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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey, everyone. Scott Benton here. I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. How are you? We are a podcast dedicated to helping people. You transition out of the academic world of law school as a student into your professional world as a fully licensed attorney. And we’re here to underscore the idea that the practice of law is fun and it is fun.
[00:00:36] Scott Benton: Today we are going to look at the question of when do I finally arrive? As an attorney, when do I finally arrive as an attorney? What does that mean? Arrive? That means there’s going to come a point after you’ve done all of this schooling. So let’s say you went straight through, you did your primary schooling, you did your college work, maybe you were in college for four or five years, you did a double major, whatever it was, [00:01:00] then you went to law school.
[00:01:02] Scott Benton: That’s three more years of school. That’s an enormous amount of schooling. You graduate, you pass the bar, and now you’re sitting in your first job as an attorney in a law firm, and you’re wondering, when am I going to actually feel like a real attorney. I know I’m licensed,
[00:01:21] Scott Benton: what am I really gonna feel that step into those shoes where that idea of the attorney that I’ve worked so hard and long for is going to materialize internally. Let’s put it that way. That’s when you arrive at being an attorney. And the answer is that moment never comes. You’re never gonna arrive as an attorney.
[00:01:43] Scott Benton: That just isn’t gonna happen. If you talk to people who have been practicing law for 25 years, they’re going to tell you they haven’t arrived as an attorney. So whether you’ve just started or you’ve been practicing for 25 years, that moment isn’t going to come. And it’s just something that you’re going to have to be comfortable with.[00:02:00]
[00:02:00] Scott Benton: So the reason that happens, by the way, is because no matter where you get to in your career, where you feel that one day you got it all figured out. You understand how the law works. You understand your cases. Inevitably what’s going to happen is you’re going to get hit by a curve ball. That curve ball is going to come in where you realize once again that you don’t know anything, or at least that’s what it’s going to feel like.
[00:02:26] Scott Benton: You got to go back to the drawing board. You got to go back to square one. And you have to start all over again, learning from the ground up. And you’re just going to find yourself in that place over and over and over again, because the laws change, technology changes. There’s just, you’re going to be bombarded with changes.
[00:02:44] Scott Benton: And so you’re never going to feel as though you’re crossing that line where you can finally say, ah, I’ve now arrived. I am an attorney, and I feel like I’ve become that thing that I studied for so long, and I set my [00:03:00] mind on becoming that goal that I reached. I’m finally reached it now. One of the reasons is, as I said, that change is inevitable.
[00:03:08] Scott Benton: Change is going to hit you. Like a ton of bricks over and over again. Now, one reason that happens is because essentially right now information is doubling every six to 18 months. We’re in the information age. We used to be in the industrial age up until about 1989, 1989, the ages change.
[00:03:31] Scott Benton: There’s the industrial age that basically goes from 1492 you probably know that date all the way to 1989. Where suddenly computers are introduced and we cross this kind of invisible line where we are now finding ourselves in the information age. Now what happens in 1989 is there’s the fall of the Berlin Wall and there’s the rise of the Internet.
[00:03:53] Scott Benton: And it’s that moment that catapults us into the Information Age. Now why that’s significant [00:04:00] is because in the Industrial Age it was a different kind of thinking. In the Industrial Age, since information was doubling every 500 years, you could Stuff as much information into your head as you possibly could, and chances are you could live your entire lifetime without having to update that information because chances are it just it wasn’t going to change.
[00:04:25] Scott Benton: If it did change, the changes were going to be fairly minor. In other words, you didn’t have to purge all of the information out of your head. You just had to change one little thing here and there, and that was about it. You could rely on an entire lifetime of information that you were carrying around in your head.
[00:04:43] Scott Benton: What was important in the industrial age, 1492 to 1989, was hoarding information, just absolutely putting as much as you could into your head. So then what happens after 89, now that we’re in the information age? And we’re deep into the information [00:05:00] age at this point. Hoarding information is actually going to be more of a burden for you and less of an asset In other words, the type of thinking has changed where hoarding of information in the industrial age changes in the information age and it is no longer hoarding information.
[00:05:19] Scott Benton: What’s important is how quickly you can learn a new subject. How quickly you can learn a new subject. And the faster you are at learning something that you know absolutely nothing about, the better you’re going to do in general. This is why you can’t ever get to a place where you say, I know enough about the law.
[00:05:40] Scott Benton: I know about this particular practice area that I’m confident. I can manage with any situation that comes along that I don’t need to necessarily learn anything new And and I have arrived as an attorney The problem is in the information age is that the goalposts keep getting moved. They keep getting [00:06:00] moved down the field So every time you think that you’re about to cross into the end zone you realize you’re back on the 50 yard line and you’ve got to just keep running and keep running So you have to get good at learning new material.
[00:06:14] Scott Benton: You have to get good at starting at zero because you’re going to find yourself there over and over again. Like I said, there’s going to be all of these curve balls thrown at you and you’re never going to feel like you arrived again. People that have been doing this forever for 25 years never feel like they have arrived.
[00:06:33] Scott Benton: By the way, people who grew up in the information age are very different than people that grew up Prior to 1989, when they were in the industrial age, people that were in the industrial age, like myself, by the way, we had to make a transition from industrial age thinking to information age thinking. But if you already grew up in the information age, then you’re not going to have a context for what industrial age thinking was like, cause [00:07:00] you never really had to do it. If you grew up with cell phones and iPads and computers, then your whole life has been spent in and around computer technology so that your information age experience is not going to include a lot of the, Thinking patterns and thought process of industrial age thinking that was once relied upon.
[00:07:22] Scott Benton: People that grew up prior to 1989, they have to think in both ways, industrial age and information age. And sometimes for people that grew up in the industrial age, it seems like they’re not quite as up to date yet. Sometimes they’re not quite as up to date with people who grew up in the information age.
[00:07:41] Scott Benton: And one of the reasons is sometimes people don’t know. That there is a different way to think now in the information age as there was in industrial age. The question becomes, if you’re never going to arrive as an attorney what’s the answer? What do you do with that piece of [00:08:00] information? It’s actually very simple.
[00:08:01] Scott Benton: You just have to have an awareness of it. You have to know that the goalposts are going to be moved down the field, probably throughout your life. You’re never going to get to that place of arrival. And if you know that, it helps you Maybe not be contained by that idea or have any anxiety maybe around it of when am I going to finally arrive as an attorney.
[00:08:24] Scott Benton: The other thing that you can do, and this is very key, is just understand that you’re going to be uncomfortable. You’re always going to be uncomfortable. You’re always going to be anxious. If you talk to older attorneys, people that have done like a hundred trials for instance, they’re going to tell you that every time they show up in a courtroom for a trial, They’re just as nervous the 100th time as they were the first time they set foot in a courtroom.
[00:08:49] Scott Benton: And if you’re now starting to set your feet in a courtroom, and you’re feeling that anxiety, it’s that anxiety that years from now, 25 years from [00:09:00] now, if you step foot in a courtroom, you’re still going to feel that same anxiety. What you can do to help with that that process is just take a minute and understand that you’re just going to be uncomfortable in those environments as an attorney.
[00:09:15] Scott Benton: When you’re working on your cases and you come across something new that you don’t understand and you get delta curveball, then you’re going to be put back in that uncomfortable space once again. And so the key to the whole thing is to start to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And that starts with awareness, knowing that you’re going to be in this space quite often And getting comfortable with that vocabulary, so to speak, and knowing that you can find a way to be comfortable by being uncomfortable. And if you can do that, there’s going to be no stopping you. So I hope that’s helpful. My name is Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. If this is information that you are enjoying and you want to get an alert every time [00:10:00] we put out a new episode, you can go to our website.
[00:10:02] Scott Benton: Our website is classroom2courtroom. com. You can leave us your contact information. When we put out a new episode, you’ll get an alert. And if you do like this material, of course, don’t forget to share and subscribe. We hope you’ll join us. on the next episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast.
[00:10:17] Scott Benton: And until then, we also hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time. Thank you so much.
