There is a particular kind of tension that fills a courtroom before every family law case. Lawyers arrive carrying banker’s boxes and the weight of their clients’ worst days ahead of them. Everyone is ready for battle. In Judge Solomon “Sol” Casseb III’s courtroom, that tension rarely had a chance to settle in.

Before any argument was made, he would lean forward from the bench and motion to the lawyers with an invitation as genuine as it was disarming: “Counsel, let’s grab a cup of coffee before we get started.”

The conversations were brief, but focused on the lawyers, their families, and life in general. His interest in them as people was genuine, and the lawyers knew and felt it. After those few minutes, they returned to the courtroom, and something had shifted. What had been a room poised for conflict became one where the lawyers could still advocate, but with the same calmness Judge Casseb displayed minutes earlier and carried forward to the bench.

Shaped by years of practicing family law and serving as a mediator, Judge Casseb understood the power and authority of the gavel. But he also knew that if he could appeal to the humanity of the lawyers before him, their clients would benefit rather than pay the price of escalation.

Of all the things I learned from him, the most powerful was that approachability is not the absence of authority. In the right hands, it is the highest expression of it. That is a legacy worth carrying forward.