So the economy remains problematic and jobs are hard to find.  That doesn’t stop milliennials from believing that they, each of them individually, will do spectacularly well in their lives.  They believe.  From the New York Times, Tali Sharot writes:

THIS month American college seniors will don caps and gowns. As they await receipt of their diplomas, they will absorb lessons handed to them by the accomplished men and women who deliver commencement speeches. More often than not the speakers will be outliers: rare individuals who made it against all odds. More often than not their message will be “dreams come true … take chances … if you try hard enough you will succeed.”

“Don’t know that you can’t fly, and you will soar like an eagle,” Earl E. Bakken, founder of the medical technology company Medtronic, told the University of Hawaii’s class of 2004. “You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future,” Steven P. Jobs told Stanford’s 2005 graduates.

The thing about outliers is that they’re outliers.  There is a reason why they are getting the honorary degree, providing the final note of inspiration before sending graduates on their way, and the cashier at the Piggly Wiggly is not.

We now know that underestimating the obstacles life has in store lowers stress and anxiety, leading to better health and well-being. This is one reason optimists recover faster from illnesses and live longer. Believing a goal is attainable motivates us to get closer to our dreams. Because of the power of optimism, enhancing graduates’ faith in the American dream by presenting them with rare examples as proof may be just what the doctor ordered. Their hopes may not be fully realized, but they will be more successful, healthier and happier if they hold on to positively biased expectations.

About ten years into practice, criminal defense lawyers talk amongst themselves, usually over an alcoholic beverage, how they can continue doing this.  The exuberance of youth is gone.  The belief that truth and justice will prevail is the set up for a punchline to a joke (appeal immediately!!!).  It’s disheartening going into court, day after day, only to be smacked again, first by the judge and then by the client.  Why bother?

For those who began their careers with a twinkle in their eye and ideals in their heart, this is where cynicism becomes overwhelming, the sense that there’s no winning for trying.  It’s where lawyers stop worrying about trying and only about getting paid.  It’s where lawyers give up, and yet continue.

As a charter member of the  legal  curmudgeons club, much of my written efforts are intended to take the bloom off the rose for the unduly optimistic.  They may feel good about themselves, but their optimism puts clients at grave risk, their inability to reasonably assess the risks means that those who pay the price for their lawyerly delusions, the defendants, are being advised to take chances, employ tactics, that reflect the lawyer’s hopefulness.  When things don’t go as well as hoped, the lawyer goes home, feeling pretty darned awful, and the defendant goes to prison, feeling even more awful.

There’s a flip side, even to a curmudgeon.  Once you accept the fact that life isn’t fair, that platitudes are only good for engraving on lintels and that the life you’ve chosen means you’re going to have a perpetual headache, you stop feeling bad about the law, about yourself, about the unpaid bills, and start realizing that the best we can hope for is to help one person.  That’s not such a bad thing.  And if we’re relatively fortunate, we can become serial helpers, and do it again.

Shalot’s point is that unreasonable optimism, the sort that let’s people believe they need not save for retirement or check out that lump in their breast, is just foolish, but the loss of optimism, the belief that you can accomplish something, will waste your life.

There is no point in bemoaning every perceived wrong and injustice in life.  We’re not so special, so wonderful, that we can fix it all.  Let it go.  At the same time, every once in a while we help a person, we save one person from falling into the abyss.  When that happens, it’s magnificent.  It may not register on your personal Richter Scale at the time, but you can bet it changed the life of a defendant, her family, her children. 

I had a chat with one of my protégés yesterday, who finished a trial in a case that I sent to him.  From the outset, it looked like a dead loser, a decent guy who made boneheaded decisions that created the appearance of guilt when there need not have been any.  He did it for a woman, who was the one who called me about the case, She was a monumental PITA on the phone, and must have called me back a dozen times to ask more questions.  At no point did she comprehend that her man sat in jail for doing her bidding.

The trial resulted in acquittal on the top two counts and hung on the bottom two.  It was a great verdict, given the facts, and my friend should have been very proud of himself for having done an excellent job.  Instead, he was depressed, feeling as if he had blown the one chance the defendant had to win.  Retrial will not be as kind.

I metaphorically smacked him through the telephone.  “Who are you to be so arrogant as to whine about achieving less than perfection?” 

Maybe someone reading this post will turn out to be the next Gerry Spence, if you believe his press releases.  But the rest of you, of us, won’t be the outlier.  So we’re relegated to banging our head against a wall day after day, and taking our victories in pieces, one case, one client, one issue at a time.  This is what we do.  This is the best we can hope for.

When you expect too much, and don’t achieve it, you fall into the funk and give up.  When you expect nothing, you will most assuredly achieve it, but there will be purpose to your being a lawyer.  When you grow up and realize that you do help others, you can make a difference, even though it won’t happen every time, and that the only choice available is to continue to try your best every time, you will have served a purpose.

Life may be a toilet, but it’s better to look at it as a toilet half full.  Helping one person, one life, is still worthwhile, even if you can’t save them all.  Now when can I get my honorary degree?