Effect of stereotyping
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Stereotyping clients can negatively impact the lawyer-client relationship and legal outcomes. When lawyers make assumptions about clients based on attributes like appearance, education, or personality, it can damage trust and cause them to miss or misinterpret important case information. Lawyers must treat each client individually, without bias or preconceived notions, in order to accurately gather facts and provide the best possible legal representation.
Effect of stereotyping
- 1. Nelfi Amiera Mizan Multimedia University Effect of Stereotyping Stereotype can be defined as the unfairly beliefs that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same. As the statement specified, each client is an individual, a unique entity. Thus, during the session of client interview, lawyers must treat each client differently as they have different personalities. The most commonly judgment made towards clients are through their appearance, education status and characteristics. When a good looking client with professional looks, ones may directly conclude a positive outcomes. Most people tend to think that good appearance comes with good brain, which most of the time is not accurate. When a clumsy client came across with an outdated appearance, lawyers may tend to think that they know nothing and conclude negative outcomes. Thus, a lawyer must not be judgmental and should be neutral at all time. It must be noted that serotyping may not only occur towards the client from the lawyer, but also towards the lawyer from the client which both will obstruct the accuracy of information processing during client interview session. Firstly, by stereotyping the client, lawyers tend to judge the client’s action without valid and sound proof. Jumping into conclusion only by one’s action indicate an unprofessional lawyer. This will affect the bond of trust between client and lawyer. When the lawyer did not
- 2. trust the information given by the client, he may omit some important information given by the client. Secondly, by stereotyping the client based on their personality, lawyers may directly conclude for a particular case. For example, seeing a well-educated client with high class attributions make them believes all the information given without a research. This may affect the outcomes of the case and affect ethical considerations. Thirdly, by stereotyping and had misled all the information, lawyers may then disregard the instruction from their client and evaluate for them differently from what being asked. This is obviously contrary to what lawyers should do, which they must act in accordance with the instruction from the client. Forth, client sometimes may feel reluctant to give honest answers, thus affecting the information process. Because of their fear being judged negatively, client usually did not reveal some important information thus affecting the interview session. Lawyers must therefore assure that the lawyer is completely non-judgmental and the session is conduct in a private and confidential manner. Nelfi Amiera Mizan Multimedia University