel are not supposed to become emotional surrogates for their clients. Our function is not to amplify conflict. It is to exercise judgment within it.
There is also a practical reason to resist contempt: today’s opposing counsel may be tomorrow’s referral source, mediator, arbitrator, co-counsel, colleague on a professional committee or lawyer representing someone whose cooperation your client desperately needs. Family law is a surprisingly small community. Reputations travel faster than motion material. The antidote to contempt in relationships is mutual respect and appreciation. The professional equivalent is simple: firmly but politely express a contrary legal position while preserving respect for the person advancing it. There is enormous power in being able to say:
“Our client disagrees with your client’s characterization, and I will soon be sharing their version and a proposal for settlement.”
Written diplomacy costs nothing and attracts the respect of the client and counsel. Aggression only leads to higher legal fees and disappointed clients. Professional goodwill produces settlements and repeat business. Professional resentment blocks resolutions and ends retainers.
Horseman #3: Defensiveness: This appears when someone responds to criticism by denying, counter-attacking or transferring blame. Relationship experts describe it as protecting the ego instead of addressing the relationship. The antidote is accepting responsibility – sometimes even for a small part of the problem – and demonstrating that the other person has actually been heard. Lawyers are professionally trained to deny, defend and blame. That makes this horseman especially challenging. In litigation, there may be legitimate reasons to contest allegations. But not every professional interaction is a call for combat. Sometimes the most effective response is simply:
“You are right. I should have responded earlier” or “I think we have both contributed to how this issue escalated. Let’s reset.”
Those words do not compromise the client’s legal position. They strengthen counsel’s professional position. There is a misconception in adversarial professions that acknowledging an error diminishes authority. Often the opposite is true. The lawyer confident enough to acknowledge a mistake usually gains credibility, not loses it.
Horseman #4: Stonewalling: Stonewalling occurs when someone withdraws from communication altogether – ghosting, disengaging or chronically unavailable. In family law, stonewalling has a particularly recognizable professional form. The unanswered email. The telephone call that is never returned. The settlement proposal that is ignored. The request for dates that receives no response until someone threatens a motion. Sometimes there are perfectly legitimate reasons. Lawyers become busy and overwhelmed. Clients stop providing instructions. Other cases blow up and consume our whole week. Life happens. But silence sends a fairly loud message whether we intend it to or not. To the other lawyer, it may communicate disrespect, indifference or a tactical obstruction. And once that interpretation develops, escalation usually follows. The next email becomes even spicier. Motions are threatened. The motion material is served. The energy shifts to affidavits and arguments. Suddenly two lawyers who could have resolved the problem in a ten-minute telephone conversation have now steered their clients into $20,000 of litigation.
This is not to say that there is a need to answer every difficult email immediately. Sometimes you should not. But there is an enormous difference between taking time to respond thoughtfully and simply disappearing. A two-line email can preserve a professional relationship:
“I received your message. I just need instructions from my client and will respond soon.”
That small courtesy can prevent an extraordinary amount of unnecessary conflict.
There is something almost paradoxical about our profession. Everyday we witness what happens when people stop listening to one another. We see the cost of resentment. We see what happens when every disagreement is interpreted as evidence of bad character. We see how quickly defensiveness creates counter-defensiveness. We watch silence become suspicion. We watch contempt make compromise psychologically impossible. And then, occasionally, we repeat the same behaviours with each other.
Perhaps family lawyers should be the professionals most sensitive to relationship dynamics because relationship breakdown is the subject matter of our occupation. We know that relationships rarely collapse because of a single conversation. They deteriorate through patterns. Small micro-discourtesies become irritations. Irritations become contempt. Contempt leads to combat. And combat fundamentally changes how every future communication is interpreted. That is true between spouses. It is also true between lawyers.
None of this requires lawyers to become passive. Civility does not mean weakness. Professional respect does not require agreement. A lawyer can be firm, strategic and highly effective without becoming insulting. Indeed, some of the finest advocates I know are also among the most courteous. Their strength comes precisely from the fact that they do not waste credibility on theatrics. When they say something matters, people listen. When they draw a line, opposing counsel knows it is deliberate. When they object, the objection carries weight because hostility is not their default setting. That is a very different form of advocacy from permanent combativeness. One is strategic. The other is unregulated emotion.
The Four Horsemen framework ultimately carries an optimistic message: these behaviours are not necessarily irreversible. They can be recognized and replaced with healthier patterns – responsibility instead of defensiveness, engagement instead of withdrawal and respect instead of contempt. Perhaps the same is true for our profession.
Family lawyers spend careers observing people who discovered, usually too late, that relationships require maintenance. We should not need to learn that lesson twice. Our clients may arrive in our offices because their relationships have broken down. There is no reason the relationships between their lawyers should have to break down with them.
This article was recently published in LEXISNEXIS’s Law360 Canada at: https://www.law360.ca/ca/family/articles/2517525/can-family-lawyers-learn-from-their-clients-mistakes-
Steve Benmor, B.Sc., LL.B., LL.M. (Family Law), C.S., Cert.F.Med., C.Arb., FDRP PC, Acc.D.C., is a full-time Divorce Mediator/Arbitrator and principal lawyer of Benmor Family Law Group, a boutique matrimonial law firm in downtown Toronto. He is a Certified Specialist in Family Law, a Certified Specialist in Parenting Coordination and was admitted as a Fellow to the prestigious International Academy of Family Lawyers. Steve is regularly retained as a Divorce Mediator/Arbitrator and Parenting Coordinator. Steve uses his 30 years of in-depth knowledge of family law, court-room experience and expert problem-solving skills in Divorce Mediation/Arbitration to help spouses reach fair, fast and cooperative divorce settlements without the financial losses, emotional costs and lengthy delays from divorce court.
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