James Sexton: evaluation

Transcript context

…At best it’s the same. It’s one of the things I think that’s interesting about divorce is in our increasingly performative society, you can’t pretend you meant to get divorced. You can’t, like everything everybody does. “Well, I wrote that album for me. It didn’t matter that it was not going to be popular.” No, you wanted that album to be popular. Come on, you’re lying and that’s fine, but you’re lying. “Oh, I think my haircut came out great. I wanted it to look this fucked up.” No, you didn’t. You didn’t. You’re lying and that’s fine because we live in a society now where everybody’s just, “Oh yes, I meant to do that.” Okay. Divorce? Nope, you got married. You break up in a relationship, not a marriage. “Okay. Well, we were only going to be together for a little while. It was never serious. We were having fun. That’s all it was. We were never going to be a happily believer after.” No, you got married. You got married guys. You got up there and you said forever and it didn’t go forever so you can’t bullshit anybody anymore. No, it didn’t go the way you thought it was going to go, didn’t go the way you signed on for. So now that that’s undeniable, what can we make it? What can we make it into? It can be beauty. The barns burned down, now I can see the moon. Let’s make it something. And so, for me, I think people look at a divorce lawyer and they just go, “Yeah, this is this horrible chapter and I associate you with it.” Also, too, listen, some of the things we do, it’s difficult to simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. The things you do to protect your clients sometimes look like acts of aggression, but really they’re just trying to shore up a defense. And so, I get paid to be paranoid and I have to say to clients sometimes like, “Well, are you sure that they’re not doing this?” And then they go, “Well. I don’t know.” I go, “Well, let me inquire.” “Did you accuse me of that?” “No, no. I’m not accusing you. I’m just trying…” We get a reputation, divorce lawyers, as amping up conflict because we get paid for the conflict, right? It’s like if you get paid by the bullet, you’re going to start a lot of gunfights, right? It doesn’t really work that way with most good divorce lawyers. There are plenty of people that are bad lawyers and they stoke up conflict because it jacks up fees. They usually don’t do well. They don’t build a successful career because you live and die by your reputation. Yes, reputation is everything.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.