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Scott Benton: Hi, everyone. It’s Scott Benton, I’m the host of the Classroom to Courtroom podcast. How are you? This is a podcast where we are talking about the transition from going from law school into your professional career into a law firm, going from the classroom to the courtroom, so to speak. And everything that it takes in between those two stages, something that we believe law schools don’t teach you.
And it’s something that law firms really aren’t in the business of teaching you.
Scott Benton: You need to be able to show up already knowing how to practice law and it’s one of those things where, there’s this term called a Catch-22 that you’re probably in. If you’re not familiar with a Catch-22, there’s a movie called, Catch-22 and a book that you can go watch or read. But basically, it’s one of those things where, for instance, a company’s not going to hire [00:01:00] you unless you have experience, but how can you get experience if a company’s not going to hire you? And so, it’s a problem that you’re going to have that you’re going to need to solve one way or another.
In this case, how are you going to solve your Catch-22 dilemma that you’re in when you’ve just graduated law school? You’ve passed the bar, you have your ticket as a practicing attorney but you’ve never worked as an attorney before. And one of the issues that you’re going to confront is, how exactly to practice as an attorney? How are you going to practice as an attorney, given that you’ve never actually done that before. Or Maybe you’ve been a clerk at a law firm or you’ve been a summer associate somewhere but you haven’t really been given a stack of cases for what you’re responsible for because you’re not an attorney, generally in those situations.
You’re working for an attorney who is providing you with case tasks that you then go and do the research [00:02:00] for. Maybe you’re writing letters or you’re looking up some laws that will help that attorney prepare for his case. Maybe he’s got a trial coming up or something like that. And you’re helping the attorney with the trial.
But, there is going to come a point where you’re the attorney. That’s what this is all for, right? You’re going to law school, you’re studying for the bar, you’re passing the bar and now you are applying for jobs in law firms. Now, there’s a thing that happens a lot of times when people who are looking for their next legal job or their first time position as an attorney is, they go into these interviews and they’ll say to the interviewer that, I need training. That comes up all of the time. And the truth is that you need to know how to practice as an attorney before you get that first job. But, in that Catch-22 scenario, you don’t necessarily have that experience. No one’s really taught that to you before, so we need to know how to go and get that information.
One of the things, of course, you can do is, watch or [00:03:00] listen to the Classroom to Courtroom podcast, which is the very reason that we’re putting together this body of material in the first place. We want to arm you to the teeth as well as we can so that you can go into your legal career as you transition from being a law student to a legal professional.
So, one of the tools that we want to give you that you’re going to hear about on this show over and over and over again. In fact, it’s built entirely on this concept that I’m about to tell you. This whole show is exploring something that we call, The Success Cycle. Now, law schools are busy trying to convince you that practicing law is a very difficult thing to do. It’s very hard to practice law as an attorney but the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast is taking the flip side of that. And we’re telling you that not only is it easy but it’s also fun Practicing as an attorney, it should be fun. And if you’re doing it correctly, you’re doing it well and you have the tools that this podcast is going to [00:04:00] provide to you. You’re going to find that your days are going to fly by, that it’s going to be fun, almost adventure every single day that you show up to the office. And one of those tools that you will hear on this podcast discussed over and over and over again, either in its entirety or in its entirety. component parts is The Success Cycle.
Now, what is The Success Cycle? It is a three part process that you are going to use that sort of overlays every single activity that you do on a case as you are working on cases as an attorney. Now, you’re obviously going to do this as well. If you’re a law clerk, if you haven’t gotten your bar results back yet or maybe you’re doing a summer internship or something like that. But basically, there are three parts to the work that you’re doing and it is contained in The Success Cycle. And the three parts of The Success Cycle are this.
You’re going to make your To-Do List, first and foremost. That’s the most important thing, you need to look at your case and you need to decide where the case is [00:05:00] in its process. You need to know what the objectives of the case are and why you need to do the work that you need to do. Okay. When you’ve determined that, when you’ve read through the case notes and you understand all of those pieces of the case and where it is? Where it’s going? Why it’s going there? What the objectives are? What sort of the legal goals are that the client is hiring you for? At that point, you know where that case is and you know the next steps, probably the next few steps.
Those steps need to be put down on your To-Do List for that case. Now each case is going to get its own To-Do List. You could even say, each case is going to get its own Success Cycle. On your To-Do List for this case, you’re going to put down those items that are the next steps that need to be taken. Now, you’re going to move on to the second part of The Success Cycle. So the first part is the To-Do List. The second part is, Getting It Done. You’re going to do the work that you’ve listed out on your To-Do List and you’re going to complete [00:06:00] those assignments. You’re going to complete those tasks. So now, instead of case review and writing down those items that need to be completed. You are now completing those items and you’re generally running a clock on those. You’re generally spending time on those individual items until they are completed. You’re focusing on them until they’re done and you’re able to check them off your checklist, your To-Do List. Those items that you’re completing are what you’re going to now use, once they’re done to go into the third part of The Success Cycle, the third and final part of The Success Cycle.
And that is, you want to Bill For Your Time. You want to Bill For Your Time and ultimately you want to get paid for that time and you want to do this right away. You don’t want to wait till the end of the week to go back and figure out what all the tasks were that you completed and bill for those tasks at end of the week. You want to do it immediately. You want to do it [00:07:00] right away. So, you want to complete a task, that’s step number two of The Success Cycle. You made your To-Do List, that was step number one. You completed those items on your To-Do List, that’s step number two. And now step number three is, you want to Bill For It.
So, you finish a task and you immediately go into MyCase or whatever platform your firm is using. In order to bill clients and record time and you’re going to go into MyCase, for instance and you’re going to record the time for the tasks that you just completed. Okay? So that’s it, that’s the whole thing, it’s very simplified. The Success Cycle is going to speed up your efficiency. It’s going to make you good at what you do. Because, once you’ve built for that time and you’ve learned how to write your time entries and that’s a whole other level. podcast subject that we’re going to get into at a later time. How to write your billing entries so that your clients understand them.
There are essentially two. There’s Block Billing, which is you lump it all together but you don’t want to do that. You want to stay away [00:08:00] from Block Billing. You want to do it this way because this way helps you list out your billing on the individual items that you’ve completed that have come from your checklist. You want to go in and you want to bill the client for those activities that you’ve completed, those legal services that you’ve completed. delivered to them. And then here’s the key, you want to start over again, okay? So it’s just, 1, 2, 3 and start at 1. 1, 2, 3, start at 1. And you’re gonna repeat that ad infinitum. You’re just gonna do that over and over and over again. For days and weeks and months and years and throughout your entire career.
This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to put your To-Do List together for that case. You’re going to perform the services for that case and you’re going to bill for those services that you performed and get paid by the client. And then just repeat over and over and over again. This way, when you’ve graduated law school and you’ve completed the bar and you now have your full attorney ticket so that you are licensed to practice law, you have interviewed with [00:09:00] several different companies, you have not once gone to them and said, that you will require training.
I mean, They know that you’re going to require training. They already have that assumption. It doesn’t need to be stated because, every law firm has its own systems. A business, remember, is just a system of systems. So you need to learn those systems and from law firm to law firm, those systems are going to be vastly, vastly different. So yes, they’re going to provide you training. That’s a given. You don’t need to make that statement and you don’t need to feel like, because it’s your first attorney job that you’re not going to know how to work as an attorney. Yes, you didn’t get trained and how to do that during law school or while you were training for the bar.
Your expectation might be that, the law firm is going to train you how to do that. But the law firm’s expectation is that, you’re already going to know how to do that because, their goal is not to teach you how to practice law. Their goal is to render high quality legal services to the clients that have hired [00:10:00] them. And you need to be able to show up in those interviews and show up at that job and have that firm know that you’re going to help them with their problem.
Their problem that they’re trying to solve is, having people come in to deliver those high quality legal services and that’s exactly what you’re going to do. And how are you going to do it? You’re going to do it with them. The Success Cycle. Very, Very simple, it’s going to make your job fun and enjoyable and it’s going to make you efficient. It’s going to make you get up to speed very, very quickly. Because, what are you going to do? You’re going to do three steps. You’re going to do number one, you’re going to get your case, you’re going to figure out where the case is and you’re going to put together your To-Do List. Once your To-Do List is done, you’re going to start to deliver those legal services.
You’re going to complete those items on your To-Do List. And as those items are finished, you’re going to go over to MyCase or whatever billing platform the firm has set up for you and you’re going to record your time. You’re going to record your time, so that time is then billed to that client and then that client makes that [00:11:00] payment or it comes out of their trust fund or however it’s set up. And then you’re going to go back to The Success Cycle and start all over again. And either on the same case, you’re going to go back and there’s either more to do items left on your To-Do List that you’re going to start to do or you’re going to move to another case. And that case is going to have its own To-Do List, its own success cycle, its own, time to have services rendered for that particular case for which you then bill the client to and get paid and start all over again.
And if you have 20 cases or 30 cases or 40 cases or whatever it is, you’re simply delivering and rendering those legal services, going back to your To-Do List, doing those next items on the list or going to the next case, figuring out what needs to be done on that case, delivering those legal services, billing for those legal services, and going back to one. So it’s very, very simple, very simplified. We’re going to talk a lot about The Success Cycle. As I stated, this entire podcast is going to be about The [00:12:00] Success Cycle. Now, even though it’s simple, even though that’s a simplified way of doing your work as an attorney, inside of each of those steps are many, many nuances.
And that’s exactly what these podcast episodes on Classroom to Courtroom are going to discuss. They’re going to talk about some nuance or some variation of those three steps. Sometimes, it’s going to be a broad overview of just practicing law, sort of a 30,000 foot view of The Success Cycle, that kind of thing.
But for the most part, we’re going to go deep down the rabbit hole on each of these steps and we’re going to discuss every little component that we can possibly discuss. Where it comes to To-Do Lists, performing your tasks as an attorney and delivering and rendering high quality legal services and then billing for those services.
So that is the entire scope, so to speak, of the Classroom to Courtroom podcast. And I hope that this has been helpful. I’m your host, Scott Benton on Classroom to [00:13:00] Courtroom and if you would like to be alerted every single time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website. Our website is ClassRoom2CourtRoom.com. That’s Classroom, the number 2, Courtroom.com. You can sign up for our alerts when we put out a new episode. You’re going to get an email or an alert that is going to tell you a new episode is available. We hope you enjoy these, we enjoy putting them together. For us, this is fun. We hope that our enthusiasm for the practice of law is going to transfer from us to you as you understand that it’s not quite as complicated as law school likes to make it seem.
It is a very interesting field that you’ve decided to get into and there are ways to make it complicated, which we hope to eliminate. And there are ways to make it fun. And we are going to make this a fun process for you. And we know that The Success Cycle is your entire key to making this fun and engaging and something that you’re going to look [00:14:00] forward to coming back to every single day.
So don’t forget to share, like and subscribe. And we hope you’ll join us next time on our next episode of Classroom to Courtroom. And in the meantime, we hope that you’ll join us for making the world a better place. One client at a time. Thanks so much, take care.
