Celebrating Wins and Walking the Walk

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Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast, where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney, and where we make the practice of law fun. Now today, we’re going to take a quick, impromptu look at celebrating wins and walking the walk.

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Scott Benton: Today, in order to help assist your overall use of law, of the success cycle, which is largely what we talk about on this podcast in order to help you better understand the actual practice of law, which of course is a subject that is not taught in law school. We’re going to take an impromptu look at celebrating wins and walking the walk. Today’s gonna be a little bit different from the previous podcast episodes that I’ve recorded, because this one’s not written. Now, this episode is episode 150, which is a landmark episode that I really wanted to celebrate.

Now, notice that I didn’t wait until episode 200 to celebrate an achievement, but I’m celebrating in the middle, so to speak. Between 100 and 200 at 150, which [00:02:00] is a milestone that is usually not celebrated. But on this particular podcast episode, it is going to get celebrated. And the reason that it’s going to get celebrated is because I want to show you that not only do we talk about celebrating wins on this podcast, and we talk about that.

as being an important component to the practice of law, but that we as the podcast producers also exercise the same advice that we dish out. So celebrating wins is is something that continues to be important. It’s something that we talk about on the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. And it’s something that we also do as well.

So here we are celebrating 150 episodes.

One thing I wanted to do was talk about what I’ve learned after making 150 of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast episodes. And one thing that I learned is that you don’t really find your voice right away. It takes a long time, and in many ways, I still haven’t found my voice for this podcast.

I think I have found it [00:03:00] more than I had it during the first few episodes of Classroom 2 Courtrooms. podcast, but I can tell that I still have a long way to go. I can still tell that I’m looking for that particular angle or that particular voice or that particular, let’s call it a persona that I’m presenting every time I show up on one of these episodes and

so where that lines up with your work as an attorney, I think what you might find is that when you begin working as attorney, when you start your first day on the job as an attorney, you might probably not have found your attorney voice yet. In fact, it may take some time before you do. In some cases, it might take years.

before you really find that attorney’s voice. I know on this podcast, being the host of Classroom 2 Courtroom, that I’m still in search of what that voice is going to sound like. I’ve found pieces of it. I have found parts of the puzzle, but I haven’t really formed a clear picture of it. And you’re probably going to [00:04:00] find the same dynamic going on as you begin your own law practice.

Two, three, four years down the line, you’re probably going to sound a little. differently than you did in the first couple of weeks is working as an attorney. And that’s just something that happens with everything we do. When we begin a new adventure of some kind, we haven’t quite found our voice, but once we get into it, we get further established.

Then our voice begins to really materialize Now, considering that this entire podcast is focused around our success cycle model, which is what we talk about in every single episode. I’ve learned that I’ve been able to put together 150 episodes, essentially about three stages. Because if you look at the success cycle model, there’s really only three parts of it.

And that is what we call the G sheets, which stands for get it done, or that translates into the to do list. So G sheets equals to do list. So the first portion of the success [00:05:00] cycle is you’ll see in our model, on our graphic where it says G sheets, that is just another word for to do list.

The second part of the success cycle model is to perform the legal services, to actually take what’s on that G sheet or on that to do list, take one of those tasks and perform it. So you’re going to set your timer, get your timer going. You’re going to perform that task. And then that’s going to move you into the third portion of the success cycle model, which is to bill for your time.

You’re going to bill for your time. You’re going to get paid. And then you’re essentially going to circle back to the first portion, which is to go back to your to do list. Again, there’s three portions of the success cycle model, and we’ve been able to record 150 episodes talking about those three stages.

Now, another thing that I’ve discovered that in those 150 stages is there can tend to be a lot of repetition. Even in this podcast episode, I’m repeating [00:06:00] things that have appeared in many other podcast episodes, such as describing the success cycle models I just did. But I’ve also learned that repetition is okay, because That’s how we learn a new subject.

We learn just through repetition. Hearing it over and over again is really going to inform everything that we do as we go back to our lives after listening to maybe this episode, as we go back to our work and we start in on our process of. Completing legal tasks. Hearing an idea over and over again really starts to bounce around in your mind, and it begins to subtly adjust how you do your work.

Repetition in the sense of creating 150 episodes, Is going to actually in the long run be very helpful to you because you’re going to hear me saying the same things over and over again. Now, that’s not to say that the success cycle model doesn’t have depth. It does have depth. In fact, as I’m discovering, it has [00:07:00] infinite depth.

depth because we can talk about a very simple model of three pieces with 150 episodes. And I don’t even feel like we’ve gotten really started. Now, if you would have told me that I would have crossed 150 episodes of the classroom, the courtroom podcast a few months ago, I don’t think I would have been able to have seen that visualized so well.

But. Nonetheless, here I am. So it’s possible, but you just have to keep going. And I think with your own legal work, especially by the way, especially when you’re just getting started, things are going to feel probably a little bit overwhelmed. You’re learning new systems in a law firm.

Each law firm has its own system. So you’re learning those new systems in terms of. how work gets done just on a day by day basis. So not only do you have to learn the practice that you’ve gone into, and that alone is going to be an enormous amount of work and take an enormous amount of time, but you also have to learn every single [00:08:00] system that firm has.

And what I mean by that is they’re going to have certain ways of accessing past cases. On their drive or they’re going to have they’re going to use a different legal platforms such as Westlaw, or they’re going to, have a different way that. Billing gets done and they’re going to have billing entries that are done a certain way.

And the copier is going to work differently from another company because it’s a completely different copier line. There’s so many details in any one given firm that are just going to be different from firm to firm that you need to learn that particular system of systems. So let’s say you did some work as a summer associate, for instance, or you became a law clerk and you worked at another firm.

Chances are pretty good that going into a new firm means that you’re going to have to learn a whole new set of systems.

So when you start your job, you’re not going to really necessarily be able to visualize all of the [00:09:00] efficiencies that you’re going to realize in a few months time. In a few months, you’re going to understand all the systems, you’re going to understand how that particular firm is practicing, and you’re going to really be able to become a lot more efficient, let’s say in 3, months than you were in 3, weeks.

So keep that in mind when things get tough for you, when it seems like you’re under a lot of pressure, just keep going. That’s what I did with this podcast and we accomplished 150 episodes. Okay. Now, what does 150 episodes of this podcast tell us about the success cycle? It tells us that something that looks very easy where there are only three portions of the entire success cycle, which appears to be simple enough, is actually very complex.

And that there are many different facets and areas that we really need to study. There are little crannies and nooks and little narrow hallways. We’ve got to go down to really start to dig down into the [00:10:00] subject. Now, practicing law is going to have the same kind of dynamic for you.

Even the same kind of case or the same kind of situation with your client that you’re dealing with. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to require the same kind of legal services, and of course, each case is going to have to be evaluated independently.

As I’m recording this episode, so far we’ve been publishing our podcast episodes for only about a couple of months now, maybe not even quite a couple of months. And while I see that impressions and viewership are growing, On all the many different platforms that we’re appearing on. I’m really hoping that the goal of teaching law school students, the how part of practicing law has started to get a little bit of traction.

The idea for this podcast was to fill a void that we noticed between law school and new attorneys starting their first job. We saw that there was this idea that you graduated law school and you passed the bar. And that just automatically [00:11:00] meant that you knew how to practice law. What we found is that nothing could be from the truth.

And while law schools are essentially telling their law school students that they’ll learn how to practice law once they join a firm, the reality really is that when new attorneys join a firm and they’re in their first attorney, job firms already really expect you to understand and know how to practice law.

But if no one’s taught that to you, then. It’s going to be virtually impossible for you to be efficient at that right away. It’s going to take some time, and so it puts the firms in a position, just because they have to teach you how to practice law, which, as you can see, there are a lot of pieces.

We’ve recorded 150 episodes, so there’s a lot of information that goes into the practice of practicing law. And wouldn’t it be nice if there was a source that of information that you could consume, such as a podcast that included 150 episodes that we’re celebrating today, so that you could [00:12:00] really hopefully pick up on all of those nuances and all of those little areas that require you to understand so that you can work your way through the success cycle model and really be good at the practice of law.

What if you could show up on your at a new law firm as an attorney already knowing how to practice law. And that’s what we are hoping with this particular podcast, that it will fill that gap that’s just been left there all this time. And chances are you really don’t know how to practice law, unless maybe your parents or someone in your family had a law firm that you worked at, or somebody taught you how to do that.

which is really the exception more than it is the rule. Most people don’t have an opportunity like that. Then you’re going to show up really not understanding how to practice law. And this podcast is an area where we thought we could solve that problem.

So today we’re celebrating this win. We’ve recorded 150 episodes of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast, and we’re looking forward to [00:13:00] recording 150 more.

So reaching milestones like this one and celebrating them really helps to build up the confidence and it helps you to keep going and to keep getting better and better.

For your legal work, this is exactly why you want to celebrate your wins, your small wins, your big ones. It doesn’t really matter. It’s more about consistency. You want to consistently celebrate your wins because it gives you that extra psychological push that you really need to keep getting better and better at your practice and at your craft in the legal services arena and practicing law can really be a craft at the end of the day.

So as you get into your own work as an attorney, you really want to remember the importance of stopping somewhere along the way and really recognizing your wins. You want to stop and you want to remember everything that you’ve accomplished because when you’re working so hard as an attorney, a lot of times your mindset is very much focused on just doing the next thing, completing it, doing the next thing, completing it.

A lot [00:14:00] of times when you’re working as an attorney, you’re under a lot of pressure. You have many cases that you’re working on. You might feel like you just can’t keep up. That’s why you want to put together a to do list and work from that to do list to accomplish your legal services. But you really want to take time to just stop along the way and recognize all of your achievements.

And even if they’re not achievements, let’s say that something went wrong that You really want to stop and recognize what went wrong. And we talk about this as well on this podcast, because a lot of times the best lessons that you learn are lessons that you learn from the mistakes that you make.

If you talk to older attorneys, people that have been around for, A decade or two or longer. A lot of times if you ask them how they became so good at practicing law, they’re going to tell you they became good at practicing law because of all the mistakes they made. So not only is it important to celebrate your wins, but it’s also important to celebrate your mistakes.

If you want to call them mistakes, your losses, your mistakes, things [00:15:00] that didn’t really go well for you because when you celebrate those mistakes, you also stop and you reflect on them and you pull out the lessons because in every setback, there’s an opportunity. And if you don’t learn the lesson that setback taught you.

Then your chances are you’re just going to keep making the same mistake over and over again. You’re not going to grow as an attorney and that’s your job. Your job is to come here, listen to these podcast episodes, get your job as an attorney, start working in your practice and getting better and better every single day.

Some attorneys talk about getting better just by 1 percent a day, which is an imperceptible amount of improvement. And there’s a great book by Darren Hardy called the compound effect that is very much worth reading. I mentioned it on this.

podcast

all the time. It’s a book you should really pick up and and muscle your way through because it talks about taking very small incremental improvements and how over time, that’s really what gives you just an enormous boost and an [00:16:00] enormous increase in the quality of your work, your feedback.

Efficiency, everything across the board. So you want to make sure that you have a mindset that is a growth mindset and that you’re growing even at an imperceptible rate of 1 percent per day over time, that’s really going to add up for you. Now, even if this more improvised episode is a failure, just a complete mess and a dumpster fire, then at least it’s going to get me to the next step after I look at what went wrong and what’s not working and make the appropriate corrections.

Once I learn from the mistake, it’s going to help me. grow. It’s going to help get me to the next step. It’s going to help improve the overall quality of these podcasts. So even if this podcast is a little bit clunky, even if I’m going off track or it doesn’t sound right, or I’m stumbling over my words or whatever it is, then I can look at that.

I can Take a look at the 30, 000 foot view and say, okay, this didn’t work. This didn’t work. This worked well, so I’m going to keep that. But over here, I’m going to make these particular changes. [00:17:00] And as an attorney, that, of course, is something that you’re going to want to do as well with your own work.

So if you, let’s say, do a deposition, you’ve never done a deposition before. Then after the deposition, you can evaluate your performance overall. You can see that you didn’t do enough prep maybe, or you asked the wrong types of questions, or you missed a critical piece of evidence and getting the background on that piece of evidence or something, because you felt like.

you’re one the spot maybe. Or you were in the spotlight and you froze up a little bit. So the next question becomes, how do you not freeze up when you’re in the spotlight? And that’s an, and that’s an important piece of information for you to have because you’re going to be in plenty of situations where you’re in the spotlight, especially if you’re a litigator.

If you’re a litigator, then You’re in hearings all the time. You’re in front of a judge. You might be in front of a jury, just depending on the nature of the case, and it becomes very important that you don’t freeze up when you’re speaking in front of all those people. You hear that thing about public speaking all the time that’s what people fear the most.

I don’t actually [00:18:00] believe that, by the way, but You can practice your public speaking skills. You can get better and better at your public speaking skills. If you have to, you can take public speaking classes. You can read books, you can listen to audio books. You can go to Toastmasters where you it’s like a speech club.

You can go and practice your speaking until you get really good at it. And until you get really comfortable in front of a crowd. But that’s not going to come around until you really fail in front of a crowd, whether it’s a small crowd or a big crowd or whatever it is. As long as you’re reflecting upon your performances, I’m going to reflect upon my performance here on this particular 150th episode of this podcast, then it’s going to allow you to take the next step.

So I’m going to, I’m going to take a look at the next steps that I need to focus on for this podcast. And I’m hoping that as you begin your career as an attorney, that you’ll be doing the same thing with really everything that you’re doing in terms of filing motions or working with paralegals or talking to your clients or talking [00:19:00] to opposing counsel or judges or court clerks or whoever it is that you’re talking to and interacting with, that you’ll take a look at those interactions.

You’ll take a look at those, let’s call them performances and you’ll make any adjustments that are necessary. So I hope these Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast episodes are really teaching you or helping you to learn everything you need to know about the practice of law for when you start your first job as an attorney, or maybe you’ve already started your first job as an attorney and you’re finding it to be a little rough, a little clunky.

This podcast will help take care of that. It will before you begin to, make a lot of progress. Bye. Bad habits and have those lock in. And that becomes really hard to change. You can simply listen to these podcast episodes and learn the success cycle model and start to implement that in your practice.

And you’re going to see that will alone make your. Practice a lot more efficient. You’ll be able to go faster. You’ll cut through a lot of the unnecessary clutter of practicing law. You’ll learn how to do billing entries more effectively, and your day is just going to be a lot more fun, and it’s going to go by [00:20:00] a lot more quickly, and you’re going to enjoy your evenings and your weekends.

So If for that alone, it’s worth listening to this podcast, but I hope these have been instructional for you. I hope they’ve been enjoyable. I hope you’ve been able to share these with others that you think could benefit from this. Maybe colleagues that you’re in law school with or other friends that you know who are attorneys, maybe new attorneys, or they’ve been maybe practicing for only a couple of years.

Hopefully these episodes help you achieve an upwards trajectory on your career and that you’re not wasting a lot of time trying to, by, trial and error, figure out how to master the practice of law. I’m Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for checking out this episode and helping me to celebrate my win of completing 150 of these podcast episodes. Now, if you like this podcast and you’d like to get more information about us, you can always go to our website at classroom2courtroom.

com. That’s classroom, the number two [00:21:00] courtroom. com where you can send us a message simply to keep in touch with us. Or you can even inquire about our seasonal associate programs that we have available for law school students. If you want, you can come and work with us. And as always, don’t forget to share and subscribe to stay on top of all of our newest episodes.

And until next time, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place. One client at a time.