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Good Lawyers Keep Learning

The lawyer who thinks she has nothing left to learn is just a lazy and ineffective advocate. Keep learning.

By Christine A. Rodriguez  
on

Library partyI have been a practicing attorney for more years now than I care to admit. Yet, on a daily basis, I am reminded that there is always something new to learn. Good litigators keep an eye out daily for changes and emerging trends in the law that impact their practice areas through newsletters, listservs, law journal alerts, trade journals, and other publications. For example, I subscribe to a number of email lists for publications on employment law trends that fill my inbox every morning with the latest developments in my practice area. Keeping up with this information is time consuming, but also an essential tool for a good litigator, as well as part of the ethical obligation attorneys have to be zealous and effective advocates for their clients. You cannot be effective in the courtroom or in your legal writing on behalf of your clients if you are not familiar with the current law and legal trends that concern their matters. So, make sure to carve out a little time each day to read up.

Just as important as keeping up with legal trends is honing and improving your legal skills. I recently took a three day commercial mediation training program to do just that. My colleagues and I have participated as counsel in countless mediations on a variety of matters, so mediation is not new territory for me. Yet, the program taught me a whole new set of skills from a different perspective — that of the mediator. What I learned during those three days will not only help me be a better advocate for my clients during mediations, it will also help me to guide them to resolutions that benefit them before they ever have to litigate. Why is this important for a litigator?  In the real world, litigation is often difficult, disruptive, and expensive for both individuals and businesses. While many litigators, including me, love the work we do in and out of the court room, it’s just not that much fun for our clients. So, it is important for me, as a zealous advocate, to have effective skills to assist my clients to avoid litigation when I can and when they want me to do so.

The most refreshing thing about the commercial mediation training program was the broad range of people who attended the program. Participants ranged from junior law clerks just out of law school to seasoned commercial litigators and even several judges. The program focused on practical skills and there were several roleplay sessions for participants to practice what they learned in the lectures. Everyone was there to learn and improve their skills, some as potential mediators, but many just to improve their advocacy skills.

It is important for lawyers to keep learning, particularly when it comes to practice skills. As we gain more experience, try more cases, negotiate more settlements, and draft more motions, we get complacent. It is easy to fall into the mindset that, since we have litigated the same type of case dozens of times, there is nothing new for us to learn. Unfortunately, complacent lawyers miss things, sometimes things crucial to the success of their litigation. The savvy and effective lawyer is the one who reads her morning case alert emails, took a CLE on effective oral arguments the week before, and looked up all the statutes in the complaint she just got from her client just to make sure that nothing has changed since the last time she read those very same statutes. The lawyer who thinks she has nothing left to learn is just a lazy and ineffective advocate. Keep learning.

Christine A RodriguezChristine A. Rodriguez is of counsel to the firm Balestriere Fariello and successfully represents individuals and small businesses in all manner of employment discrimination, civil rights, criminal defense, civil litigation and commercial litigation matters. She also advises small businesses on all aspects of legal matters from contract to employee issues. You can reach her by email at christine.a.rodriguez@balestrierefariello.com.

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