Monthly Archives: March 2017

Lessons For The Young Attorney – From An Old Attorney: Lesson No. 2 (Is This Really How You’re Supposed To Practice Law?)

To my young colleague: thank you for dropping back in for “Lesson No. 2″….hop in and take a ride with me, and I’ll tell you this brief story, and all you have to do is just listen quietly.

After graduating from law school I knew that I wanted to return to my hometown (Anderson) to begin practicing law because after 7 straight years of living there, Columbia was too hot for me in the summer, too cold in the winter, and already overcrowded with attorneys, and I knew that I could be a great “fit” for the larger, mainline law firms in Anderson.  I was wrong about that.

I first interviewed with the largest law firm in Anderson at the time (all of them were excellent attorneys, and brilliant, who universally enjoyed great area, even statewide, reputations).  All the partners gathered around their conference room table to interview me, and the most senior partner began by asking me two questions: what areas of the law practice were the most interesting to me, and what was my graduating grade point average from law school?  WHAT!!!!  And so with that, after I answered I believed I could be a “pretty good” TRIAL attorney and gave them my GPA (I’ll never reveal it here, so let’s just say it was high enough to let me graduate from law school), the interview was over!  Record time. They thanked me for meeting with them, and they were gracious enough to let one of the partners “show me around” their law library and walk me to my car.

Four months, 2 more “live” interviews, and around 8 “cold calls” to Anderson attorneys later, in December, 1973, I was hired as an associate by a two-man partnership at an annual salary of $9,000.  Both attorneys were excellent (the “senior partner” was the Circuit Solicitor at the time, and the “junior partner” was also a terrific trial attorney, but they had completely different and compelling personalities and work ethic.  And in the time I was with them, they each became my mentors and my tor-mentors.  But to their everlasting credit, they instilled in me the early awakenings of what would become my love for the practice of law…and here’s why:

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Lessons For The Young Attorney – From An Old Attorney: Lesson No. 1

My intent is to take my time and really try to put some thought and effort into writing a series intended to focus on an “audience of just one” – on some young attorney out there who has practiced law for less than 5 years and who, even now, is wondering if he or she made the right career decision by choosing law school over, well, any other post-college career path.  And I’m driven to do this because, after now practicing law for almost 44 years, there have been so many times in my professional life where I have wondered if I made the right decision….and because the older one gets the more melancholy one becomes, I realize that my “professional clock” is winding down, and that the only “footprint” I can possibly leave is to share my wisdom (and there is very little wisdom) and my experience (but there is a great deal of experience, both good and bad) with the youngest of my colleagues.

I plan to include some anecdotal stories from my earliest days of practicing law up to the present time – but I promise to try and not bore you too much with these tales (and I certainly don’t intend on making this a “diary”, because then I would bore myself); and I will offer you only the ones which I hope will help you avoid the pitfalls and problems and agonies I experienced going through them (and maybe you would have even shared some of these exact same “experiences” with me).  And I will then give you a number of suggestions and lessons and “maxims” and ideas which I hope will keep you centered and moving forward in this most difficult of professions.

Let’s start.

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