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Scott Benton: Hi everyone, Scott Benton here. I am your host on the classroom to courtroom podcasts where we are helping you to easily transition from the classroom to the courtroom, going from the world of law schools and being a student in law school and transitioning into your professional career as a licensed attorney, practicing law and providing legal services, probably for clients that hire you.
Today’s question that we’re going to address is. Are you ready to jump into the deep end? Are you ready to jump into the deep end? And what does that mean exactly?
Scott Benton: Well, when you start a new job, any job really, but in this case, we’re talking about starting at a law firm. And you are practicing law as an attorney for the first time, it’s going to feel [00:01:00] like every single day you have jumped into the deep end of the pool and you’re going to find yourself in this place over and over and over again.
In fact, you’re going to find yourself in this place in the deep end throughout your entire career. So, you want to know how to navigate that. You want to know what tools you’re going to need. You’re going to know how to solve the issues that you’re having when you find yourself in that knowledge gap where you don’t know how to do something.
It might be, you come in and you’re given a whole list of cases that you now need to start to learn and you need to start to think about. figure out where those cases are in the process and you need to take them along the journey and do the next steps. And a lot of times you’re going to find that you don’t know how to do those next steps because you haven’t done them before.
And that could include things like Conducting a deposition or conducting discovery for a case, maybe even going to a hearing, whether that’s in person in a courtroom or online, or [00:02:00] even going to a trial. Now, speaking of trials, we, there is a story of one of the attorneys who went to a hearing, or at least thought they were going to a hearing, and it turned out that it was a full blown trial that they were in, but they didn’t know that they were in a trial until the judge said, please call your first witness.
Now, that’s a really good example, and probably everybody’s worst nightmare, of suddenly learning that you’ve been thrown into the deep end. So you need to know what to do in that moment that you realize you’ve been thrown into the deep end of the pool or that you simply just stepped into it. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen those videos maybe on Facebook or on YouTube where people are walking along a pool. Maybe they’re looking at their phone or doing something else and they slip and they fall into the pool and that’s exactly what just happened to you.
You realize that you’re in a full blown trial because the judge has just said please [00:03:00] call your first witness. So you need to know how to navigate those situations because they will come up hopefully not as drastic as being in a trial that you didn’t realize you were in. But first and foremost you need to know not to panic.
That’s always important not to panic. You need to keep your mind clear because you need to stay nimble and you need to know what to do now in cases where you can utilize your resources such as going to other attorneys in your firm or maybe paralegals or other law clerks or people that are familiar with the situation you’re in.
You can easily go and use those resources to help accomplish your goals. But what did this attorney do? When he suddenly realized that he was in the middle of a trial, again, everyone’s worst nightmare. Well, he stayed calm because that’s what you need to do when you’re splashing around in that deep end of the pool.
And he needed to utilize his brain, utilize his skills, keep his mind clear, as [00:04:00] clear as possible so that he could think and navigate his way out of this. Now he did the best that he could. Under the circumstances and he went through the trial. Of course, that first day he went through the trial and when it was all over, there were two things that he did.
First of all, let’s back up a minute when you realize that you’re in the deep end, you need to. There’s two responses you can give. You can panic. And you can try and step away from it and step out or you can lean into it. Recognize that you’re in the deep end right now. Recognize that you’re in a little bit of a crisis.
Stay calm, but lean into it. Lean into the idea. that you’re in a trial suddenly that you weren’t expecting to be in. Lean into that idea. You don’t want to betray your confidence. You want to maintain your posture and you want to maintain that level of knowing and that level of confidence because you’re transferring that confidence to your client.[00:05:00]
You’re transferring that confidence to the judge transferring. If there’s a jury, you’re transferring that confidence to a jury or Opposing counsel, for instance, whoever else is in that courtroom. So you want to lean into it as opposed to recoil from it. And when you’re leaning into that uncomfortable situation, you found yourself.
And remember, we talk about learning to become comfortable with being uncomfortable because you’re going to be uncomfortable practicing as an attorney. In many instances, this is going to come along over and over and over again for you, so one of the skills that you learn is being comfortable with being uncomfortable.
I hope that makes sense. Another thing that you can do in this case for this attorney who found himself in a trial, once the trial was over, the attorney sat down with a journal and started to write and write and write and write. And this is something that you can consider doing as well. It’s the fastest way [00:06:00] to improve your strengths and improve upon your weaknesses.
And in this journal, the attorney recorded everything that he had done correctly, that he felt went well, that he responded to appropriately. And then he made a separate list in this journal of all of the areas that he thought he could improve upon. Because chances are, that attorney is going to be in another trial, and then another trial, and then another trial.
And this is how he improved his skill sets quickly, rapidly, efficiently, and well. He went to his journal every single time he had another trial, or even a hearing, and wrote down, reflected on that for a moment, and wrote down what he did well, and what he could improve upon. And he sort of he shined a light on those weaknesses.
He also shined a light on those strengths. It’s important that we celebrate our wins. Whenever you have a win, you want to take a [00:07:00] moment and celebrate it. But you also want to look at those areas that you can improve upon. And that’s what this attorney was doing, especially after he found himself swimming around, splashing around, maybe drowning in the deep end when he learned that he was in a trial.
And this is what you’re gonna have to do as well, because you’re gonna find yourself thrown into the deep end over and over and over again as well. You need to be able to develop the skill sets that are gonna have. in those situations. You certainly don’t want to panic. You don’t want to betray your confidence and let anybody know that you are in an area that you’re not so sure about right now where you have resources.
You want to exploit those resources. Hopefully what you’ve done as you’ve begun in this law firm is you’ve begun your work. legal career. Maybe you’re a couple of years into it. Maybe you’re three, four or five years into it. Something like that. But you want to have already built strong relationships, not only with the [00:08:00] people in your own law firm, but people that are even outside of your law firm, maybe friends that you went through law school with that are practicing the same type of law or have a specialty that comes up sometimes in probate law, which is the area of the firm that I work in probate law.
There are several different areas that will come up from time to time. Maybe it’s real estate law, because a lot of times probate, there are real estate assets that are a part of a particular case. So there’s a lot of real estate law that will come up. And maybe you don’t know everything that you need to know about real estate law, but you have a friend or a contact or a colleague, somebody that is a in that field that you can contact.
And so that’s going to become a resource for you. Maybe there are other attorneys in your firm that do a lot of real estate related law associated with their cases. So you’re going to want to go and ask them about something that you’re dealing with in one of your cases. So you want to utilize [00:09:00] those resources.
Maybe you have a practice guide that you can go to. Maybe there are areas in the practice guide that come up over and over and over again, and you have those highlighted or underlined and you have notes written off to the side because something comes up over and over and over again in probate. Maybe there’s an 8 50 petition or whatever.
And so you have some notes that you want to be able to refer to over and over and over again in that practice guide. Again, you can always go to youtube if there’s something like a you’re trying to fill out or some area of the law that you’re not sure of. Remember, the law changes all the time, so you want to stay updated.
You want to have your finger on the pulse of those updates that are coming along and make sure that you are you’re following the law as it’s currently laid out because sometimes changes do come along. You want to be sensitive to those areas and you want to be sensitive to those changes and just know that.
From day to day, there may be enough things that changed or conditions have changed or goals have changed [00:10:00] that you’re going to want to be able to pivot. This, by the way, is what we mean by the practice of law becoming fun and that’s what this podcast is really all about. We want to point out those areas of practicing law so that it becomes a fun process for you so that you know that when you’re, for instance, in this case, in the deep end, if you find yourself in the deep end, you know, splashing around, you want to get calm.
You want to start to. Recognize you’re in the deep end. You want to start to swim as slowly as you possibly can, but you want to maintain your confidence and you want to later look at how you behaved in that situation when you found yourself. In the deep end once again, and you want to look at your strengths, you want to figure out how to make those even stronger and you want to highlight your weaknesses.
You want to shine a light on them. Believe me, you’re going to see your [00:11:00] weaknesses and so is everybody else. And you’re and by virtue of the same process, you’re going to see everybody else’s weaknesses as well. They’re just they’re things that really can’t be hidden. So Once you’ve been able to identify those weaknesses that you need to strengthen, the next question becomes, well, how do I strengthen my weaknesses?
And maybe that’s something we’ll do on another podcast, but basically it comes down to continuous education, improving a little bit every single day, a little bit at a time, even if it’s 1%, even if you’re improving 1 percent every day over time, that’s going to be a significant amount of improvement. So you want to be able to always have the idea of continuous education in your mind.
How can I get a little bit better? How can I get a little bit better? And how can I get a little bit better? There’s something in Japanese culture mostly it’s attributed to the automotive industry called Kaizen. And Kaizen are, they’re tiny, It’s the imperceptible little improvements that the [00:12:00] Japanese car manufacturing industry was making to their automobiles.
Just tiny little improvements. And over time they ended up making excellent vehicles. Vehicles that tend to not need a lot of maintenance such as Toyota or Honda. Those vehicles were produced and improved upon a tiny little bit at a time. Imperceptible amounts. And you want to think of your practice as an attorney and your ability to improve your skills in the same kind of way.
You want to make small, Little it sometimes imperceptible improvements a little at a time a little at a time a little at a time and that way eventually Soon enough if you’ve done not one trial that you’ve suddenly found yourself in but 20 trials Now you’re gonna see a remarkable difference and that’s when the law and practicing the law Starts to become fun I’m your host, Scott Benton, and this is the Classroom to Courtroom [00:13:00] podcast.
If you like what you’re hearing here, you can always go over to our website. Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two, courtroom. com. You can sign up for alerts.
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