This article was automatically translated from the original Turkish version.
One aspect of legal practice can be described as: “being present as a professional expert alongside someone who, in the midst of a difficult situation, does not know what awaits them or what they should do.”
And here is a voice: “I know what needs to be done; together we can determine what is best for you. I can draw on my experience and professional knowledge gained from previous situations similar to the challenge you are facing for the first time, to assist you and help you achieve the best possible outcome. I am with you. Do not worry.”
This is certainly not “This is my job, I’ll handle it.”
It is not about saying “We will do it this way, proceed like this,” and then placing full trust in your own suggestions about what is good and ideal for them, or even assuming responsibility on their behalf—not despite them, but with them.
The person before us may sometimes arrive having lost everything they had invested their entire life into—reduced to chaos, broken, burned, or in complete disarray. This may sometimes involve a business investment, a partnership, or even a family.
In that moment, whatever they bring into the room—this confusion they hold in their hands—we gather, organize, and when necessary, properly dissolve, clarify, and disentangle it together; sometimes rescuing, sometimes cleansing, sometimes rebuilding from scratch. It is the authority to intervene when someone’s rights are being violated, so that when asked “Who are you, what is it to you?” this intervention is not perceived as interference.
When someone is lost within a chaos they have accumulated but cannot articulate, when the words they learned during their education are no longer sufficient to defend themselves, and when they surrender their role to someone else because that person will do better on their behalf—to act on their behalf, to stand in their place—is not about losing one’s own identity. On the contrary, it is about using one’s own personality, skills, and experience to manage the role required by the person in need, and in a sense, to serve them.
What I have come to understand in this profession is that the effectiveness of communication depends on recognizing its limits and acknowledging that its success hinges on the other person’s willingness to understand.
How beautifully whoever said it put it: “To one who understands, a reed flute is enough; to one who does not, drums and zurnas are too little.”
