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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 of course, where we make the practice of law fun and it is fun.
[00:00:21] Scott Benton: Now today we’re going to answer the question of what changes when you get your bar license, what changes when you get your bar license.
[00:00:29] Scott Benton: [00:01:00] So if passing the bar were anything like what happens in the movies, and maybe it’s a movie like The Matrix, you would be like Neo, who’s played by Keanu Reeves, where he plugs a cable into the back of his head, he downloads a program, and in three seconds, he announces that he knows Kung Fu, meaning he knows all of Kung Fu, and then he can fight people really, really well.
[00:01:39] Scott Benton: So, in a way, there’s an expectation that the minute you check your bar results and find out that you’ve passed, And you get your bar number that, like Neo and the Matrix, and maybe after downloading an attorney program with a cable in the back of your neck, you can simply announce that you know how to practice law.
[00:01:57] Scott Benton: Now, in reality, of course, you can’t do that, and [00:02:00] nothing changes the minute you get your bar license. Nothing changes. You’re exactly the same person. There’s no lawyer program that magically fills your brain with information. You know, you get to use the ESQ now after your name if you want to, and you get paid more than you did as an intern or as a lock clerk, but who you are fundamentally as a person remains identical.
[00:02:22] Scott Benton: Your brain is the same, the person that you are, it’s the same. However, you are going to find that you’re experiencing a massive paradigm shift now. No longer are you a law clerk waiting for assignments to get dropped off on your desk from the attorneys that you’re working for and then who later clean up your work once you’re done with it and hand it back in to them.
[00:02:44] Scott Benton: No longer are you a passive participant in the bigger scope of providing legal services that are getting performed at the law firm you work for. You now must make the adjustment to becoming an active participant. You’re no longer a passive [00:03:00] student or a passive law clerk. From here on out, you’re the one driving the work.
[00:03:05] Scott Benton: You’re the one billing the time. You’re an important revenue generator for the firm that you’re working for. You are the one who’s essentially now dropping the work assignments off on your own desk, and it’s not someone else. In fact, you’re going to find yourself in an uncomfortable space every day for a very, very long time.
[00:03:24] Scott Benton: The key is to recognize that discomfort and get really good at being comfortable with being uncomfortable, which is going to take you far if you’re able to master that particular skill. Because that’s not easy to master, being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Usually we’re completely uncomfortable when we’re uncomfortable, but you’re going to have to flip that a little bit and you’re going to have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
[00:03:48] Scott Benton: In fact, The entire key to mastering that skill is to recognize and identify your discomfort and then find a way. Maybe you breathe into it or lean into it, lean into the [00:04:00] discomfort and you want to embrace it and become excellent at being uncomfortable. You want to become excellent at being uncomfortable.
[00:04:07] Scott Benton: You just want to be uncomfortable all the time. This is something the Marines train for. They love to be uncomfortable. They’ll be as uncomfortable as possible, and it’s something that they work really hard at.
[00:04:18] Scott Benton: So in a way, let’s call you a legal Marine. You want to get comfortable sleeping on rocks and just being, hot and can barely breathe out in the elements. So, you’re going to have your own cases in this case that you’re going to need to analyze. That’s one of the first things that happens when you become an attorney.
[00:04:36] Scott Benton: And you want to be able to analyze them so you can put together your own to do list and then perform those legal services and then, of course, finally bill for that time and get paid. That cycle, of course, on this podcast, we refer to as the success cycle. Once you get paid, you’re going to start all over again and return back to the to do list and you just keep repeating to do list, perform services.
[00:04:56] Scott Benton: Bill for your time, get paid, to do list, perform legal services, [00:05:00] bill for your time, get paid, and so on. So, there’s also, there’s this idea when you become an attorney that you, eventually you arrive as an attorney, and that means that there’s this inflection point where you’ve been working as an attorney, where suddenly you kind of know everything there is to know about lawyering.
[00:05:18] Scott Benton: And yes, by the time you’ve been practicing for about five years, we’ve kind of set that there’s a kind of a learning curve for about five years. We ballpark it at, and after about five years, you’re going to know a lot more about practicing law than you did on your first few days. But the truth is that you never totally arrived as an attorney.
[00:05:40] Scott Benton: And one of the reasons that you never totally arrive as an attorney is that in the information age, which is. That’s kind of where we are now. That breaks down into several different ages that are byproducts of this information age. This whole thing is just a little confusing at this point. But where we are right now, information doubles [00:06:00] every 6 to 18 months.
[00:06:02] Scott Benton: Think about that again. Everything doubles right now every 6 to 18 months. When we were in the agrarian age or the industrial age, information doubled every 500 years. So now information is doubling every six to 18 months, which is a completely different world that we’re living in. That’s important for you to know because it means, and all of this is just theory, so don’t get too excited, it means, in theory, that everything you knew a year and a half ago, it’s already been replaced with new information.
[00:06:34] Scott Benton: Everything you knew 18 months ago, it’s irrelevant. It’s not so true. But there is a lot of truth to that statement. Information is doubling every 6 to 18 months. So you’re going to have to keep up with constant change. And that means you’re always going to be uncomfortable. And that means you’re going to be uncomfortable over and over and over again.
[00:06:52] Scott Benton: You’re just going to be uncomfortable all the time. That’s just what’s going to happen. So that means, again, you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. [00:07:00] And that means arriving, finally arriving, getting to that place where you have arrived as an attorney. It’s virtually impossible because the goal posts are going to keep moving continuously further and further and further away from you simply because of the attrition and development of new information that comes along.
[00:07:19] Scott Benton: So that’s really going to be a lot of pressure on you. It’s also a lot of pressure on everyone else, that they’re struggling with it. Whether they know this or not, or maybe they just sense it intuitively, is this is putting people under an enormous amount of pressure. It used to be you could just learn a whole bunch of information and that would get you through the rest of your life.
[00:07:38] Scott Benton: Now that’s not so true. So you’ve got to keep up with all the technological advances that also change everything else around you. If you’re asking the question of what changes when you get your bar ticket, the answer is that everything is already changing all the time, all around you anyway, and it’s going to continue to change.
[00:07:59] Scott Benton: So [00:08:00] you have to be able to keep up with it. Now, what essentially is important as a skill for you to develop right now is being able to learn a new subject, that you know absolutely nothing about, and you need to learn it as quickly as possible. This is something you can even practice, by the way. You pick a subject that you don’t know anything about.
[00:08:18] Scott Benton: You want to test yourself. Pick a subject, you know nothing about it, you focus like a laser beam. Like a laser beam, until you’ve mastered it. As an example, I did this once years ago with sailing. I knew absolutely nothing about boats. And I decided to learn sailing and I decided to learn sailing because I knew nothing about it.
[00:08:39] Scott Benton: And within six months I had achieved all my certifications so that I was able to take out ten friends on the Santa Monica Bay on a 50 foot sailboat. I learned how to sail a 50 foot sailboat starting from nothing, from scratch. And that, what was important about that process is it developed my ability to quickly learn a subject that I simply [00:09:00] didn’t know.
[00:09:00] Scott Benton: So I hope that’s helpful information and that it starts to answer the question of what changes when you get your bar license. The answer again, it’s nothing.
[00:09:08] Scott Benton: Nothing really changes. And that now you’re essentially going to master speed learning. So you can keep up with all the world’s constant whirlwind of changes that you see. all around you all day long. I’m Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for tuning into our show on this episode.
[00:09:27] Scott Benton: Now, if you like this material that we’re putting together and you’re finding it helpful as you transition from law school student into your professional career as a fully ticketed and fully licensed attorney, and you want to get an alert every time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website.
[00:09:41] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two courtroom. com. You can sign up there. to receive our notifications. Just leave us your contact information and we will send that out to you. And if you do like this material, don’t forget to share, like, and subscribe. If you’d like to stay on top of all of our newest episodes. And until next time, we hope you’ll join us in making the [00:10:00] world a better place, one client at a time.
[00:10:03] Scott Benton: Thank you so much.
