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Summary: A successful attorney needs to be confident but the job constantly beats away any confidence attorneys have from every direction until they give up.
The Most Important Characteristic Attorneys Need to Succeed and Why It Is Almost Impossible for Them to Keep It will teach you more.
Confidence is needed in every career in order to be successful but not many jobs pick away at confidence like the legal industry. Attorneys start out with confidence only to have many factors from the industry pick away at what they start with until they are left with nothing but disappointment and depression. Harrison Barnes explains each stage of the legal career and how confidence is stripped away.
Potential law students lose confidence when applying to law school. There are hundreds of thousands of students applying for positions at the top law schools but only a small amount of those are actually selected. You may have top grades and a great LSAT score but that does not guarantee a spot at a prestigious law firm. Many students don’t understand this and think either they will get in no problem or that attending a less prestigious law school is no big deal. This is not the case. The law school you get accepted at will greatly affect your future after law school. Students that don’t understand this have their confidence destroyed before they even finish school.
Harrison Barnes Takes on the Tough Question of “What’s the Point?”
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Law students then get their confidence trampled on when they don’t get the coveted summer positions their first summer. They see their fellow students procuring these positions with top law firms and immediately start to feel inadequate. They may have great grades but without confidence they won’t be able to land the positions that will carry them on to success.
New attorneys are able to make it through the application process to law school and then law school with some confidence only to be lucky enough to obtain a job at a law firm and have it beaten down more. The hours are intense and the criticism even more so. Many attorneys never make it past their first year of work because they can’t handle the demands of the job. An attorney that is able to hang on to their confidence will have a much better chance of being successful.
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First to sixth year attorneys are at the peak of their marketability. They have made it through to prove themselves valuable to the firm. The criticism will start to ease up and their job should remain stable as long as there is still work to do. Unfortunately, they are still expected to work long, hard hours. At this point, the health of many attorneys is not great since they have been so focused on working that taking care of themselves is an afterthought.
Senior associates, young of counsel, and young junior partners are the next level that attorneys must make it through with hopefully some confidence intact. By this point, these attorneys will be pulling in very healthy salaries but they are not usually bringing in their own business, leaving them vulnerable. However, even with business, many attorneys have their confidence shaken when they try to find a new firm.
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Established partners must face the constant attack of bringing in enough business to keep their salary. Partners realize that they work their butts off to bring in millions of work for the firm but are only paid a small amount. They then lose trust in the firm and will move from one law firm to another every few years in order to make as much money as possible.
The only thing attorneys can do is find a way to regain some confidence. When attorneys have confidence, they will be able to believe that they should get the most important work, are always going to succeed, can get clients, and will win cases and get the better end of deals. For long-term success, an attorney needs to be hang on to whatever confidence they can.
Photo: forbes.com
