Wilson: Find ways to be better than you were yesterday

Being a new lawyer can be a daunting experience. When one makes the impactful decision to attend law school in hopes of becoming an attorney, being sworn in is the primary goal that motivates years of studying and hard work to graduate law school, pass the bar exam, then to finally be sworn into the state bar association.

If you’re anything like me, you could hardly believe it when the moment came to stand and take the Oath of Attorneys and walk out as a newly admitted lawyer. As I celebrated with friends, family, and fellow newly admitted attorneys, it did not take long for the thought to arise in the back of my head: “How long does it take until I actually feel like a lawyer?”

I knew what to do to get to this point and when I would become a lawyer, but when am I supposed to know when I will be a good lawyer?

No matter what point in life you make the decision to take the path of becoming an attorney, goals and direction are obvious and consistent between you and other future lawyers.

Everyone needs to study hard to earn good grades in class, then study hard to pass the bar exam to become licensed. After being sworn in, this dynamic changes. We always had exams with grades that let us know how well we were doing.

The legal field offers such a wide variety of opportunities and roles to fill, with each presenting its own unique challenges and metrics of success. As new lawyers step into their first role, the uniform metrics of success, i.e., grades and test scores, suddenly no longer exist.

Everyone still wants to perform well and at a high-level, but how do we even know that we are performing at a satisfactory level in the first year or few years of practice?

This is a concept that I have struggled with as a new attorney because, not only is “performing well” a subjective goal, but it is also difficult to measure when there are so many different roles an attorney can take at different organizations.

One of the other difficult factors is that being a successful attorney is a goal that has to be maintained once it has been achieved, or risk being an inconsistent attorney. I didn’t know the first thing about what makes a good lawyer when I was admitted mere months ago and I struggle with it at times now as a new lawyer.

I felt it important to take a proactive approach in the pursuit of discovering what makes a good attorney. I spoke with as many experienced lawyers as I possibly could to gauge success metrics and how to know if I’m doing a good job at being an attorney at this stage in my career.

I spoke with attorneys that I worked with from past experiences as well as my current role to get some insight into what qualities and accomplishments make new lawyers good lawyers.

Speaking with experienced attorneys, it was quite humbling to hear the responses from whom I would consider as very good attorneys. I was surprised to hear that many of them felt that they were still continuing to learn and to improve their skills from writing to advocacy to case management skills, even after several years, and even decades, of practice.

At first, I was a bit discouraged by this information. I thought to myself: “If all these experienced and successful attorneys are still trying to learn, how will I ever figure it out?”

It took some reflection and several more months practicing before I realized that the feedback that I had received from other legal professionals was actually comforting. No matter how long other attorneys had been practicing, they were all continuously striving to improve their abilities and to learn as much as possible.

I spoke with one mentor who stated that their lifelong goal as an attorney was to “be better than they were yesterday” and that as long as you learn from previous mistakes and make improvements based on feedback from clients and supervisors, you’ll grow and your knowledge base will increase

As someone who is very goal-oriented, this resonated with me. It was comforting to know that even experienced lawyers don’t have all the answers and have room for improvement.

The way that I thought about gauging success started to change for me after some time. I thought less about if I was doing the right thing and more about whether I was learning from mistakes or previously unknown knowledge.

I have already found myself knowing a lot more now and completing assignments more efficiently than I did even six months ago. I think back on how clueless I was about things that I do not even think about now.

There can be some degree of anxiety surrounding a goal that doesn’t have a timetable or a completion date on it. It might be difficult in some instances to determine if you are doing better today compared to yesterday, or better this year compared to last year. However, every lawyer is in the same position as you are, no matter their tenure.

Regardless of where you work, who you work with, and what is expected of you, everyone can continuously improve. Especially as a new lawyer, there is a lot of new information being thrown at you and a lot of questions you will not know the answers to.

It can be hard to think that you are doing well when you walk out of the office at the end of the day and it feels like you didn’t have the answer to most problems, when it’s your job to solve problems.

No one has all the answers when they first begin a career. However, if you learn from your experiences, strive to increase your knowledge base, and rely on the experienced colleagues around you for support and guidance, the more knowledge and confidence in your performance you will pick up over time.•

__________

Chase Wilson is an associate at Lewis Wagner. Opinions expressed are those of the author.