A Brief Post About Congratulations to Prevailing Lawyers

For several months, I've generally congratulated prevailing lawyers in cases I write about, as a mark of acknowledgment of their professional success on behalf of their clients. I've done so without regard to whether I agree with the lawyers' positions as a legal or moral matter; they apparently did a good job as lawyers, and my hat is off to them for that. (To be sure, it's possible that they just had a strong case that few lawyers would lose, or perhaps they did a shoddy job and won despite that, but I was willing to generally infer professional quality from the victory.)

Indeed, I was hoping to model for law student readers the principle that lawyers succeed by serving their clients, entirely apart from broader political questions. When I didn't congratulate the prevailing lawyers, that was generally because (a) I thought the decision as a whole (and not just the part I wrote about) was split enough to not be a victory, (b) the lawyers' names weren't easily obtainable, (c) there were so many lawyers on the winning side that listing them all would have been a chore, or (d) I forgot.

But though I had explained this practice in this post, it seems from comments that quite a few readers interpret congratulating a lawyer as a mark of endorsement of the lawyer's position—which, especially, to nonlawyers, is indeed a plausible interpretation. I've thus tentatively decided that I'd take something of a middle road (especially since this is certainly not a great matter of principle for me one way or another): I would note the names of the prevailing lawyers and indicate that they represent the prevailing party, a public acknowledgment that I hope will be seen as a gesture of professional respect, without saying "congratulations." And I thought I'd mention this expressly, so that readers don't assume that my noting some people when I had congratulated others before says something about my views on the merits. I hope this makes sense, to readers and to the lawyers involved.