In the case of the lawyers, this is actually not an example of non-niceness being good for society. The defense attorney who defends a guilty party, their job is not to be a jerk to the prosecutor or to the judge. It is to, as you say, provide the judge with information (including counter-arguments to the other side’s arguments). While his job involves working in an opposite direction from his counterpart, it does not involve being non-nice to his counterpart (and it is indeed most pro-society if the two sides treat eachother well / nicely outside of their equal-and-opposite professional duties), and it does not involve being non-nice to the judge, whose job the attorney (as you point is) is actually assisting with. Again, society expects maximum niceness from both attorneys towards the judge outside of ⌞their professional duty to imperfectly represent the truth⌝.
Society expects niceness to be provided from each of these parties to each of the others: {the judge, the defense attorney, the prosecution attorney}
The board’s statement doesn’t mention them having made such a request to Altman which was denied, that’s a strong signal against things having played out that way.