Building Trust in the Practice of Law by Patryk Zamorski and Patrice Yermia
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OVID-19 has wreaked havoc on interpersonal relations, making now the ideal time to rethink exactly how we work, communicate, and interact. Trust—or more precisely, building trust and building it well—underpins the entire process of how we relate to each other. In this article, we argue that, where trust is lacking, important soft skills, such as persuading and motivating, become seriously impeded. To test the impact of trust on the quality of a final legal product, we conducted a survey and interviewed people from the legal profession and business world about the importance of trust in relationships, both between in-house and external lawyers, and between lawyers and the businesspeople they advise. We also reviewed academic research into how people build trust, and how trust comes into play in a business context.
The Science of Trust Trust is a dynamic process, which ebbs and flows like the tides. Trust is never offered forever. Rather, it is fragile and may strengthen or weaken depending upon the quality of the relationship. The reason for this fragility, especially now, is that social connection lies at the core of trust and is the crucial ingredient at the human level. Events have conspired against us, placing unprecedented strains and obstacles on interpersonal bonds. Who has been able to truly nurture connections of late? Anxiety in our everyday existence impedes us from building security and stability in our professional lives. As our circumstances have changed markedly, the means of gaining and maintaining trust are more important now than they have been for generations.
Pain and Gain We all inherently want to feel appreciated, recognized, valued, respected, liked. Individuals want to be part of something bigger. If someone hits you in the jaw or treads on your foot, a strong electrical signal heads straight for your brain’s pain center. By the same token, if you are excluded from an activity or not picked for the team, a signal heads straight for the very same part of your brain. Both types of pain, physical and emotional, light up the brain and are recorded in the neurological system in precisely the same way! What’s this got to do with trust? Social exclusion creates emotional pain and this in turn destroys trust and the social bond. Landmark research by Professor Paul Zak shows that higher 10
Attorney Journals San Diego | Volume 220, 2022
levels of trust can lead to noticeable improvements in performance (“The Neuroscience of Trust”). He argues that creating a high-trust culture in an organization helps us stay engaged over the long term. More oxytocin is released in our brains, translating to greater trust if we create the right environment. This directly impacts the lawbusiness triangle: in-house lawyers, business, and law firm lawyers. Various factors affect trust and how it is perceived. Age, seniority, hierarchical position, and role in the organization impact how trust is obtained, perceived, and maintained over time. The persons whose trust you seek will—consciously or unconsciously—assess your behavior to determine if they can grant you trust safely. Focusing now on lawyers and legal teams, similar evaluations will occur based on perceived competencies, the atmosphere in the legal department, team diversity, etc. In essence, people are trying to answer this simple question: Is this legal department a place where I feel secure?
Trust and Culture Trust develops in significantly diverse ways depending on your culture. In certain cultures, trust is given upfront, in others it must be earned and nurtured. We have come to believe, from our own experience and from research, that if greater trust is offered from the get-go, it immediately creates a cognitive bias in the form of a bond. And this bond exists at the neuronal level/brain level for all involved. Do you trust with your head or with your heart? According to Professor Erin Meyer, this largely depends on your culture, and it is important to understand these cultural subtleties to avoid misunderstandings. There are two basic types of trust: cognitive trust and affective trust. Cognitive trust is based on the confidence you feel in another person’s accomplishments, skills, and reliability. Trust from the head. Affective trust comes from feelings of emotional closeness—parents, spouses, old friends. Trust from the heart. Professor Meyer found that in “task-based” cultures such as the US, Denmark, Germany, Australia and the UK, businesspeople are much more likely to develop work bonds based largely on cognitive trust. In China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and India, trust is more “relationship-based” and is built through developing a personal bond. In the business world of those cultures, cognitive and affective trust are not separate but woven together.
