We've discussed crying before here, here, and here. I have cried at work, but not in a work-related context: I got choked up when a family member was dying, when I got in a personal disagreement with a good friend at work, and when I was feeling particularly homesick. I also once comforted a friend at work whose pet was sick. I did not feel I had been unprofessional in these situations - but it's clear from the conversations we've had in this area that I could have beenperceived as such.

What I did think was unprofessional was crying in a professional capacity, i.e. during oral argument, trial, negotiations, or any other representative capacity. Recently, I witnessed another attorney cry in court. The thing that made this attorney so emotional was another attorney attacking her. Both attorneys had strayed from the core issues of the case and were focused on one another's behavior, which they each deemed inappropriate. Regardless of whether or not the allegations of improper lawyering were warranted, both the initial attack and the teary reaction seemed to me to be entirerly unprofessional.

The experience confirmed my initial reaction to the conversation about crying attorneys: it distracts from your client's case and it attracts negative attention. But it also made me wonder: if the reacting attorney had remained calm and unemotional would I have thought that the attacking attorney's behavior was so inappropriate also? It's hard to say, but in this case the crying may have been perversely effective if the attacks - though poorly asserted - were indeed merited. Because the attorney took the attacks so personally and reacted with such emotion, I was thinking about what had been said that was so upsetting; I was thinking about the personal conflict between these attorneys. If you've got the losing argument, can crying help you - not because you'll engender sympathy - but because you'll distract your audience from that fact? I hadn't thought it was possible, but as I look back on the whole exchange I'm forced to wonder.