Good Lawyers Choose Great Careers
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
A thriving law practice requires good clients to serve as well as good client service. Building a client base is a challenge for most lawyers, regardless of practice area, geographic location, or business model. A proven system many lawyers have used with significant success requires steady techniques consistently applied. In this way, we learn to [...]
Law careers are developed and created over time. Generally years, not months. A lawyer on the “fast track” may shave a year or so off her “metoric success,” but one rarely graduates from law school on Friday and becomes Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. Yes, Barack Obama is a young president. [...]
When there is only one choice, it’s the right choice. That’s what good lawyers with great careers often discover. Take John Arthur Jones, for example. He’s practiced law for 60 years. He said he’d planned to become a journalist, but that didn’t happen. He tried a few other things that didn’t pan out. And then, [...]
A senior partner, furious with a mistake made by a young lawyer, screamed, “Aren’t there some things I’m entitled to assume you just know?”
No, the young lawyer wasn’t me. And I was certainly glad of it that day. But the answer to senior partner’s question isn’t all that obvious. Or at least it wasn’t obvious to that gobsmacked young lawyer on the receiving end of the tirade.
“Gobsmacked” is a British
M. Diane Vogt
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