Law Schools

Mistakes

Assess each mistake as an opportunity to learn more about what makes you tick. That is the path to confidence.

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You’ll make mistakes as a lawyer.  “We all make mistakes,” I hear.  Lawyers, judges, law professors, students, friends, and family all make mistakes.

This isn’t a post about the ABA Model rules and committing malpractice.  I’m sure there are lots of posts about avoiding getting sued, fired, or otherwise in trouble for making mistakes.  It’s enough to scare a new lawyer.  Sometimes the CLEs about this will scare you, too.  And I’m not just talking about the fees.

Imagine being perfect.  We actually know people who claim they are.  But they aren’t. Everyone makes mistakes.  Heck, this blog post may be one.  It’ll certainly have grammatical errors and typos.  It may not even be well thought out.

Making mistakes, however, has value.  They make you human.  They make you grow.  They make you learn.  And, they make you humble.

There will be people who will regale in your mistakes, or make sure to keep reminding you about them.  They will make you feel shame about your mistake.  Having your mistake repeatedly shoved in your face will prevent you from learning from it.  Defensiveness isn’t a good way to learn.

But there are paths out of mistake hell.  But those paths aren’t easy.  Most of the blog posts I’ve searched have these as common elements:

  1. Take responsibility for your mistake. It is impossible to learn from a mistake if you are seeking to avoid owning it, or blame others.  Taking ownership is the mature thing to do.  This will be difficult if your boss is abusive or just fires people for fun.  And, the size of the mistake matters.  But regardless, taking ownership is a necessary step.

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  1. Correct the mistake, if possible. Some mistakes are correctible.  Some mistakes are not.  Some mistakes continue until behavior is changed.  And some are one-time things.  If the mistake is correctible, you should take steps to correct it.  It might be you do this even before you apologize.  But action demonstrates sincerity.
  1. Implement strategies to not repeat the mistake. If you repeat the same mistakes over and over, that means you have not learned the lessons you were supposed to learn from your mistake.  As an example, I recall as an intern having to do some document review.  I thought it was fun, actually.  However, I was missing the point of document review, and causing some headaches by flagging documents that weren’t important — sometimes, more than once.  I got called out on the mistake.  In response, I asked what I was doing wrong.  In short, I was asking to be taught.  And in doing so, I became a better doc reviewer.  This is what learning from your mistakes means, to teach yourself to avoid making the same mistake repeatedly.
  1. Forgive yourself for your mistake. If you keep beating yourself up for your mistake, you’ll make more mistakes, more often.  You will seep away your own confidence.  You will become your own worst enemy.  If it isn’t you, it might be someone else who tries to shake your by rubbing your face in your mistakes. That is the problem with bosses you scream at you when you make mistakes.  They are basically inducing more mistakes.

If you follow these steps, you’ll learn something about yourself.  Yes, something caused you to make the mistake on a cursory level, but in some instances it is something deep within yourself.  Assess each mistake as an opportunity to learn more about what makes you tick.  That is the path to confidence.

You’ll also learn to be compassionate towards others who make mistakes.  Or at least that is what I would hope would happen, if you’re human.  Often times, people who refuse to look inward do a great job of pointing out the mistakes of others.  We’ve all had that boss who was quick to judge you, but doubly quick to justify their own mistakes with excuses, right?  Don’t be that person.

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Mistakes are a part of life.  The important thing is to learn from them, forgive yourself for them, and grow from them.  In short, be human.

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here. He is way funnier on social media, he claims. Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at [email protected].

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