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Robbins: How to be a lawyer

There’s the preliminary stuff, of course: get up, get out of bed, drag a comb across your head … oops, wrong soundtrack.

Go to K through 12, do pretty good, get into college, do pretty well, take the LSAT, knock it out, apply to law school, get admitted, study your backside off, graduate, prepare like a demon for the bar exam, sit for the bar exam (in my day — in California — a grueling three-day 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. exam with a 42% pass rate), gnaw your fingers to the quick waiting for results, if you’re among the lucky and tenacious 42%, pay your fees, take an oath, and voilà, you are a freshly minted lawyer. But my, oh my, that’s just the start.

Now you have to figure out what you’re doing.



Unlike med school (with which I have passing acquaintance as well) where you get to work with stuff (like cadavers and real honest-to-goodness patients), law school is mostly theory. Unlike med school, too, which is followed most times by an internship, law school graduation is more like a sparrow chick being flung rudely from its nest without a kit bag or a compass. You are on your own now! Better flap those wings and learn to fly!

If you are lucky, like I was, when I was a brand-new hatchling lawyer, if your resume is strong enough to land you with a gonzo firm where the guys more senior than you actually know what they’re doing, and, if you are doubly lucky, they take a shine to you or at least take pity on you, they will tuck you neatly beneath their wings and teach you, so to speak, the legal ropes.

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“This one is a clover hitch, that one is a bowline, and this other is a sheet bend and here, son, is how a clever lawyer unties them.”

After a couple of years, more mistakes than you will care to remember, and your post-graduation swagger hopefully being a bit less swaggery, maybe you can at last call yourself a real lawyer. They call it practice for a reason.

But besides all the preliminary stuff, there are other things you have to master. And so, with your permission, a few lessons about how to be a lawyer, stuff they most definitely did not teach you in law school.

  • The client comes first.  Even though you have every right to charge fees for your services — someone has to pay back those student loans after all! — your job is to represent the client. The client’s interests must come before yours.
  • Return phone calls. Promptly. While it may not be neurosurgery we’re practicing here, whatever reason a client has hired us is an important matter to the client. Just like none of us like cooling our heels in a doctor’s office waiting interminably for the doc, no one likes to feel that the lawyer’s golf game is more important than the legal thing that’s dear to them.
  • Treat your client, other lawyers, clerks, paralegals, staff, and pretty much everyone else courteously. Not only is it the right thing to do — and will make you feel better about yourself — but kindness and consideration pay dividends. No one wants to give ground to a jerk.
  • Say please and thank you. A lot. And mean it. What goes around comes around.
  • Be prepared. Or maybe over-prepared. Don’t make an ass of yourself or your client by fumbling around. Don’t waste the court’s or other people’s time. Being unprepared means that you do not care enough to do your work.
  • Do what you say you’re going to do. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. That doesn’t mean that things don’t change unpredictably sometimes — in fact, in law, it is as much the rule as the exception — but when the ground moves under you, explain why to your client.
  • Do what you say you’re going to do on time. And if you can’t, explain precisely why.
  • See both the forest and the trees. Always keep sight of the goal but bear in mind too that everyone likes a neat and well-defined path to reaching it.
  • Keep it simple stupid! Never speak down to a client or be condescending but neither should you speak in legalese or acronyms without endeavoring your utmost to make clear what you’re trying to convey.
  • Encourage the client to ask questions. As many as she or he needs to make sure the two of you are on the same wavelength and she or he is comfortable with the plan.
  • Admit when you are wrong. We all make mistakes. The coverup is most times worse than the crime.
  • Be interested in people. At the end of the day, every legal matter is a chapter in the book of someone’s life.
  • Push back when pushing back is the right thing to do. Sometimes the client is wrong or wants something that practically or legally can’t be done. Say so. Say so too when the client is right, and don’t claim credit for the client’s or someone else’s good idea.
  • Make practicing law fun. Other lawyers are good people too. Enjoy their company, intellect, and banter. Your days will be much, much brighter.
  • Remember why you became a lawyer. Be passionate and be an advocate. We are blessed to be the nursemaids to the law.
  • Be generous. With your time, with your money, with praise and kindness to others. Be a mentor. Tithe pro bono work. Looking out is almost always a more rewarding view than looking in.

After almost four decades of hacking at the coal mine of law, that’s what I’ve learned and what, in my practice, has made this a career instead of the drudgery of a job.

Rohn K. Robbins is an attorney licensed before the Bars of Colorado and California who practices Of Counsel in the Vail Valley with the Law Firm of Caplan & Earnest, LLC. His practice areas include business and commercial transactions; real estate and development; family law, custody, and divorce; and civil litigation. He may be reached at 970-926-4461 or at Rrobbins@CELaw.com. His novels, “How to Raise a Shark (an apocryphal tale),” “The Stone Minder’s Daughter,” and “Why I Walk so Slow” are currently available at Barnes and Noble & Amazon.com.


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