I get calls and emails all of the time from law students and lawyers who want to start their own law firms. I try to give them my best thoughts and earned opinions to their questions.
Is it appreciated?
Who really knows.
But, I can tell you with many there is a great deal of apathy, halfheartedness or lassitude in the responses. It is a passiveness really boardering on "oh, do I have to".
I understand it. It is someone telling you that it is not going to be a piece of cake to do what you want. It is some one stating things you believe are true, but do not want to do or hear.
What I have learned over the years (too many to count really) is that advice is plentiful. Some people charge for it. Some, like me, offer it freely. And, everyone has an opinion on something. A diversity of opinion is good. You can take it all in, absorb it, and combine the various bits of advice to make your own.
It is not that most lawyers do not want the advice. It is that mere advice is not what they really want. They are wanting someone to do it for them, or at least walk with them through every step. A hand holder. A doer. A confidant is not often enough. Lawyers have come to realize that opinions and advice do not represent action.
You see, advice is easy. It is easy to give, and it is easy to take. It is easy to formulate.
It is executing that is hard (if not just downright impossible) for many people. It requires a sense of purpose, and a sticktoitness that most people cannot imagine themselves doing. You cannot have poor execution habits and expect to succeed. This leads to trepidation.
Most of us can invision ourselves in the final analysis. We can see us as the lawyer, in the nice office, with lots of staff do our bidding, with plenty of time for luxury and vacations. The thought of working hard and playing hard is appealing. It is just the road to that destination that is hard to imagine.
The easy thing is to start at the end with the office and staff, and then to work backward. Although this rarely works out right, this is what you see most new lawyers doing.
There is also an element of faith. If I blindly start down the path I have to know that everything will work out alright.
I tend to think that poor execution habits and a lack of faith is why lawyers and law students want to team up for the journey when there is not enough to feed and care for one. The thought of not being alone is comforting. There is the thought that it will overcome one's culture of resistence to execution. The thought is that somehow a partner will add accountability for execution.
Within most of us there is just a resistance to change. Add this to a lack of discipline, and it can get tough.
To me, it is kind of like trying to put eye drops in your own eye. It is counterintuitive. But, an eye doctor can do it because he, and not you, is in control of the drops.
This is why people, including me at stages in my life, do not seem to get a firm off the ground until we are place in a position of failure. You can say it causes us to focus on priorities, but I think it forces us off our butts to get something done that might otherwise be uncomfortable for us to do otherwise.
It is like the story of the salesman the visits an old country home. The family is on the front porch. As he is trying to pitch the family the old blood hound is just whining, monaing and groaning. The salesman asks, "what's wrong with your dog". The man spits and says, "he's layin' on a nail". The salesman asks, "why doesn't the dog just move?" The man spits again and says, "ain't hurtin' 'nough for 'em to move."
And, that is how it really is with most of us.
I could tell you about goals and plans and the like. That is the easy advice. But, no amount of advice is going to be enough unless you have the gall to execute on it. Nobody is going to do it for you. And, the truth of the matter is that you are not going to move until it is hurting you enough that you cannot stand to lay in place.
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