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JEAN LAWLER:
Hello, I'm Jean Lawler. Welcome to the ROADS TO Resolution ~Closure and ~Certainty Podcast. As a mediator I am honored to be invited into other people's lives for a few hours, like all of our lives shaped by the many roads that have brought us to our "today", and roads leading to the unexpected, and roads holding the promise of "tomorrow". Thank you so much for joining me today. It's a pleasure to be here with you as we talk about how to be a fantastic lawyer and a good human. Yes. How to be a fantastic lawyer and a good human. The choices you make dictate the rest of your lives. So let's talk about being a good human and a fantastic lawyer at the office.
First of all, there's the cases. You know, your legal knowledge is really what you went to law school for, and so ultimately the goal is to be an excellent lawyer, a trusted advisor, a counselor, and a wonderful trial attorney, if that's where you go. Whatever the skill set is that you need to develop to achieve the level of--I hate to use the word "success"--but to be able to be at the top of your field, to be able to do that is, in fact, what you need to do as you develop and grow as a lawyer, and all of this tends to come over time and through experiences. I have been a lawyer for 40 years--or more than 40 years now--it is hard to believe. And I was a managing partner of my former law firm, we had five offices here on the West Coast. And, going through that process I would regularly mentor younger lawyers as I moved along in my career, and still do today. So, I would never underestimate the cases and the need to become an expert so to speak, or competent, competent of course is the first level, for whatever field it is you've chosen. But recognize that competence doesn't mean that you have to know everything. You can't know everything. I used to say that half of the practice of being a lawyer is knowing where to go to find answers to things, and then of course, intuition, and the sense of giving good advice, wisdom, that sort of thing is what it all ties together with, and what holds it all together. So there's that.
Then in addition to your cases, there's client development, and so at the office you do need to be able to develop clients. Client service is key, no matter where you are in your career, and the more client service you provide, then the more clients you will develop as you go along, and then the more valuable you become to your firm or your company, or whoever it is, but definitely to the clients the more valuable you become. They do say, or it is said, that clients hire lawyers, not firms, and there's a lot to be said for that. So you want to be so valuable to your clients that not only do they respect you and look to you for good solid advice, but that you have the ability to bring work into the firm. That is key, because only when work comes into the firm--if you're in a firm environment, for example--is there work to do for yourself, or for the other lawyers that are younger than you or coming behind. So client development is key, but then professional development.
Professional development can not be understated. You need to invest in yourself, throughout your whole career, and the more you invest in yourself, the more you are better able to serve your clients, serve your firm, and give back to your community, to your family, whatever it might be. So in this regard, I would say join professional organizations. Don't join them just to have them on a resume. Pick and choose which ones tie into your practice area or into the kind of work that you like to do, want to do, that you do do, that your firm does, things like that. You might be able to see in my background, there's a picture. Yes, I'm with Margaret Thatcher, and that is due to my having served as a program chair for one of the Southern California Defense Counsel Association meetings when she came a a speaker, and I was program chair there and so, yes, I got to meet Margaret Thatcher, have my picture taken with her, have her sign that picture, which is special, but then I was also able to mingle my family life with my professional life. I brought my three daughters to that program to hear her speak, and they still talk about that today, and we all--we still do talk about that. It was inspirational. In fact, at their school, the principal and their teachers did not believe that they were going to a lunch with Margaret Thatcher, when I wrote the excuse letter. Then we brought the pictures, and they did.
So anyway, those three things really tie-in to making you your best…lawyer that you can be, but then, what about the other part of your life, your at-home life. Self-care, of course. You know, people use that “work-life balance”--I personally think of that as a phrase. There is no such thing as perfect balance in life for anything, but self-care...Taking care of yourself, taking care of your family, if you have one, your partner, if you have one, whatever it might be. You need to take care of yourself. If you don't take care of yourself, then you're really in no position to care for anyone else, and you're really not your best self at the office or anywhere else. So I'm not a therapist here, but I would say, just remember, put yourself first, especially women. We tend to put ourselves last behind everybody else and everything else, always giving--and I'm not saying that men don't--but women, just a sense of the nurturer aspect...Well that's all fine and dandy, but make sure that you put yourself, in at least as equal position so that you can then care for those that you love and do that well.
So then, superheroes only exist in comic books, they don't exist in real life. As I was coming up the ranks, it was like you could do everything, you know, that old Helen Reddy song about fry up the bacon and do whatever, that you could be Superwoman. Well, you can't be. No one can be Superman or Superwoman. So it's all a balancing act. And so keep your priorities, is really the bottom line on that one then.
And the importance of friendship...I can't stress that enough. So often we get tied up with our work, and we live at the office, maybe, and our friends might be the first ones to drop by the wayside, because we're tied up with everything else that we're doing. Don't let that happen. It's hard to not let it happen… Book groups that I wouldn't make the meetings…Or just different things. Just don't let your friends go by the wayside. They're there for you and you need to be there for them, and they make such a difference in life. So, basically, you do these kinds of things...The choices you make, they dictate your life. And it's said, "it's never too late to pivot." And I would just say, do your best. Carpe diem. Seize each day and make it your best life. And you be the best lawyer and the best person--human--that you can be. Thanks so much for joining me today. Please follow me on LinkedIn, on my YouTube channel, and find me on my website, LawlerADR.com. Thanks so much. Goodbye.
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