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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 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 what happens if I make a mistake.
[00:00:24] Scott Benton: [00:01:00] Now, a mistake’s bad when you go to school. You learn that, yeah, mistakes are pretty bad, and you probably know that intuitively because when you make a mistake, chances are you’re going to get a lower grade than you normally otherwise would have. In fact, school Actually encourages you to not make any mistakes.
[00:01:34] Scott Benton: And by virtue of the way that the school system works all the way from grade school into PhD school, you’re typically on an A through F grading system that focuses on making A’s or B’s and not making. D’s are F’s. Otherwise, they tend to kick you out for that. In school, it’s not like you would make a mistake on purpose, like on a paper or a test you wouldn’t make a mistake on purpose so that you [00:02:00] intentionally would get an F so that you could learn that lesson by getting that F.
[00:02:06] Scott Benton: That’s just not the game you’re playing in school. The game is to get the highest grade point average possible, and if you get the highest grade point average. Then you win. If you get the lowest grade point average, you lose, according to the grading system but, one of the problems with that model is that in real life, or what we’ll call life outside of school, mistakes get made all the time.
[00:02:31] Scott Benton: Now, you don’t hope to make any mistakes. You don’t want to make any mistakes on purpose, if you can help it. But at one point or another, mistakes, they are simply going to get made. It’s just the nature of the world. It’s a given. So the question that you might want to ask yourself is more along the lines of, How are you going to handle mistakes whenever they come along?
[00:02:55] Scott Benton: Because at some point, those mistakes are going to come along. [00:03:00] You’ve been in school for so long, especially if you’re a law student. You did, you’ve got 12 years of primary school, four years of undergraduate, maybe you got a master’s degree, but then you have another, what, three years of law school.
[00:03:13] Scott Benton: So you’re talking 20 years of law school where you’ve been on this A to F system, so it’s not going to feel, you’re going to feel panicked if you make a mistake. That’s just your vocabulary, having been in the school system for so long. So in real life, when you make a mistake, you need to develop that vocabulary, that response system, which is going to be different than everything you’ve ever done playing the game of school.
[00:03:38] Scott Benton: First, you’ve got two ways to go when you recognize that you’ve made a mistake. You can hide it, and you can cover it up and hope no one sees it. Or, you can get the biggest Hollywood style spotlight imaginable, and the kind that they have at the red carpet movie premieres, and you can shine that spotlight [00:04:00] on that mistake, Which is probably something that you would never do in school, since it would obviously lead to a lower grade.
[00:04:08] Scott Benton: But you can do that here. You can pick to do that. You can hide it, or you can shine a spotlight on it. Now second, as you’ll probably hear over and over again not from me, not from the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast, but just out there in the world, that in order to become better at anything, you have to learn from your mistakes.
[00:04:26] Scott Benton: So if you have a habit of hiding or covering up your mistakes, what happens is you lose out on that valuable opportunity to become better and better at whatever it is you’re doing that you made the mistake in. So if you don’t learn from that mistake, then what tends to happen is you repeat the same mistake over and over again until you finally get the lesson. And sometimes that’s just what we need in life, but you can really shortcut that process [00:05:00] instead of hiding your mistakes to really shine a spotlight on them.
[00:05:03] Scott Benton: Now, in Japanese, there’s a character for crisis. And it’s actually two characters. Crisis is one character, but it’s made up of two separate characters. And the two separate characters that it’s made up of, one of the characters is dangerous, and the other character is opportunity, and they’re just superimposed on top of each other.
[00:05:24] Scott Benton: So it’s this kind of crazy, crazy. Complicated Japanese character if you look at it, it’s almost, I mean there’s so many lines it’s almost like a black box of just ink. So if a mistake suddenly plunges you into a state of crisis, you can always remember that Japanese character, that one Japanese character for crisis.
[00:05:45] Scott Benton: And you can use your mistake as an opportunity to grow. You can use your mistake as an opportunity to get better and to improve. Because that’s where the magic is. That’s where the most advancements are going to take place for you. And it’s your [00:06:00] way to grow. When you make a mistake to fast track your ability to practice law.
[00:06:05] Scott Benton: In fact, whenever you talk to attorneys who’ve been around for a while, and these are usually the attorneys that might look like they do everything right. They’re very meticulous and detailed about how they process certain legal situations. They note down to the most minute detail. If you were to ask them how they got that way, They’re going to tell you about all the mistakes that they’ve made and all of the lessons that they’ve learned along the way.
[00:06:33] Scott Benton: And in fact, they might even credit their high level of expertise that you’re going to see if they’re like 10 or 15 or 20 years into their legal career. You’re going to see that level of expertise. And they’re going to tell you themselves, they got there by making every mistake in the book. Now, some firms Actually like to share their wins.
[00:06:55] Scott Benton: They like to have staff meetings, get all the attorneys together, just everybody in [00:07:00] the company together, and they’re going to talk about the things that they did that were victorious or that maybe things that benefited a client or even someone working at the firm. Sometimes you have attorneys and they’ll move up.
[00:07:13] Scott Benton: To that senior attorney level and so that’s obviously that’s a big win and that will get talked about in these meetings That’ll get celebrated as it should but a win It can either be big like getting somebody getting promoted to a senior level or winning a big case or something like that Or it can be very small sometimes new attorneys They might for instance complete their first court filing or maybe they attend their first hearing or they conduct their first deposition.
[00:07:44] Scott Benton: Those are all wins. Those are all big wins that you want to talk about. And you want to share them to the rest of the group because it’s important to remember to do this consistently for the reason that wins all the time they remind you and they [00:08:00] remind everybody else about the positive outcomes of the work that you’re doing as an attorney and as a firm.
[00:08:06] Scott Benton: And that alone, that’s going to offset any setbacks or losses or failures that come along. And it’s a way to inject a consistent positive type of energy into the firm in order to keep the legal team and the office staff and everyone associated with the firm motivated and productive and feeling good about the work they’re doing together.
[00:08:28] Scott Benton: So whenever possible, you want to create a positively charged environment. Because that’s simply going to displace anything that comes along that creates a negative charge, such as a mistake. So keep in mind, this is a mindset, I know, but where your mindset is concerned, if it’s positive, then your work is going to be fun and it’s going to be easy because your day is going to flow.
[00:08:56] Scott Benton: You’re going to blink and it’s going to be the end of the day. You’re not going to want to go home. On the other hand, [00:09:00] if your mindset is dialed down into a negative frequency or a negative setting, then your work is going to feel heavy and never ending and boring and difficult. And if you’re in that space, you might want to stop and take a breath and just do a self assessment and figure out if you’re in that negative mind space Or if you’re in that positive mind space, if you’re in that negative mind space, you can attenuate that and change that place that you’re in.
[00:09:31] Scott Benton: Breathe into it, lean into it, and make sure that you’re creating a positive space for yourself. That way, when a mistake comes along, if you already have this habit of celebrating wins, That’s in your firm, and you talk about them during your staff meetings, for instance, then setbacks or mistakes or losses, they’re greatly offset through your efforts to celebrate and highlight the wins.
[00:09:58] Scott Benton: And it doesn’t matter if they’re big or small. [00:10:00] It doesn’t matter. Just every time there’s a win, you want to shine a light on that win. And that’s why it’s so important to focus on the positive, especially when you’re working in a legal environment. So to answer your question about what you need to do if a mistake happens, very simply, you need to make sure that you’re celebrating the wins for any positive outcomes for yourself and others on your team.
[00:10:24] Scott Benton: And that way, when a mistake is made, You want to make sure that you don’t miss the opportunity to learn the valuable lessons that are inside of that mistake and that they teach you, but you’ve already offset any negativity by celebrating your wins when something more negatively charged comes along. So I hope that’s helpful.
[00:10:46] 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. And I hope this has been valuable information for you. If it is valuable information for you, and you’d like to receive an alert every [00:11:00] time we put out a new podcast episode, you can go to our website.
[00:11:04] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. That’s classroom, the number two court room. Courtroom. com and you can leave us your contact information and that way you’ll get an alert whenever we put out a new episode. The other thing you can do is share and subscribe. That will also help you stay on top of our newest episodes.
[00:11:19] Scott Benton: 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.
