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[00:00:07] 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 look at when you’re in trial, and I know you might be far away from that day, but It’s going to come up at some point, especially if you’re going to become a litigator.
[00:00:29] Scott Benton: When you’re in trial, you’re going to be dealing with something called the trial fear timeline. The trial fear timeline. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that.
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[00:01:27] Scott Benton: In other words, how long does it take before the fear of going into a trial finally goes away?
[00:01:33] Scott Benton: As a litigation attorney, when you get to your first trial, what we hear from many litigation attorneys who have gone before you are stories of the fear that they’ve experienced. And things like not sleeping the night before, finding themselves in a high level of anxiety once they get to the courtroom and they’re in front of a judge and the trial begins.
[00:01:53] Scott Benton: These stories generally share many of the same characteristics about going through a period of extreme [00:02:00] fear. Now no matter what you do to prepare for a trial, if you haven’t been through one yet, it’s fair to say this is probably going to be a more difficult environment for you to navigate. For the one simple reason that you just haven’t done it before.
[00:02:13] Scott Benton: Now, I’m talking about being a lead attorney here or representing a client in court. I’m not talking about sitting in the second chair and letting another attorney do all the heavy lifting. This is where you’re doing all the heavy lifting. It’s one thing to see a trial done on television, or in the movies, or if you read about it in a thriller novel.
[00:02:32] Scott Benton: Even if that was an accurate representation, and it’s not, it’s quite different when you’re the one who’s actually sitting in the courtroom with a judge and the courtroom staff. Maybe you’re worried about making sure you know how to do everything properly, or maybe you’re just worried about saying something you probably shouldn’t have said.
[00:02:52] Scott Benton: All of those concerns are perfectly normal, and they’re thoughts that most attorneys probably have when they’re going into their first trial. [00:03:00] So those concerns that you’re having about going into a trial, are fair to have. They’re fair because I would say most people have them. But then you finish your first trial, something you feel is a huge accomplishment, and it is, you definitely want to celebrate that milestone. You get a calendar date for your second trial that’s coming up.
[00:03:19] Scott Benton: And when it does, you find out you have the exact same fears going into the second trial as you had when you went into the first trial. How can that be? Then the fear for the third trial is the same and even the fourth trial. So you might start to ask yourself When does all this trial fear finally go away? What is the timeline for when I can expect this trial fear is no longer going to show up as part of this trial process and when will I have enough experience and confidence with just litigating to step into a courtroom without feeling all of this fear.
[00:03:55] Scott Benton: It’s a good question, and it’s a fair question, but it’s possible that it’s [00:04:00] entirely the wrong question. I say that because if you get a chance to talk to a litigation attorney who’s, let’s say, been around for a couple of decades, and they’ve got, let’s say, more than 50 trials behind them, and now they’re headed into their 53rd trial, and they’re going to find that they still have the same fear.
[00:04:20] Scott Benton: And you’re going to learn that it never goes away. So asking the question of when the fear finally stops, or if you’re waiting around for that fear factor to end, you’re simply going to be waiting around your entire career as an attorney. It’s not going to go away. So maybe the better question is what to do with this fear.
[00:04:39] Scott Benton: Since from what we hear from the long time litigators is it’s going to be there anyway. It’s just. It’s going to be the fear factor that’s going to be present in all of the trials that you engage in. Now, when you talk to these attorneys, what you learn is that, yes, the fear was there during the first trial, and in many cases, it had far more of a distracting [00:05:00] effect on them.
[00:05:01] Scott Benton: But then after a few trials, they finally learned to work with the trial fear, and they learned how to incorporate that into their own process. And they know what to do with it when it shows up in the courtroom on the first day of their new trial, whether that’s the 51st trial or the 151st trial. In working with trial fear, some litigation attorneys, instead of leaning away from and dodging and avoiding the influences of the fear.
[00:05:28] Scott Benton: They instead go the other direction, and they lean directly into the fear. In other words, they use the power of this fear to bolster and even energize their ability to think on their feet, and to supercharge their capability to process and navigate the core proceedings.
[00:05:45] Scott Benton: In fact, instead of resisting the trial fear and creating additional anxiety for themselves, Over time, they learn to expect trial fear to be there each and every time. They accept that eventuality and they figure out [00:06:00] ways to use trial fear to make themselves more alert or more vigilant and far more productive.
[00:06:06] Scott Benton: And this is exactly what you want to do for yourself as well. Maybe it helps to realize the fear. is always going to be there so that when you find yourself up against it early in your first few trials, you might consider that it’s going to be there anyway with all of your trials and you can try leaning into it to see what happens.
[00:06:25] Scott Benton: Play with this idea and experiment with the fear. You can see how it is able to help you instead of stopping you from becoming an excellent courtroom litigator.
[00:06:35] Scott Benton: In fact, the sooner you figure out how to channel that fear energy into a more productive channel that boosts your ability to litigate, the quicker you’re going to become an extremely effective attorney.
[00:06:46] Scott Benton: It also might help to know that since trial fear is there throughout a litigator’s career, it means that whenever you’re in a courtroom, regardless of how it might look to you, and people hide their stress state all the time, that the opposing counsel [00:07:00] is also going through the exact same trial fear dynamic as you are.
[00:07:04] Scott Benton: Again, the question isn’t really about how to wait out the fear associated with trials. The question, rather, is what to do with the fear when it shows up. And you have a couple of options. You can either let the fear contain you and take you down and freeze you out, or you can let it empower you and lift you up to heights even you didn’t know were possible. My suggestion is that you spend your time figuring out how to accomplish the second option and let yourself become entirely unstoppable. But the choice is up to you.
[00:07:38] Scott Benton: My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for watching this episode. If you’re finding this to be valuable information and you’d like to receive an alert every time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website.
[00:07:51] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two. courtroom dot com. You can leave us your contact information there and [00:08:00] we will send out an alert. So that you know a new episode is available. Don’t forget to share and subscribe. And we hope you’ll join us on our next episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast.
[00:08:09] Scott Benton: And we also hope you’ll join us in the meantime of making the world a better place one client at a time. Thank you so much.
