The Best Advice I Was Given As A Young Lawyer Part 1
by Ryan C. McKeen
I spend most of my day giving advice in one form or another. It’s a lot of ”do this” and “don’t do that.”
The learning curve for a young lawyer is steep. All of the sudden you have clients not named “Donald Defendant” or “Polly Plaintiff” and no court is ever moot.
It simply stops being enough to say “plaintiff will argue…” then “defendant will argue…” because your clients don’t want arguments they want answers and results.
I’m going to do a series of posts exploring the best advice that I was given as a young lawyer. The first piece of advice: Never miss an opportunity to learn.
As much as the practice of law is becoming increasingly specialized the truth is that to focus on anything you need to know something about most things to properly advise a client.
Just because you want to do real estate law and your first job has you doing bankruptcy work…don’t fret. It’s an opportunity to learn. For example, one of the chief concerns of real estate attorneys is to protect the client’s assets. At closings there are title searches, certificates of insurance and sometimes the formation of an LLC – all to protect the client’s investment.
It’s beyond the scope of this post but bankruptcy is also a tool to protect your clients interest in a piece of real property.
Learning the law takes many forms. As a young lawyer, you’ll learn from CLE’s, going to court, reading journals and blogs. Take every review you get and treat everything you do as a chance to learn something. Learning for the sake of learning is what becoming a lawyer is all about because the more you know the better lawyer you’ll be.
July 12th, 2009 at 2:20 am
I had an opportunity to spend 1/2 a day in court on a recent rainy day @ Cape Cod. Just sat on a back bench in Probate court and watched the proceedings. Glad I did.
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July 20th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Legal Base provides a reference point for legal information.
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July 21st, 2009 at 5:33 am
I was always taught that you should strive to learn something new every day. It keeps the mind fresh and the imagination sharp. Opportunities to learn are all around you if you just take the time to pay attention.
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