The Selfish Gene

by Richard Dawkins

Lawyers must accept only one member of a couple as a client. The other person is turned from the door, and either has no legal advice at all or is forced to go to another lawyer. And that is when the fun begins. In separate chambers but with one voice, the two lawyers immediately start referring to ‘us’ and ‘them’. ‘Us’, you understand, doesn’t mean me and my wife; it means me and my lawyer against her and her lawyer. When the case comes to court, it is actually listed as ‘Smith versus Smith’! It is assumed to be adversarial, whether the couple feel adversarial or not, whether or not they have specifically agreed that they want to be sensibly amicable. And who benefits from treating it as an ‘I win, you lose’ tussle? The chances are, only the lawyers. The hapless couple have been dragged into a zero sum game. For the lawyers, however, the case of Smith v. Smith is a nice fat nonzero sum game, with the Smiths providing the pay-offs and the two professionals milking their clients’ joint account in elaborately coded cooperation. One way in which they cooperate is to make proposals that they both know the other side will not accept. This prompts a counter proposal that, again, both know is unacceptable. And so it goes on. Every letter, every telephone call exchanged between the cooperating ‘adversaries’ adds another wad to the bill.