By:Charles M. Hosch & Kathryne (Kate) M. Morris
Prompted by Mey Ly-Ortiz’s thoughtful invitation and in the spirit of the holidays, we’ve aggregated some of the best advice to young lawyers that we’ve come across and added some of our own, especially for young privacy and technology lawyers:
- You are joining a profession, not a business.
Do you appreciate the difference between a profession and a business? A business can prioritize its own bottom line, but a professional must put her clients’ interests ahead of her own. You owe your clients your highest competence, hardest work, and absolute honestly and fairness. You also owe duties to the Court, to the Constitution, and to those who can’t afford counsel. You must always be conscious of your duty to the judicial system. It deserves our reverence and protection.
Ignore the mercantilists that advise, “well, it’s all just a business now, so…” They have forgotten that a profession requires more of them.
The point is don’t fall into the trap of measuring yourself by how much money you make. Ask yourself, instead, how well you’ve served – how well you’ve helped – your clients, the courts, the Constitution, and others who’ve needed you.
2. Now that you’ve graduated law school, start really learning.
“The business of a lawyer is to know law.”
J. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Your real education starts when you combine academic study with the actual practice of law, serving clients. Be humble and realize how much you have to learn. Every new lawyer has immense blind spots, and learning to recognize them requires attention, commitment and training.
- Become a sponge: Learn something new, at least twice a day. You can attend CLEs, read law review and news articles, watch experienced lawyers in the courtroom, review redlines, read 10-Ks, listen in on phone calls, enroll in formal mentoring programs, ask experienced lawyers for speed mentoring sessions, and more. But you need to keep learning, focusing especially on developing your skills, and realizing that experienced lawyers / mentors are an invaluable resource.
- Re-read the rules / laws, from scratch: In practice, you’ll pick up insights you missed the day before. Plus, something may have changed overnight, and it’s important to always check for new guidance and regulations.
- See the big picture: Law school and even firms tend to bias toward encouraging the narrow, singular and specific (for example, specialty or niche practices), but most legal issues are not singular, and in fact, they usually involve several subjects at once. This means that you will be well-served if you focus early on broadening your perspective, skills and experiences. Learn how to see around and beyond narrow specialties and practice areas.
- Learn your client’s business: Learn the difference between advice that your client can’t afford to take, and advice she can’t afford not to take. Take it easy on the brilliant but un-executable advice. Save your credibility for the somber times when you have to tell your client what she must do, like it or not. (Justice Holmes again: “What the world pays for is judgment.”)
3. “Compliance” isn’t enough.
Compliance” isn’t an elusive state of grace. It simply means “conformity to current requirements.” We don’t minimize how hard that is to do, but it’s not enough.
Why not? Because every area touched by technology is moving into the future with mind-bending speed — making today’s standards and requirements obsolete by the time they’re issued. So if you’re satisfied with “compliance,” what you’re actually doing is letting obsolete practices congeal, and institutionalizing future risk.
Nowhere is that more true than in privacy.
4. To heck with incivility.
There’s no excuse for rudeness. Real lawyers look down on it. Civility is a bedrock quality, essential to our profession. Treat everyone equally and with respect, no matter how they may have provoked you; and be truthful, courteous, prompt, and prepared—whether you are on duty or off. For lawyers inside and outside of Texas, the Texas Lawyers’ Creed recites a standard to which all should aspire:
It only takes an internet connection to see how feverishly coarse (even violent) today’s common discourse has become. Call us optimists, but we predict that sometime within the next few years, the fever will start to break, and true civility and “professional courtesy,” will return as the mark of a true professional. When that happens, the ones for whom it’s been a way of life all along will have an advantage.
5. Style over substance spells doom.
You may have been urged to “start early, developing business.” But “fake it till you make it” only works in the movies. At every age, beware of letting your appearance outpace your substance, and never puff yourself up to look more capable or experienced than you really are. Not only is that unbecoming, but sooner or later you’ll be found out.
As a young lawyer, you will do far better developing business later if you focus on challenging yourself now, listening to others, learning new skills, developing meaningful relationships, and being conscientious and reliable. When people trust you, they will hire you.
6. Cultivate the right temperament for success.
Academic brains, grades, and so on claim an outsized share of the light, but they’re only a small part of what really makes a good lawyer. What really matters (in addition to impeccable competence) is temperament. Cultivate patience, endurance, and courage in yourself:
- Patience, because it takes a long time to develop these skills, and there are no shortcuts;
- Endurance, because practicing law is hard work. You will have set backs, but each failure is a learning opportunity, and no substitute for that, either;
- Courage, because the most important day in someone’s life may be spent in your hands.
Practicing these principles will lead you to professional success — the kind that really matters, which is being fulfilled by what you do and proud of how you serve your clients and this profession.
—
Charles M. Hosch and Kathryne (Kate) M. Morris are the co-founding members of Hosch & Morris, PLLC, a boutique law firm dedicated to data privacy and protection, cybersecurity, the Internet and technology. Open the Future℠.
