Humility and professional organization
Humility has an important positive impact on the functioning of legal professional organizations, such as corporate law firms, government agencies, prosecuting offices, international organizations, public interest law firms, and public defender offices.
There are several ways in which humility is relevant to the organizational dimensions of the legal professions. First, humility helps to foster an egalitarian ethos at the work place.As argued, the virtue of humility involves a commitment to relate to others on an egalitarian basis. Given the hierarchical structure that is characteristic of most work environments in the legal professions, the egalitarian stance that humility brings in is central to promote collegiality among people across levels within the organization. The egalitarianism that is at the core of the virtue of humility is particularly important in the context of public institutions, for the way in which public officials relate to others (i.e., co-workers, but also those in need of legal counsel or service, victims, parties, etc.) manifests how the state treats people and sets an example for how citizens should treat each other.Second, humility has been associated with a number of pro-social values that are extremely consequential in the context of organizations (Nielsen and Marrone: 2018; Owens et al., 2011; Wallace et al., 2017).3 There is robust empirical evidence for the connection between humility and other-oriented behavior that is altruistic, generous, cooperative, and helpful; higher levels of empathy, benevolence, forgiveness, and gratitude; making decisions that are non-exploitative of others; and lower levels of power-seeking (Krumrei-Marcuso: 2017; Davis et al., 2012;Wright et al., 2017).This connection between humility and a number of pro-social values and behaviors results in highly beneficial outcomes for legal professional organizations.To begin with, humility has important positive effects on team work, especially with regard to team integration and team performance (Owens et al., 2011; Nielsen and Marrone: 2018, 817;Wallace et al., 2017, 251).
The positive impact of humility on teams is not only relevant for the well-functioning of legal organizations but, as I will argue below, is particularly significant for collective legal decisionmaking. In addition, humility results in strong social bonds, increased group cohesiveness, and a higher level of employee retention (Nielsen and Marrone: 2018, 816), all of which are very valuable for legal organizations.Third, there is a substantive body of empirical research that shows that humility is a predictor of emotional well-being (Nielsen and Marrone: 2018, 815). Specifically, humility decreases depressive symptoms, positively correlates with subjective well-being and self-reported health, and is associated with more positive emotions (such as gratitude and love) and less negative emotions (i.e., shame and mistrust) in contexts in which the humble person is receiving assistance or help from others.These findings are particularly relevant in the context of legal professional organizations, in light of sustained critiques of the dehumanization of the legal profession, the high levels of distress and anxiety facing legal professionals, and the challenges of leading a successful career and a satisfactory personal life in the legal professions (especially, albeit not exclusively, in corporate law firms and legal services in the banking and finance sector) (Schiltz: 1999 and Rothstein: 2007).
Fourth, humility has been shown to be connected with high performance and innovation in the context of business organizations (Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez: 2004; Owens et al., 2011; Nielsen and Marrone: 2018). The positive impact of humility on performance and innovation is the outcome of a number of different mechanisms: (i) humble people have a better awareness of strengths and weaknesses, which leads to a better distribution of time and work; (ii) humility influences performance insofar as it is a key characteristic of effective leadership (Collins: 2005); (iii) humility enhances social learning (through imitation of role models), which results in better individual performance and higher organizational outcomes (more on this in Section 38.5); (iv) humility helps innovation and performance insofar as it enables an open attitude to new paradigms and promotes experimentation, learning by trial and error, and risk-taking; and (v) humility also has a positive impact on performance insofar as it increases an organization’s resilience, i.e., the organization’s capability to adapt to change and improve performance in the long run, insofar as humble people are more receptive to feedback after failure and avoid selfcomplacency after success.These results may arguably be indicative of the significance of humility for bolstering organizational outcomes in the legal professions.4
Last, humility is a trait of character that enhances one's capacities to work in transcultural environments, which is critical in the context of legal professional organizations (Foronda et al., 2016; Hamman: 2017).
Cultural diversity is a central characteristic of some legal organizations, like international organizations, NGOs, and international courts. Besides, given that contemporary societies are highly diverse, and the impact of globalization in the legal sector, domestic legal professional contexts are also increasingly marked by cultural diversity. This makes humility essential for legal professionals to collaborate across cultural barriers as well as interact with clients, victims, defendants, and people in need of legal services of any kind in a way that is respectful of cultural difference.In sum, humility is valuable to legal professional organizations in that it generates an egalitarian work environment, strengthens social bonds within the organization, is positively related to emotional well-being, enhances performance and innovation, and is a valuable resource for organizations to function in highly diverse contexts.
38.4