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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I am 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 look at the idea of bulletproofing the law.
[00:00:25] Scott Benton: Your legal career. What do we start looking at when we’re bulletproofing our career? What do we even mean by that?
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[00:01:20] Scott Benton: Now, when you look at economics, and specifically macroeconomics, and that’s where you’re looking at the big picture instead of up close like a microscope when you’re studying microeconomics.
[00:01:32] Scott Benton: Macroeconomics is the most broad, general sense. It’s the economy is going to go through cycles. Where it moves from good to bad, or from prosperity to recession, or even depression, where economic and financial struggles become so widespread that they have an effect on just about everyone. Now, economic cycles, in the event that you haven’t studied economics, economic cycles, are normal and they [00:02:00] happen naturally.
[00:02:00] Scott Benton: Although sometimes the peaks and the valleys are much more severe than at other times. So there’s really no guaranteed consistency in their intensity or their duration. But we do know that there are these up and down economic cycles that do happen, and they’re watched very closely by economists, by governments, by investors, by Wall Street, by just about anybody.
[00:02:25] Scott Benton: Now, during that cycle, that wave, that up and down peaks and valleys cycle, What good would it be if you could only work during the prosperous times and then you have to wait out the dips or the down times and then jump back in when the economy improves and becomes prosperous again? How do you ensure that you bulletproof yourself whatever direction the economic indicators go?
[00:02:51] Scott Benton: And taking a look back at nearly a hundred years ago during the Great Depression, what did people do back then? who [00:03:00] remained successful during one of the most difficult economic periods in our history. What can we learn from those who went through the Great Depression, for instance, and how can that help you today to make sure you sustain your legal career without interruption?
[00:03:15] Scott Benton: Now, for context, if measured peak to peak on the Dow Jones Industrial Index, The Great Depression lasted 25 years, so from 1929 to 1954. That’s how long it took for the stock market to recover from the top of the index in 1929 before it dropped. And until it reached that same level once again, it would be unrealistic in that case for anybody to wait out 25 years before getting back into their career and getting on track once again.
[00:03:49] Scott Benton: They’d simply have to pivot somehow or do something different just to survive, just to make ends meet, let alone thrive. Now you as an attorney, [00:04:00] we want to make sure that you’re going to thrive. You want to bulletproof your career so that not only are you surviving, not only are you meeting your financial obligations, but that you’re also doing it well and that you’re prosperous.
[00:04:14] Scott Benton: So during the time of the great depression, the people that were the most successful They were those who were focused on developing their skills, who continually developed those skills, and they did that as much as possible. They did everything they could to become the very best at what they did. So this becomes a vital piece of information as you progress through your own career as an attorney in the legal environment.
[00:04:42] Scott Benton: In the worst case scenario, What can you do to make sure that you don’t experience any setbacks when the overall economy experiences a downturn? What can you do to ensure that you always have legal work to do and clients to serve? Now, what if I told you that there [00:05:00] was this insurance policy? I’m making this up, but what if I told you there’s this insurance policy that you could purchase, and it would practically guarantee that when choppy economic conditions materialized, that you’d largely be unaffected by them?
[00:05:16] Scott Benton: and that maybe with a few adjustments you would likely weather any economic storms that came along. Now is that an insurance policy that you would sign up for and pretty much pay whatever the price was? For most people the answer would be undeniably yes they would sign up for that insurance policy.
[00:05:35] Scott Benton: Just like our friends who were successful in the Great Depression who continually developed and improved upon their skills, you too. can join them in that very same mindset, especially when you are not facing economic turbulence. You too can turn your attention on developing and proving and upgrading your own skill sets.
[00:05:56] Scott Benton: You can do everything possible to become the very best [00:06:00] attorney you can, especially because your opportunities to improve one or more or even several of these areas, that it’s almost limitless.
[00:06:08] Scott Benton: The good news is that a lot of this training is going to be found in your CLE classes And those are going to go towards your CLE requirements. Now sometimes those courses are going to be covered by the law firm that you work for. So you want to find out if those costs are covered. And if they are, take advantage of it.
[00:06:27] Scott Benton: Take advantage of attending the CLE classes in areas that are especially of interest to you. You want to attend workshops. You want to attend lectures. You want to audiobooks. Anything! That’s going to give you something of value that you can use in your legal career. Now, if you’re constantly improving your ability to practice law as an attorney, and you’re learning how to become more effective and more efficient in all areas of your work, you’re also going to start to notice something that will indirectly give you a massive advantage over a lot of [00:07:00] people in the legal community.
[00:07:01] Scott Benton: And that is that you’re going to see that a lot of people are not doing this.
[00:07:06] Scott Benton: Not a lot of people are intensely focused on improving their own skills or becoming lifelong students or continuously developing themselves as an attorney. If you embrace this Let’s call it this insurance policy yourself. You’re going to see tremendous progress is measured against the statistical norms that are out there in the legal community.
[00:07:27] Scott Benton: So I hope that’s a useful idea to help bulletproof your legal career and one that you can implement. If you do, I think you’re not going to believe how quickly you’re going to find yourself moving forward. So I hope you’ll pursue some kind of Idea that’s going to help you continuously improve your skills as an attorney if only to prove it to yourself So I hope that’s helpful.
[00:07:48] Scott Benton: I’m Scott Benton. I’m the host of the classroom 2 courtroom podcast Thank you so much for listening to this episode Now if you like this podcast and you’d like to get notified whenever we put out a new episode You can go to our website. Our website is [00:08:00] classroom 2 courtroom comm there. You can leave us your contact information We’ll send you out a notification whenever we put out a new episode
[00:08:07] Scott Benton: and if you do like this material, don’t forget to share and subscribe. If you’d like to stay on top of all of our newest episodes that way. And until next time, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place one client at a time. Thank you so much.
