This morning I woke up to the search query: “I feel like a sh*t lawyer,” sitting at the top of the analytics for my site, Associate’s Mind. Googling the phrase brings up an old post from me as the top result. Yes, commentariat, I am the first hit for “I feel like a sh*t lawyer.” Have at it.
But feeling like you’re failing in your job is natural. Especially if you are new to practice or to a firm. I distinctly remember the first time I was hired by a new client. I was nervous as hell. To be perfectly honest, I felt like a fraud.
I had done work for new clients before while I was an associate at a firm, but this was this first time someone had specifically decided to hire me. Somehow, someway, the client had picked me out of the thousands of other lawyers in the city. Didn’t they know there plenty of other lawyers who had more experience in this area of law than me? Weren’t they aware I was only a few years out of law school? What were they thinking?!?
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Being a new lawyer is a tough road in the best of times, and these are not the best of times. If you look around, it’s not too difficult to find lawyers with a dozen years of practice under their belt unable to find new clients or even keep their doors open. What chance then for a new lawyer? If you’ve just graduated from law school, you’re likely thinking it it is impossible to measure up against lawyers with vastly more knowledge and experience than you. You’re likely filled with anxiety and self-doubt. You feel like an imposter.
Especially when you have rough days. You file what you think is a solid motion. The opposing counsel’s motion prevails. Or you stride into a hearing, confident in your argument. The judge rules against you. You might feel like you can’t cut it as a lawyer. That you’re not good enough. That you’re not fit for the profession.
But here’s the truth that I wrote in response to reading that search query:
If you are going to be a lawyer — You. Are. Going. To. Be. A. Loser.
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But that’s okay. So is every other lawyer. No lawyer bats a thousand. Everyone loses on a motion or hearing. Even if you’re a lawyer like Paul Clement and win a case, you can still lose on the back end by having your hourly rate cut by 75%.
There are ups and downs in the profession. Being a lawyer is hard, life is hard. We’ve all got to deal with it. What matters is how we deal with it. One day you might be flying high, the next day you could be in the dirt. You’ve got just treat every experience as an opportunity to learn and grow.
When I finished the work for that first client I had, I had put in tremendous amount of time and effort. If I’m honest with myself, I’m lucky if I even broke even on the work that I had done. Yet I learned a lot about handling the matter. And I gained some confidence in how I handled myself.
But when it was all complete, the best thing about it was what the client said to me when we were done: “If you keep doing work like this, you’re going to change the way people think about lawyers.”
While they appreciated my work, I appreciated their praise and approval even more. So yes, you’re going to have sh*t days as a lawyer. But you’re going to have great ones too.
Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter at @associatesmind.