Friendly advice for judicial candidates as to what meaningless clichés to avoid, as they not only treat the public at large to such tripe, but also impose it on fellow attorneys when they appear at events primarily composed of members of the legal community.

For RJC candidates, avoid any nonsense of the "Tough On Crime" ilk.

For Family Court candidates, don't tout as to how you are non-nonsense and "won't put up with any b.s. from people" After all, to be effective at that particular position you need to endure incredible b.s. on a daily basis and still retain a decent decorum. Over-reacting every time you hear b.s. will result in multiple daily explosions by the judge.

But also avoid the opposite of the "tolerate no b.s." pap, which is please don't keep telling us how everyone who appears in your court will "at all times be treated with the utmost respect and dignity."

Granted, that intending to treat everyone with dignity is a good presumption or starting point, we soon learn that in some cases showing someone "the utmost of respect at all times" may not be the most important approach. For example, in Family Court, parties who are the subject of a Temporary Protective Order, will sometimes turn to the victim in open court and address them in a manner intended to continue to intimidate them. These type of threatening litigants require real firmness and control, not "the utmost of respect and reverence."

And I recall a defendant in Criminal Court who turned to the parents of the child victim that the Defendant had terrorized and sexually abused, and made some really horrific comments. The last thing I would want to see in that instance is a judge who treated that defendant with the utmost of respect and dignity.

So, if you are just speaking to the public in general, and you wish to bore them with such banal generalities, that is one thing. But when you are invited, as candidates, to something like a Bar Luncheon focusing on the judicial campaigns, please tell us something of substance so we may get some real sense of how we will be as a judge, not just that you will treat me with the utmost of respect and dignity.

Very often, at these luncheons, a candidate who says they will 100% of the time treat all attorneys and parties with the utmost of respect, and even reverence, then turn around and indicate that they will never tolerate any b.s. Most rigorously contested proceedings have at their core the fact that at least one of the parties is being dishonest as to key points, or is at least flavoring their presentation with fair degree of b.s.

10:47 left out my favorite,which is the candidate whose main point is that they will use their common sense when deciding and ruling.

Obviously, common sense is presumably a real good trait to have, but the candidates who keep hammering on their "common sense" are usually the ones who have zero experience in the subject matter of the seat they are running for.

Candidates running for Family Court, for example, who have zero legal experience in the area, will reference that they are parents and therefore know what is in the best interests of children, and that they have common sense.

Again, positive experience as a parent, and having a degree of common sense, can only be a good thing, but we need to set the bar a bit higher than that for these judgeships–such as, dare I say it, making certain you, as an attorney, have some meaningful degree of experience in the court you are running for.