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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hi 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 answer the question of, should every day have a win?
[00:00:25] Scott Benton: Should every day have a win?
[00:00:26] Scott Benton: [00:01:00] A win is something you achieved or you succeeded at, so here’s the short answer. Yes, absolutely, you should definitely have a win every single day. In fact, when you get good at this, when you get good at identifying and celebrating your wins, you’re going to see it’s practically impossible, if not totally impossible, to have at least one every single day.
[00:01:39] Scott Benton: And the truth is that even if you have the worst day possible, You’re also going to have multiple wins that you want to look at. You want to focus. You want to turn that camera lens so it’s focusing on those wins. because at the end of the day, that’s what helps maintain and build a happy work environment, which really is your goal here, especially when it comes [00:02:00] to wins.
[00:02:00] Scott Benton: You’re celebrating wins because you’re keeping yourself and the rest of the firm from digging into a deep hole. Wins will add positive energy to any environment, not just law firms, but anywhere else, even at your home. The wins keep you from going into any deep hole. dark holes that you otherwise might have the potential to go down, but don’t go down those.
[00:02:27] Scott Benton: The antidote to going down the deep dark hole is to always have an armful of wins that you’re celebrating, whether the wins are your own or they’re the wins of other people that are on your team. You want to look for them. You want to identify them. You definitely want to celebrate them. You can celebrate them in your staff meetings, you can celebrate them by having conversations with other attorneys, other staff members, talk about those wins, and talk about them frequently.
[00:02:56] Scott Benton: And once you’ve done that, you want to look out for more [00:03:00] wins and just repeat that process. You want to keep that positive energy going. Now you might think that, no, that’s not true. Completely impossible because today everything went completely sideways and I couldn’t identify a win if my life depended on it.
[00:03:14] Scott Benton: Or maybe you’re overwhelmed just with deadlines and workload, or you’re just you’re stuck on a case, which we should talk about. Now, if you’re stuck on a case, and we talk about this from time to time, if that happens and you’re just stuck, the first thing we want to do is take care of that inertia of just being still of not moving.
[00:03:32] Scott Benton: That’s when you’re stuck, and that’s when you’re sinking into the abyss. That’s the part that winds fix. That’s why you want to repeat them all the time. That’s why you want to identify them all the time. The rule that we have at the firm I work for is that you never want to let yourself twist in the wind for more than 10 minutes. So if you’re stuck on a case, let’s fix that problem right away. Just to get you moving again, which by the way, that’s naturally going to [00:04:00] increase your win rate immediately. Why is that? How come getting unstuck is going to improve your win rate?
[00:04:08] Scott Benton: Moving forward generates its own momentum of wins. It’s the momentum that you want. Because you’re getting stuff done now, which, that’s an important part of any law firm. It’s just getting things done. You want to get things done all the time that you’re working. You want to work all the time that you’re working.
[00:04:29] Scott Benton: You want to check items on your to do list that you have. You want to go and perform those legal services. And then, You want to bill your time, and you want to get paid, and remember that you’re selling time by providing legal service and you have a minimum amount of billable hours that you need to hit every single day. So if you’re stuck or if you find yourself digging further and further into the deep dark hole, then you need to turn that around very quickly.
[00:04:59] Scott Benton: [00:05:00] And you do that by contacting a colleague, or your senior attorney advisor, and you simply tell them that you’re stuck on a case, they will quickly get you unstuck very quickly. So don’t dig into that deep, dark abyss for too long, or at least recognize what you’re doing and that you are digging into that deep dark hole.
[00:05:22] Scott Benton: And you want to go talk to a colleague or an attorney that they’re going to help you climb out of that. They’re going to at least help you stop digging. And sort of figure out what you need to do to climb out of that deep, dark space that you’re in. Once you climb out of it, you get back onto the superhighway of providing legal services, and you’re back on track again.
[00:05:40] Scott Benton: So now you’re unstuck, and you’re pushing forward, and you’re checking off to do list items, and you’re picking up more and more momentum. And now, without even thinking about it, you’ve got several wins. Even if you’re having the worst day imaginable. So yes, in this case, you’re going to have wins because you’re going to be writing status [00:06:00] updates.
[00:06:00] Scott Benton: For example, you’re going to be filing documents with the court. You’re going to be responding to opposing counsels on your various cases and all of those become wins. Those are wins that you’re going to celebrate. Remember, you’re going to have an armful of wins, even if you’re having a bad day.
[00:06:17] Scott Benton: They keep you from falling into that dark hole once again that you want to be conscious of staying out of and making sure that you and the firm stays out of that place. You want to focus on your wins, focus on the wins of others that are in your firm, and you want to celebrate all of them to keep that positive energy, that positive momentum going.
[00:06:38] Scott Benton: Also, keep in mind the definition of what a win is. Sure wins can be these giant victories where you succeed in getting a judgment for a multimillion dollar case, but those aren’t the only wins out there. Big wins are great to have and they’re great to celebrate, and you definitely do wanna do that when they come along.
[00:06:58] Scott Benton: But you’re going to have [00:07:00] many smaller wins, much, much smaller, even thousands of them. You’re going to have those along the way every single day that you also want to acknowledge and you want to add all of those to the win list. It might be in the form of a new process you learned or maybe you’re using a case strategy now that you haven’t used before.
[00:07:21] Scott Benton: Maybe you possibly, I don’t know, you closed a new client or you’re helping a colleague with a case that was successful. These all qualify as wins. These all need to be celebrated. Now, lastly, and hypothetically, even if you’re having a day where And this is just for the sake of the conversation we’re having here.
[00:07:41] Scott Benton: If you’re having a day where absolutely every single thing imaginable goes wrong, and let’s say your car broke down, and because of it you lost five clients in a row, because you didn’t return their calls, you found other firms, and then you ripped the arm of your favorite suit jacket, and you got to, you got a court [00:08:00] decision maybe that came in, and it’s your biggest case, and the decision wasn’t in your favor, There’s a million other little things that probably contributed to that very bad day.
[00:08:08] Scott Benton: But remember this, remember that each and every one of those events, those negative events, can be turned into a win. Every setback or failure that you experience or every mistake you make are incredibly valuable wins. If you decide to learn the lessons that they teach you. So it can be advantageous for you to not only celebrate wins, but also to celebrate the failures and celebrate the failures in terms of learning the lesson that they teach you.
[00:08:43] Scott Benton: And in fact, if you ask the most seasoned attorneys that are out there, how they got so good at practicing law, a lot of times they’re really good. 100 percent of the time, they’re going to tell you it was because of the mistakes they made along the way. Hands down. So without [00:09:00] celebrating those mistakes, they likely would have not gotten as far as they did, and frankly, neither will you.
[00:09:06] Scott Benton: So I hope that’s a helpful discussion about the reason why you should celebrate wins every single day. I’m Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. Now if this is material that you like and you want to get a, an alert every time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website.
[00:09:23] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two. Courtroom. com, you can leave us your contact information. You will get an alert whenever we put out a new episode. And if this is material that you like, you can always share, like, and subscribe. That’ll also help you stay on top 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.
[00:09:45] Scott Benton: Thank you so much.
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