How to be a member of a very special league of lawyers

It’s not my fault that the work is not done!

I always watch out for people who would not take responsibility for the end result and want to keep such people at bay. So does everyone who has the experience of handling a team, a business, or any responsible position.

There are two kinds of people out there - some of them have learned how to get things to work, and there are those who can give you impeccable reasons for why things did not work. 

I try to find how can I make things work when it is not supposed to work, and I have made a career out of it.

I was not born that way, and indeed in my first job, I did not know how to take responsibility for the final outcome and thought it is my boss’ job to get me to do the work, to get me to be productive. Terrible. I am ashamed of myself until today for thinking like that back then.

Doing a startup completely changed me, because I had to take responsibility for everything. Even if the office was not cleaned properly, it was ultimately my responsibility. If a client did not get what was promised because an employee was lax, or did not follow protocol, or even just simply absconded, all the fault was mine and I had to do something to fix the situation. 

Taking responsibility is what creates value and avoiding it means you are soon going to get replaced.

Then there are those who tell us why things are not working and why they are not to be blamed for the work not getting done. 

There was not enough time. There was no enough money. There was not enough guidance. There is not enough work in the market. The judge was tough. The case was bad. How can I learn if nobody teaches me? It is not my fault alone, there were others who also failed.

Well.  

All successful lawyers are also masters of the craft of making things work. They make things work that do not otherwise work. 

They win cases most other lawyers cannot win. They identify problems and innovate and come up with solutions. Sometimes they fight tooth and nail for clients and snatch victory away from jaws of defeat. 

If all cases were easy and simple, a handful of lawyers won’t be rich or famous. If the legal profession was very simple and easy to succeed in, then it would be more like that of a clerk. There won’t be so many millionaire lawyers if not for a bunch of very difficult cases.

If you cannot learn to take responsibility for an outcome and direct blame at others, then you are in great trouble. Even if you survive, you will at best survive in mediocrity, and never taste true success.

And yet, most people would spend more time doing everything they can to avoid blame rather than taking responsibility to get things to work and produce the necessary outcome.

Most lawyers do not take responsibility of the outcome they produce for their clients. Surely, not everything is in the hands of a lawyer. There are so many other factors, but have you really done everything that could be done? Most lawyers do not. Those who really push themselves for their clients, usually stand out of the crowd over time and succeed big time. They are the ones clients do not want to lose, especially sophisticated clients who know the value added by that lawyer.

And if your clients do not recognize the value you add to them, why even work with such clients?

The truth is that most lawyers do not take responsibility for their own training, and that is the weakest link in their practice.

There is plenty of work in the market, especially a lot of work that most lawyers are not ready to do, or do not do justice to, due to a skill gap.

For example, drafting a patent application! There is a lot of money to be made from it, but there are hardly any lawyers around who know how to do it.

There is plenty of work that one can find with respect to IP agreements, specialized technology-related agreements, economic fraud investigation, corporate governance disputes - but how many lawyers actually know how to do that work?

I come across so many lawyers who say they want to do arbitrations and are looking for such work. Yet, they are very unclear about basic procedural issues that an arbitration lawyer needs to know.

Most lawyers do not even know how they can get a vehicle that was seized by police to be released from custody, or how to draft a watertight police complaint to start with.

A huge number of lawyers are unable to do anything other than copy-paste work based on templates they procure. And even those templates are often of no good quality.  

How do they expect to do well, except for by cheating some hapless and clueless clients?

When law firms desperately look to hire lawyers with good skills, I have seen how they sometimes have to interview dozens of candidates and still find not a single satisfactory candidate for months!

I see so many clients looking for help, commenting on our blogs, and still not finding a lawyer in their budget, who is providing a reasonable service.

And that is why I do not believe that there is not enough legal work in the market. Yes, there are way too many lawyers, but most have very little skill. Most lawyers do not stand a chance to start with.

If you can increase your knowledge incrementally day by day, if you invest in self-development and learning advanced skills, you will be in a very special league of lawyers, and there are not too many such lawyers to go around.

It is not hard to succeed in the legal profession, but only if you take responsibility for your ultimate success.

Please start by taking responsibility for learning more and more about the work you will be doing every day.