Trying Cases Will Differentiate Yourself
Surprisingly most attorneys never try a case in court and if you are looking to become a trial attorney then you need to get a leg up. These lack of encounters by other attorneys taught me something important. No matter the amount of lawyers that will take you directly on is irrelevant. But if you are a successful criminal defense trial attorney, and if you have actually proved that you can obtain the results even in hard situations, then you have something that few other attorneys have. You have something that makes you different from all the other legal representatives.
Your Competitors Will Refer Legal Business to You.
Since I began trying cases, I have also tried a variety of other kinds of cases, from the “soft tissueā€¯to the “mild TBI” type cases in California. Very early on I realized that there are some extremely hard cases and situations that a lot of legal professionals do not want to take on or desire. Some of them were due to being new kinds of criminal cases in technology which other attorneys had never faced nor wanted to. This allowed me and my generation an opportunity where there was no legal competition.
Today I obtain referrals from attorneys throughout California and the United States for criminal defense cases. A lot of my legal work is DUI, violent crimes, murder charges, etc. However, I would not be obtaining these cases today if I had not been taking on the most difficult cases that nobody wanted in the early years of my career. I would be just another attorney aiming to make a living without any way to differentiate myself. These very early trial situations helped me obtain the experience I needed.
Lots of lawyers are frightened to go to trial and stand before a judge and go up against another attorney. For my firm this is great because it allows me to be the best at what I do. When I tell my very own tale to various other lawyers, I’m constantly amazed at the feedback I obtain. Several lawyers assume that I am gifted and rare because they are not able to do what I can. Nothing could be additionally from the truth. We all start at the same point of having no idea what we are doing. It is those of us who can take on failure and try to be successful that is what helps us beat out our competition and be the best trial attorney.
Investing in Legal Yourself
Put the time into yourself. Just because school is over does not mean that you do not need to continue to study and learn. The main suggestion I offer to young lawyers that you have to invest in yourself. This should be the financial investment that is your top concern. Regardless of exactly how busy you are, how many hours you put into your firm, you have to invest in yourself.
In the first few years of my law practice, I would make sure to put aside an hour per day reading topics that would help me be better at what I did. I would read test depositions, visit seminars, review books with journals on trial advocacy and much more. I had files that documented every stage of trial, from voir dire to shutting down a debate. I had notes on what other trial attorneys would say during a cross examination to how I needed to advertise to get more clients.
Now, all these years later these notes and documentation have turned into a process that I use for every case for my junior attorneys to follow.
A lot of what we do in life needs to be learned through experience and repetition. You have to commit the to the time to learn these lessons due to the fact that you will not discover how to practice law in college. You need to learn everything about the underlying causes and become an expert at what the case center around. If you deal a lot with insurance companies than you should take a class on insurance or get your insurance license. The more you know the better an attorney you can be. No lawyer merely wakes up one day with understands how you can do all of this. It requires devoted study, trial advocacy, persuasion, communication (and also this definitely consists of just how not to talk with act like an attorney), and the legislation around what you are trying and your practice. Once more, it all needs to be learned over time and cannot be instantly apparent.