It’s been a while since I’ve had the pleasure to welcome someone new to the blawgosphere. Meet Just Plead the Fifth, a Millennial lawyer’s mix of images, quotes, platitudes and commentary. It’s not about marketing. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to figure out who’s behind the blawg. That leaves content.
It’s opening salvo is an old question, how the young lawyer deals with the unfortunate reality that they are, if nothing else, inexperienced.
You shake his hand. You introduce yourself. You explain confidentiality. You explain attorney-client privilege. You then ask him if he has any questions.
“Are you good?”
Marketeers have done two troubling things over the past decade. First, they’ve convinced new lawyers that they will die without marketeering, as no client will ever retain a lawyer who doesn’t puff himself shamelessly. “If you don’t toot your own horn, who will?”* So marketeer, they must, since no one wants their practice to die a brutal, painful death.
The second is that they need to conceal the fact that they aren’t an old, wizened, experienced lawyer. There are tons of websites that tell clients how to select a lawyer, and all include a deeply problematic question: how many cases like this have you handled before?
It’s a silly question. There are no “cases like this” to a good lawyer. Every case is new, unique, different, whether because its facts and circumstances are different, the defendant is different or, if nothing else, the approach to defense is crafted specifically for that one case. Good lawyers don’t see “garden variety” cases. They see their cases, and their cases are special. Every single one of them.
But clients walk in with the expectation that a lawyer experienced in handling a particular type of case will have the dreaded experience. And yes, experience matters. Brilliant as you may be, there are things you can only learn by doing. And failing. And doing better. This comes of experience, and experience belongs to more senior lawyers.
But I am not one of them. I’m a junior lawyer, having graduated law school only a few years ago. I have no real courtroom war stories to share or results to advertise. I just have a “good” resume and the resolve to become the best attorney I can be. But that’s not what clients want to hear.
So you’re not a household name? New lawyers don’t flock to your knee to listen to your war stories, to hear your kernels of wisdom? Are you screwed?
Experience is important. It really is. There’s a reason why every law firm website has a “Results” page** (with a “these results cannot be used to predict results in future cases” disclosure). But experience is not everything. Experience does not write that late-night motion, challenge the police officer on the stand, or deliver the closing argument that seals your client’s acquittal.
There is a truth buried in there that is worthy of note. Experience is a virtue, but it only matters if it’s built upon a foundation of capability and zeal. If a bright young lawyer starts out with the recognition that he has much to learn, but that it’s all to serve one goal, the client, then the foundation exists for experience to matter.
Experience is not a substitute for the zealous representation your client needs.
Nothing is a substitute for the zealous representation of your client. No matter how experienced a lawyer is, no matter how brilliant he thinks of himself, if the focus isn’t singularly on zealously representing the client, then it doesn’t matter. This is why lawyers exist, why we are given the honor of being responsible for other people’s lives and fortunes. Everything else you’re told is a lie. It’s only about the client.
You, however, have to start somewhere. And I submit that with tireless work, humility to learn from others, and the determination to leave no stone unturned, you can make up for lack of experience. You can be a good lawyer, and you can confidently answer your client’s question, giving him the comfort he needs.
It’s unclear to me whether zeal, effort and a quality almost non-existent these days, humility, make up for lack of experience. They’re not alternatives, as the same holds true for more senior lawyers. Experience without these virtues is empty. There are lawyers with tons of experience but no zeal, who go through the motions without caring. I would take the young lawyer with zeal over the old lawyer with experience any day. I would take the lawyer with zeal and experience over both.
But not every client can afford that perfect lawyer, that Dream Team, that household name. And they can’t take on every person who asks for their help, much as they may want to. So they turn to a newer, less experienced lawyer, and ask the silly question they’re told by the marketeers to ask.
You shake his hand. You introduce yourself. You explain confidentiality. You explain attorney-client privilege. You then ask him if he has any questions.
“Are you good?”
“No, I’m fucking great.”
Saying it doesn’t make it so. Creating a website that shamelessly puffs oneself, while concealing the unpleasant details like your year of law school graduation and bar admission, doesn’t make it so. Being willing to do the work, to learn, to try, and try again, and to dedicate oneself to zealously representing the client? That makes an inexperienced lawyer great.
And with experience, the lawyer will be even greater. Welcome to the blawgosphere. Its good to have a Millennial lawyer who appreciates why we’re here.
*Clients for whom you’ve busted your butt, that’s who. The best referrals are from clients whom you’ve served well.
**Not every law firm website.
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Thanks, Scott. I appreciate your kind words and advice. Your commentary has given me a new way to answer the “are you good” question. I’ve actually never answered it the way I suggested in my post; I’ve always skirted around it. Your comments suggest that when they ask that question, I help the client define what they mean by “good” followed by an explanation of why both zeal and experience are important. And that if they are only able to get a lawyer with one of those, to go with zeal. I plan to do that going forward.
Thanks again, Scott.
Welcome to the blawgosphere. There are few things I appreciate more than new lawyers who are dedicated to the zealous representation of their clients. As we see the screams of narcissism and entitlement from the legal peanut gallery, we fear that there will be no next gen of lawyers who understand why the legal profession exists, whom we exist to serve, why we’re given a monopoly on the right to hold other people’s lives in our hands in court.
It’s lawyers like you who restore our faith that there will be great lawyers in the future, who aren’t more concerned for themselves than their clients and who don’t think their causes trump their clients. There are good reasons for the Millennial stereotype, but there is no good reason why any individual lawyer can’t rise above the stereotype. Thanks for being that kind of lawyer.
Did somebody just pea on the Fifth. Say it ain’t so!
Someday, when you have a big law budget, your marketer will remind you daily to avoid writing: justpeadthe5th.com as a signature.
For the time being, it’s anon. A marketeer’s nightmare.
You’re right. How could we question the intentions or attention to detail of a baby-lawyer who has an Etsy store filled with teeshirts that say ‘Hot Chicks Just Please the 5th’ and a ‘Contact Us’ form on his ‘anonymous’ website? It couldn’t possibly be that he just forgot to reveal his name? Or that he’s taking advice about the best way to attract the interest and favor of curmudgeonly daddy-lawyers who refer lots of smaller cases out?
Or I know who the baby-lawyer is and why the blawg is anon? And what makes you think it’s a he, you shitlord?
Yes, it’s all a tad unclear to me as well. They don’t call it “practicing medicine”, or “practicing law” for no good reason. The reason is treason. It’s the season of the Witch.
We shall add it to the list of things unclear to you, Bill.
Thanx, we don’t hear that song much anymore. But what happened to the first part of my comment? Let me guess: It was *off topic*–in your mind, naturally. Ha.
Not to worry, I can re-write. Just as easily as I can re-read some of your more prolix essays. It really is the Season of the Witch. It’s a jungle out there in the land of law and order. Ha. Only the fittest survive. If you’re not packing, you need to wear a Brooks Brothers suit, silk tie and shiny black dress shoes.
Prolix? Ouch.
Don’t play dumb. We’ve been thru this before!
Who’s playing?
That banner, though. I hope he/she/they figure out that it’s pretty unfriendly to readers to have your site banner take up the entire visible window/screen, depending on aspect ratio.
Still, agree that it’s great to see young lawyers who place the needs of their clients ahead of their own feels.
Given my amazing aesthetic, as reflected by my exceptionally well designed header, I defer to everyone’s judgment but my own.
Of course, newbies won’t know the judges and won’t know the prosecutors. They also won’t know the local system, including established convention as to what is customarily accepted unchallenged. Sometimes, this is an advantage to the client, because the new lawyer follows a workmanlike approach and challenges foundations (such as lab practices) that have gone unchecked for thirty years. Sometimes, the workmanlike newbie finds, in the course of that exercise, that the foundations have grown rotten over those thirty years, and a massive scandal follows, impacting thousands of cases.
It doesn’t take long to get the lay of the land. It does take effort. It will not be accomplished by playing Candy Crush in the office.
New lawyers dilemma, what to do with all that time between cases. It does afford the opportunity to work the existing cases exhaustively. What pops out at me most often with newbies getting in trouble is they don’t have a handle yet on client/case screening, and are inclined to just take everything, because they are hungry. Too often they end up taking more cases than they can handle, and become so overextended, they end up missing critical facts in a file that could be a home run. I think that has to be one of the most important cautions starting out. Do the front-end evaluative work, and don’t take every case.
While a good point (also addressed here in the past), not the topic here.
I was almost going to make the point that you have pics of much hotter chics on your blog (https://blog.simplejustice.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/roxanegay.jpg) than theirs. And for good reason.
Almost.
Forgive me.
“Marketeers have done two troubling things over the past decade. First, they’ve convinced new lawyers that they will die without marketeering, as no client will ever retain a lawyer who doesn’t puff himself shamelessly. “If you don’t toot your own horn, who will?”* So marketeer, they must, since no one wants their practice to die a brutal, painful death.
The second is that they need to conceal the fact that they aren’t an old, wizened, experienced lawyer. There are tons of websites that tell clients how to select a lawyer, and all include a deeply problematic question: how many cases like this have you handled before?”
This is a ridiculous, blanket statement your talking about branding and as a full-time professional marketer, it’s something I spend about 2% of my time on. Making statements like this, as you are a big-time lawyer, reveals the level of misunderstanding that continues to allow scenarios such as when otherwise uninterested groups of marketers to take a rip everytime someone searches for terms related to a certain tort class and then refers the qualified plaintiffs to cooperating law firms because they built a digital engine to middle the market; Which is no help to the clients since there is less budget available for their representation.
Conveying this animus to a new generation of lawyers potentially robs them of the opportunity to fully explore and understand the myriad of options available to them. You do them a disservice by being a marketing curmudgeon.
Nope.
lol. Your disagreement was assumed. I’m just riding the high from spanking you in that other post today.
I am shocked to learn you’re a marketeer. Shocked. SHOCKED!!!
However, having just read your other comment, I don’t think spanking means what you think it means.