Poker as an Ethical Model for Laywers
I have a review about Steven Lubet's book "52 Lessons that Lawyers can learn from Card Players".
Lubet provides interesting examples about how poker players resolve recursive reasoning: what should I do if I belive that he believes that I belive, etc. (The use of "etc." is intentionally misleading becuase there is no single series of reasoning.)
I did not address the ethical aspects of Steven's book, but there is now an interesting discussion at the legal ethics forum blog.
As an aside, at a game theory conference I attended one of the game theorists suggested that poker was easy because all you had to was play "minmax", or the best response to the best response.
What he meant was that it was easy to play pot odds; only play if the expected value of winning the pot exceeded the bet. It is a credit to poker analysis that Steven Lubet clearly explains the limits to this strategy: this only works in games with risk seeking players.
Recall Steven's summary of good poker play:
First, play the early part of your hand aggressively in accordance with the objective odds of winning, pot odds, and the feel of the local game.
Second, play the later part of the game very tight, but on pots that involve small bets, get caught bluffing to obtain information and to establish your reputation for playing in a certain manner.
Here are some examples which flesh out these contrary recommendations. Early on in the game, if you hold a weak hand, you can bet as if your cards are strong, if you believe that most of the players will stay in. It depends upon where you are sitting, but if you play a 9 7, no suit, you can draw a flop which makes it worthwhile at pot odds; the objective chance of winning, to play again.
But, if you played this weak hand like a weak hand all the time, you would miss out on the part of the decision tree in which you flop a either a 4 or 5 straight. You must build the pot , in the right position, to benefit from that outcome.
In the other example, late in the game after the river, sometimes it makes sense to call against what appears to a winning hand, in a low betting game, to establish your reputation as "bluffer" and also to buy information.
Now, I agree with Steven Lubet's general analysis of the cognitive skills needed to analyze poker and that these skills are important for lawyers. But here is the ethical question that I am not sure of.
If poker hands are metaphorically legal cases, then Steven Lubet is saying that in order to maximize winning you have to play bad cases early on in the trial process more aggressively than their expected value, while later in the process close to trial, you have to be willing to go to trial and lose a crappy case in order to establish yourself as an aggressive lawyer.
You have to waste discovery resources and die on some trials.
Without in the least diminishing my regard for Steven Lubet's book, I am uncomfortable with what seems to be the 53rd lesson from poker players.
Note that Lubet does address in his book ethical considerations about lying: good in poker; not done in law. But it is not lying that I am talking about, it is the strategic overview lawyers would have if they were would good poker players, or learning lessons from poker players. Should we really sacrifice our clients to maintain a reputation? Or have I missed a lesson?
