Do you think that all of his tricks actually worked, or was he pushing what he wanted to be right? To really know if specific brands of shoes or shirts really worked, you'd need to do some pretty advanced blind testing, that also might be unethical (would you want your lawyer to wear a pair of shoes he thinks might impact your case negatively?)
It's a good question. It depends on the end goals of your field. In programming the end goal is that your systems work as described. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and whether or not an engineer did a good job is fairly/objectively evident in whether or not the systems work as spec'd. No one really cares that you spun up your cluster in the nude.
In trial law, the end goal is to win the hearts and minds of a jury to believe you. Your end deliverable is a set of speeches and presentations to a group of strangers making decisions about ethics. In programming, your tools are your IDE, terminal, manuals, libs, etc. In law, your tools are all the different flavors of rhetoric. Some of these are pure logic-based rhetoric, but many appeal to human emotion and establishing trust and proving character. In the end, the jury needs to trust the evidence and arguments presented by the attorney are real and honest. He always explained to me that humans make lots of inferences about people based on their personal presentation--which is true. E.g. "he put a lot of care into polishing those shoes--I can infer that he did the same when collecting and investigating the evidence" Or, "that lawyer dresses really flashy with cheap clothes and fake gold watches to make it appear he's something he's not--maybe he's bullshitting his arguments too."
He explained it even extended to courthouse design. He'd say "There's a reason courthouses are big, imposing, and serious-looking. It's important that people behave themselves seriously and thoughtfully here; decisions are being made every day that can dispense justice to lives of the wronged and potentially ruin people's lives too."
He was right--when it comes to law, for absolute certain. Most of his trials were defending Fortune 500 companies (for good stuff--stuff he believed in--protecting them against other parties defrauding and legitimately wronging them). His record was something like 300-2. He was a legend and I miss him.
But I'm still going to spin up clusters with barbecue sauce on my shorts.
