Looking for legal work? Perhaps the best response at the moment is “Who isn’t?” Yet, every senior lawyer will tell you that lawyers have never known where their next piece of work was coming from. The best advice from those who have been in the practice for decades, who have seen the ups and downs of economies and clients from all sides, is not to let your lawyer’s personality get in your way. Let me explain.

Lawyers, from the most to the least successful, are professionally well served by developing their natural pessimistic tendencies. Research shows that lawyers are the only professional group that thrives on pessimism. Oversimplifying, successful lawyers tend to be skeptical, cynical, judgmental, argumentative, questioning and self-protective. We resist being told what to do and revel in our independence. These traits serve our clients very, very well. But they can too easily get in your way when your goal is personal success.

When The American Bar Association initially asked me to write Preparing for Reentry, the economy had not entered its meltdown. The book was aimed at lawyers who had taken a voluntary break from the practice and were considering a return in the future.

Since the book was initially planned, of course, the employment landscape for lawyers has changed dramatically, even though we have two lawyers occupying the White House and dozens more employed there.

Even litigation work, always considered recession proof in the past, has experienced a significant downturn. Finance sector legal jobs, some say, may never return. Venerable firms have paid their new hires to take a year or more before starting work, hoping the business will turn around.

If you are seeking to expand your practice, or to reenter the practice these days, chances are your reasons are economic more than personal fulfilment. Most lawyers need to work, as do most Americans, and every day the headlines tell us that unemployment numbers are at 25-year high points.

Lawyer Beware: In the face of these numbers, many lawyers will allow their lawyer personality to conclude their desire to practice is lunacy. They will incorrectly assume they cannot thrive in the current economy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If your lawyer personality is getting in the way of your thriving law practice, get professional help. Hire a coach. Hire a consultant. Talk to someone who is thriving, preferrably not a lawyer.

Remember: the actual work of being a lawyer is the only place where pessimism serves you well. In the rest of your life, optimism rules.

Do you see your opportunities clearly? Do you maximize them? Most lawyers do neither, but exceptional lawyers do both. Sometimes, professional help is needed. When opportunity knocks, it often pays to clarify the picture by working with good coaches and consultants.

Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book describing the lives of the exceptionally successful, explains Secret #3 perfectly: Don’t No Everything.

Among other points, Gladwell demonstrates how our cultures impact our behaviors and how exceptionally successful people make the most of the opportunities that come their way. As lawyers, our culture is exceptional. We are well educated, work hard, and devote ourselves to the best justice system in the world. From this base, we can improve our individual law practices (and our lives) by improving two essential skills: appreciate good opportunity when it comes and make the most of it.

A lawyer recently asked us about taking on a new client. She was offered the opportunity to receive work from a client who paid less than her normal hourly rate. She worried that the work would consume too much of her time, wouldn’t be profitable, and might impact her higher paying work. This is the usual risk analysis lawyers apply when faced with obstacles. She focused on the potential downsides and totally ignored the possible benefits.

We spent an hour discussing how the risks in this opportunity might be managed before I asked her this question: “What if it goes really well? How can this opportunity significantly improve your practice?”

She was nonplussed for a few moments. She couldn’t get past the possible pitfalls. I asked her whether she had enough work in her office right now to keep all of her lawyers and paralegals busy. “No,” she said. “The economy has impacted our business just like everyone else.” I asked her whether she had junior lawyers who could work effectively for the client at rates the client was willing to pay. “Yes,” she said, “but I’d like to get better paying work for them.” I asked her how much money it would cost to find and attract a better paying client with as much potential work for her office as this one offered. She said she’d never quantified the dollars spent on marketing her practice on a “per client obtained” basis, but we calculated the total time and expenses she spent on marketing in one year and discovered she could save more than enough to compensate for the lower rates the new client offered.

Finally, I asked her whether she could give the relationship a chance, with the full understanding that she could discontinue the representation if she found it dis satisfactory. “Of course,” she said.

She accepted the business. Both lawyer and client are well satisfied with their relationship.

What opportunities did you reject today? Can you go back and reconsider?

We asked lawyers enjoying extraordinary careers through good and bad economic times to share their Top Ten Secrets. Developing a sense of what risks to take was Secret #3. We described it this way:

Don’t No everything. Your skills for risk assessment and avoidance can too easily lead you to “no” instead of “yes” when opportunities come your way. Find a way to say yes instead.

Lawyers have highly developed risk assessment skills. Simply put, we can always see the potential downside presented in every situation. This skill set allows us to fashion safety nets for clients and avoid unnecessary pitfalls.

Unfortunately, our risk evaluation skills also lead to the oft repeated adage that lawyers are deal breakers, not deal makers. We flounder in analysis paralysis. We let too many opportunities pass us by because we’re worried about the negatives more than the potential.

Highly successful lawyers, those with long, satisfying legal careers have found a way to “Just say yes” when opportunity knocks. Saying no may keep you safe, but it can also keep you stuck. One strategy that’s relatively painless to start is to limit the risks of a new opportunity to levels you can comfortably endure. Another is to use visualization techniques to try on the likely outcomes of opportunities before you actually take the plunge.

Whatever techniques they decided to pursue, successful lawyers get professional help to educate and train themselves to make the most of their opportunities.

Tired of all the bad news these days? I am. The incessant negative reports from every quarter of the economy and the world have been bombarding us for at least two years now. I, for one, am ready to declare a moratoriam.  Aren’t you?

Maybe forewarned is forearmed, but after a while, these negative reports are simply depressing and demoralizing. Depressed people don’t act positively to improve their situations. Depressed people simply opt out, hunker down, and pray for an end to it all. That behavior is not what we need.

Here’s an example: This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that many large law firms are “deferring” the starting dates for their newly hired first year associates who would otherwise have started working this past summer and fall. Some have been deferred for more than a year. That may be the “bad news.”

But here’s the up side: the same article reports that these new grads are being paid a “stipend” that far exceeds the amount of money a family of four lives on in this country while they wait. And in the meantime, these new grads have a year or more off. They can work at other jobs, volunteer, travel, do pro bono work, write, or just lay around and watch TV. They can use this time to relax and refresh themselves, renew their energy so that they start their jobs full of positive enthusiasm.

Bad news is in the mind of the receiver. Don’t let the headlines fool you.  Play Angel’s Advocate and ask yourself: Where’s the Good in this situation?

Nothing happens instantly, in legal careers or in life. When we described the 10 Secrets of Extraordinary Legal Careers based on our interviews and experience with thousands of lawyers, one of the most significant secrets they shared was Secret #4 Eating apples requires attention. We shouldn’t eat an apple just to be finished with it, but to enjoy the experience. Nor should we practice law just to get to the end. Ours is a noble calling, work that not everyone is suited to perform. There are many joys to practicing law and our job, in part, is to appreciate them.

Legal careers are meant to last a lifetime. We begin in our 20s and can practice six or more decades. We don’t travel in a straight line from LSAT prep to grave. Life simply doesn’t work that way. Detours are a normal part of lawyer development.

The happiest lawyers are the ones who learn to enjoy their careers and their lives, not in retrospect or with aged perspective, but as they are happening.

Have you mastered this vital skill yet? Are you learning from your coaches and mentors?

At the end of each work day, do you stop to appreciate all you’ve accomplished, or are you so focused on what is left to be completed that you fail to acknowledge your own contributions? If not now, when will you do so? There’s no time like the present to begin to appreciate the extraordinary career you already have.

Good Clients are Kings, not Gods, successful lawyers know. In Secret #5, we mentioned that clients are essential to worthwhile legal careers. But lawyers can get so caught up in representing clients zealously that they surrender too much objectivity and professionalism to their client’s cause.

Health care lawyers, particularly in-house counsel, have found themselves on the wrong end of criminal prosecutions because they represented their clients’ wishes too zealously. Government lawyers have recently been under investigation for writing legal memos, some say inappropriately. Navigating between appropriate advocacy and legal ethics can be more difficult than we expect. Yet satisfied lawyers with lasting careers learn how to attract good clients, keep good clients, remain zealous advocates and simultaneously practice ethically and well within the law every time.

Clients will not always be happy with outcomes. This is an inevitable fact of life. Whether its a contentious divorce, a difficult custody matter, an emotional civil trial, or a transaction gone wrong, outcomes are frequently out of the lawyer’s control. Good lawyers with great careers have learned how to serve clients effectively and keep the clients in the firm even when outcomes are disappointing.

What skills have you mastered to attract, serve and keep good clients? Who helped you to learn the essence and application of Secret #5?

Lawyers get in trouble when they forget Secret #5: Clients are kings, not gods. Law is a service business. We need clients to serve. Clients must be nurtured and well represented to grow your practice. But your first allegiance is to the law, not the client. Advancing your client’s interests at the expense of adherence to the law you serve is a sure road to hell, regardless of good intentions.

As lawyers, our first allegiance is to the law and the system we serve. We are required to represent our clients zealously, yes. But firmly within the bounds of the law. We’re also obligated to explain our limits to our clients.

Young lawyers can get caught in both sides of this dilemma. Distinguishing between what is ethical and what is unethical isn’t always as easy as it might seem to non-lawyers. But staying focused on our professional ethics is job one.

Simple to state, harder to implement, the solution is to create an atmosphere where complaints are welcomed and resolved quickly. Realize that clients will have complaints and don’t think that their failure to tell you about them means the complaints don’t exist.

Use the acronym LASTS to help you remember the easy solution. LASTS stands for Listen; Acknowledge (show you understand the problem) or Apologize (if there’s complaint of any kind); Solve the problem; Thank the client; and make them Smile.

An apology isn’t a solution. These days, lots of complaints are handled by starting with “I apologize for the inconvenience” or some such. Clients want solutions. Remember the Smile. Not yours, which is important, but theirs, which is essential. Send them away happy. Until they’re happy, don’t let them go.

The formula for Client Service that LASTS. Simple to state, harder to implement, the solution is simply to create an atmosphere where complaints are welcomed and resolved quickly. Realize that clients will have complaints and don’t think that their failure to tell you about them means the complaints don’t exist.

Law practice is a service business Just like car washing, technical support, appliance installation and many others. Practicing medicine is a service business, too. As is teaching at all levels. And being President. Or holding any other political job or elected office.

What work in today’s American economy isn’t a service business?

Are you a producer? If we’re not producing a product, then we are engaged in some sort of service. There aren’t a lot of examples. Manufacturing, certainly. Farming. Construction. Any job that results in a tangible product (and most of us reading this post are not producing any tangible products).

Why is this important to lawyers? Because clients have many more options for selecting lawyers than they once did. Because satisfied clients are the golden eggs of law practice. Because we can’t practice law without clients, that’s the bottom line. At least, I haven’t found a way to practice law without clients to represent, whether those clients are individuals, small businesses, government agencies, large corporations, or foreign nationals. Have you?

Because most clients come to lawyers with problems that need to be solved, clients are tense and anxious. Just being nice is essential, but niceness alone won’t cut it in the delivery of legal services (or the delivery of any services). Clients are going to have complaints and those complaints must be successfully resolved if the client is to become and remain satisfied. Client service has many attributes, but one of the most important is keeping the client’s complaints successfully resolved.

Come to think of it, all service businesses would benefit from this procedure, wouldn’t they?

“But where do I find those good clients?” lawyers often ask.

Secret # 6: Everyone is a client. Thriving law practices are built when your practice is combined with your life. Over time, your friends and colleagues advance in the world, just as you will. Clients come from everything you do, everywhere you go, and everyone you know.

Happy lawyers tell us their great law careers developed through varied client experiences, which flow from varied life experiences. Many clients became close friends first, and clients later. Lawyers enjoy helping others and find helping friends even more satisfying.

When you treat everyone you meet as if they were already wonderful clients, more often than not, they will be.

Successful lawyers know a law career is not a snack, it’s a banquet that will feed you for decades to come. As we explained in Secret #7

Eating Elephants takes time. Big projects can become overwhelming unless you handle them in manageable chunks over an appropriate period of time. Practice patience as a means to an end, and do something on the project every day. Eventually, the elephant will be consumed.

The point is not to finish the each project or stage of career development as quickly as possible. Law careers are meant to be enjoyed along the way as well.