welcome. my name is keith bybee, i'm a professorat the college of law and the maxwell school. in conjunction with dean arterian, i organizethe 1l convocation speaker series. and this is a series that selects distinguished individualsand brings them to campus for lectures that are open to the university community but thatare really designed for the interest and benefit of the 1l class. and this year's series kicksof with a lecture by one of our own faculty, professor greg germain. the title of his lectureis good lawyer, bad lawyer: what makes the difference. professor germain joined the collegeof law in 2002. he teaches and conducts research in areas of taxation, commercial law, bankruptcyand corporate law. he publishes widely on the subject of bankruptcy. in 2009, professorgermain, working with legal services, established
an internship at the college of law that isnow actually a clinic, through which 2nd and 3rd year law students work with people goingthrough bankruptcy. students help gather information, prepare filings, and represent clients incourt. before professor gemain came to join us in 2002, he practiced law for 17 years,first as an associate and latham and watkins in los angeles, then as an associate for landis,ripley, and diamond in san francisco. he was also a judicial extern for the honorable lloydking, chief justice of the us bankruptcy court for the northern district of california, andlater he was an attorney advisor for the honorable renato begley of the us tax court. professorgermain has been around the block, and he's here to tell you today about his trip. beforei turn over the lectern to professor germain,
let me just tell you a few things about protocol.we will conclude today by 12:50 at the latest so you have an opportunity to get back toyour classes. after professor germain is done speaking, there will be an opportunity forq&a. if you do have a question, i just ask that you raise your hand and katie lipp hasa wireless mic, and she'll come over to you so you can speak into the mic. this will allowyour question to be heard not only by your peers but also by professor germain. i alsoask that you turn off all of your phones and electronic devices, so that we don't haveany disruptions during the talk. without further ado, please join me in welcoming professorgreg germain. [applause] thank you all. my name is gregory germain, and i do teach herein the college of law, and i know some of
you back there are my students in contractsthis year. the first rule i wanna talk to you about is that a good lawyer always takesresponsibility for his or her mistakes, rather than trying to blame them on others. and ithink that's particularly important today because you are all here, attending this mandatoryconvocation during your first midterm exams. so i'm sure you're not thrilled to be here.and i just want you all to know that i had absolutely nothing to do with the schedulingof this convocation. [laughter] in fact, it was all keith's fault. [laughter] so, whati'm gonna talk to you today about is not very academic. it is not the result of kind ofdouble blind studies and scientific theories. i'm going to be giving you some opinions thati have formed as i approach my 30th year of
law practice, as to what it is that makesa good lawyer, and how you can become a good lawyer. and so i want to give you a broaddisclaimer, since i'm a contracts teacher: what i'm about to tell you may be wrong, andmore importantly, it may be wrong for or about you. but i think that what i have to say mayresonate with some of you and may help you, especially next year, when you're selectingclasses and thinking about how to prepare for a legal career. as you approach your firstset of midterms, some of you are probably asking yourself, "is law school a good idea?is this a good investment?" after all, it is very expensive to go to law school, andthere has been a broad academic debate going on, especially recently, with the recession,in law school employment, about whether law
school is a good investment. there has beena recent academic study, looking at how much people make out of their law school career,taking the present value of their future salaries, based on historic data, and deciding how muchis a law degree worth. and the conclusion of this study, written by two professors,is that the median present value of a law degree is one million dollars, making it looklike a pretty good investment, huh? it's more than that for people who graduated in thetop of their class. and for people in the bottom 25% of their class, the median valueof a law degree was $325,000. still not bad, but not a great return on investment. buti think there's two important points that we have to think about when we're lookingat an academic study like this. one of them
is that these numbers are based on past data.and we don't know how much people are going to make in the future, and so your futuresalaries may be different than salaries have been and incomes have been in the past. andsecondly, these are medians. which means half of the people make less than these amounts,and half of the people make more than these amounts. and so we're looking at statisticsthat don't tell us much about how much you're going to make over your legal career, andwhether law school has been a good investment for you. what will determine whether law schoolwas a good investment for you, and i submit it is whether at the end of your career youhave had a fulfilling and lucrative legal career. and so the focus of my presentationtoday is how you can develop a fulfilling
and lucrative legal career. so what are thecharacteristics of lawyers that succeed and have fulfilling law practices? that's whati want to talk about. the first piece of advice i have for you is not to focus too much onthe short term. i see a lot of people, and i was one of them when i graduated from lawschool, very focused on going to work for a law firm that had a fabulous reputationand that paid the highest salaries. you know, i was very interested in going to a largefirm, and i did. i went to work for latham and watkins which is one of the largest lawfirms in the country. and i left after nine months. one of the reasons i left was someof the advice that i received after my first week on the job. and so i want to tell youabout that. at the end of my first week at
the firm, the firm had its annual retreat,at a very fancy resort hotel, the ritz carlton, in laguna nigel, right on the water in orangecounty. it's an absolutely beautiful resort facility. i don't think i'd ever been to anythingthat kind of fancy, and all the lawyers, from all the offices, about 800 lawyers, flew infor this retreat. and it was my first week on the job. i didn't know anybody there. andmy first evening, i entered the dining room for dinner, and there were all these tablesaround, filled with lawyers having a wonderful conversation with each other. i didn't knowany of them, and i saw a guy sitting at a table in the back of the room, all by himself,an elderly gentleman, and i thought, "well, you know, he's sitting all by himself. i'llgo sit at the table." and so i walked up and
i said, "hi, do you mind if i join you?" andhe said, "no." and i said, "it's nice to meet you. i'm one of the new employees at the firm,my name is greg germain." and he said, "nice to meet you, my name is clint stevenson, i'mthe managing partner of the firm." well. the next hour, i learned why nobody wanted tosit at the table with him. he proceeded to take my deposition, finding out every littlefacet of my very inexperienced life during that hour, and i didn't get to eat any ofthe fabulous shellfish that was in front of me. but one of the questions he asked me was,"why did you decide to come to latham and watkins?" and i didn't have a very good answerfor that. "well, you know, it has a great reputation, you know, blah blah blah." i mean,i didn't know why i should pick a term. but
i decided to turn the tables on the managingpartner, and i asked him, "based on all your experience after all these years, if you werea young lawyer choosing a firm, what would you look for in a law firm?" and he pausedfor a minute, i don't think he was expecting to be asked questions. after all, he was themanaging partner of the firm, but he gave me a very honest answer. he said, "what iwould look for is a firm where i could be involved in the direction of the law firm.i'm a builder, i wanna help build the law firm, i wanna be involved in management, andfeel that i have a role in the success and future of the institution that i'm workingfor." and that had a lot of resonance for me, over the next 9 months, as i looked atthis giant boat that was latham and watkins,
and thinking, "it's gonna be pretty hard toget up there to the captain's seat, and have any influence on the direction of the firm."and so i decided for me, that it is so important to be involved in feeling like i'm a teamand in building the practice, and my own practice, that i really needed a smaller firm. so iwent to a smaller firm in san francisco, that was a much more fulfilling practice with methan it would have been, i think, if i had stayed at a large law firm. and so you gottathink for yourself, what is it, long term, that i'm looking for? am i looking for a jobwhere it's 9 to 5? i'm looking for a job that is not 9 to 5 and i'm contributing to thefuture success of the law firm. and that may have something to do with whether you decideyou want to be at a giant law firm, or a small
law firm, or another institution. so whatdo i think you should be asking when you are looking to go to work at a firm. where areyou going to learn the most? where are you going to have the opportunity to become apartner and to grow as a lawyer? for most of you, your legal careers are going to belong. i'm now looking back on 30 years of experience. probably i'll have another 10or 20 or 30 more. so this is a long endeavor. your starting salary in your first job isvery unlikely to be the end of the process, and so, thinking about bettering yourself,for the long term, is far more important than your initial salary that you get right outof law school. now, the legal market is quite different than it was when i graduated fromlaw school. when i graduated, the legal business
was growing very fast. i had basically offersfrom every law firm i interviewed with. all the firms were growing at a very high rate,and so there wasn't a kind of short supply of jobs. i remember one of my classmates,theresa woody, had a job interview at the largest firm in san francisco at the time,called pillsbury, madison, and sutro, and she wasn't really interested in working there,particularly. she wanted to interview, but she wanted to go back to where she was fromin kansas city. she went to this job interview, and they were a little bit disorganized thatday, and they said, have a seat the waiting room, and we'll be right with you, and shewaited and she waited and waited and she went up to the secretary and said i've been herea half hour, what's going on? they said, oh
we have some confusion today, just have aseat and wait a little longer. she said, you know i don't really want this job, i reallywant to go back to kansas city anyway. and so after another 20 minutes or so, she left.she just waked out. two weeks later, she received a letter from pillsbury, madison, and sutro,saying how much they enjoyed the interview, and offering her a job. so, you know, thosewere the good old days. i think things are a little tougher now, and firms are gonnabe looking at you and deciding what do you bring to the table? what distinguishes youfrom the mass of resumes that all these employers are getting? some of the things are obvious.legal skills. do you have good legal skills? do you have good knowledge of the law? doyou have the ability to figure out what you
don't know? are you able to apply the lawto facts? those kinds of things are of primary importance to an employer, but how do theyjudge them in the 15 minute interview, or from your resumes, which after all are notgoing to have tremendous amounts of experience in them, you're right out of law school. andso, the hard truth of the matter is, they're going to rely on your grades in deciding whatyour legal skills are. if you're at the top of your class, they're gonna assume you havepretty good legal skills. if you're at the bottom of your class, they're going to assumeyou don't have good legal skills. they may be wrong, but that's going to be the firstcut that they make, because that's what they see. so, it's very important to master thesubjects that you're studying in this first
year, to put in absolutely your best effortsall the time, and to do as well as you can. because that's going to be of primary importancewhen you go out on the job market. secondly, are you reliable? can an employer trust youto handle a case properly? in large part, this is about communication and diligence,and i'm going to talk more about some of my experience in supervising students and younglawyers when i was a partner in a law firm, about some of the problems i see with communicationand taking responsibility. work ethic. i think the law is a terrible profession for someonewho wants a 9 to 5 job. there are lots of 9 to 5 jobs around, but very few good lawyersthat i know work 9 to 5 jobs. they have to work on weekends when things are busy, theyhave to work at night when things are busy,
they have to work in the morning when thingsare busy. that's just the reality of the practice. you have to do whatever is necessary to doa good job on your case and work doesn't come in from 9 to 5. and it means there are goingto be times in your life when you have to put your work ahead of your personal life,and some people don't want to do that, and i think they have to think seriously aboutwhether the law is really right for them. there may be positions in the law, kind ofin-house positions, or gov't positions, where you can work a 9 to 5 life, but that's nottrue for private practitioners. and so i think that having a realistic notion of the workethic is important. another characteristic is what i call a winning attitude. by that,i don't mean you need to be one of those fake
happy people that always has a smile on theirface. anyone who knows me knows that i'm not one of those people, and ... but what it meansis you have to be able to figure out how to win your case. it is not the job of your supervisorsto figure out how to win your case. it's your job. one problem i constantly have, supervisingstudents in law cases, is their failure to kinda take the bull by the horns, to say,this is my case, and i'm going to look up and find the solution. instead, i get a lotof questions like, what do i do, what do i do next, how do i do this, and that's notwhat lawyers do in practice. if we hire an associate at my firm, we give them a caseand expect them to come in and tell us. to do the analysis. to do the research, to tryto answer all the questions before they come
in, so they can tell me, give me suggestionson how to handle the case. i may disagree with them and say, no i want to go in a differentdirection, but i want a self-starter, who figures it out, and comes in with a solution.not a secretary or receptionist who just passes on the client's questions to me. and i geta lot of that in the pro bono and bankruptcy clinic, where students say, client asks aquestion, and they just pass it on to me. client says they want to know blah blah blah.well, go look it up! and then come talk to me about it. i want to be here to, i mean,i don't want you to make the final decisions, as a first, second year lawyer, but i wantyou to think about it before asking me the question. you've gotta take that ethic intothe practice of law. it's your case. you've
gotta solve the problem, and you need to figureout a solution. not just go to the supervisor and say, tell me what to do. personality isof course a very important factor. successful lawyers are good at generating business. asa new first year associate, you may not be expected to generate business, but it won'tbe too long before you are. and the people that succeed and become partners and are successfulat a law firm are good with clients, and get additional referrals from the same client,because they handled the case well and they start building what they call a book of business,which is the coin of the realm in the world of partners transferring from one law firmto another. and so, being good with your clients, returning their calls promptly, showing thatyou care about their problem, and that you're
going to find a solution to it is absolutelyof fundamental importance. and your personality in being able to do that is going to be animportant skill that you have to develop. so what did i look for when i was hiring younglawyers at my law firm? we don't have very much. we have your resume. what do i wantyour resume to read like if i'm hiring a lawyer? the first thing i'm looking for is somebodywhose resume shows an interest in my area of the law. so if i'm hiring a bankruptcylawyer, i want a resume that demonstrates that the person has some interest in bankruptcy,knows something about it. that doesn't mean i want to see only bankruptcy courses, orsomething like that.... the core bar courses are core bar courses because they're fundamentalcourses for the practice of law. so i want
to see a resume that shows that most of thefundamental courses in law school have been mastered. in addition to that, i want to seecourses in my area of specialty. and all of the courses should reflect a plan and designto show that you're interested in a particular area of law. if i get a resume where peoplehave (woop, sorry!) if i get a resume where people have all kinds of scattered courses,that have nothing to do with each other, i think, who is this? what are they going todo? it shows a lack of organization and thought. and so, you're relieved of most of the responsibilityof selecting your courses in the first year. we do that for you. but next year, you'reresponsible to select your own courses. and you should do so in an intelligent way. whatdirection are you going? you may not know
exactly what you want to do, but you shouldhave a pretty good direction, even after the first year. do i want to be a criminal lawyeror a civil lawyer? do i want to be in business law or tort law? you should have a generalidea after the first year, and you should be structuring your curriculum in an intelligentway, to obtain the kinds of classes and education that you need to be a good lawyer in thatarea. and we're here to help you with that. all of the professors, i think are more thanhappy to get a call from someone saying, hey, i'm interested in bankruptcy law or estateplanning, and will you help me go through my scheduled and suggest some better classesthat i can take to move in that direction? or criminal law, whatever it is, i'm not meaningto pigeonhole you in any particular areas.
but take advantage of the advising of thepeople that know their fields around here, and ask for help with course selection, andi think you'll end up with a resume that is much more organized than someone who selectstheir classes because they're only the in the afternoon and you like to sleep in or,you know, only on tuesdays and thursdays. i also want to see on a resume someone whoshows initiative and is willing to volunteer their time to learn and become a better lawyer.so, i'm very impressed with things like participating in moot court competitions, writing a goodlaw review article, getting a job as a research assistant, anything that shows a little extrainitiative is impressive. ok. let me tell you a little bit about bad lawyers. firstof all, bad lawyers don't do research. if
you ever find a lawyer that says, i neverdo research, you can be pretty sure that that's a bad lawyer. and there are lots of them outthere. they hate doing research, they don't really like talking about the law, and ifthey ever have to write something for court, they grab a couple of headnotes out of a secondarysource, and cite the headnotes. they don't go back and read the cases, or read the statutes,or really understand what they're doing. and you're guaranteed to fail. because at leastif you're up against someone who's a good lawyer, they're not going to just read theheadnotes. they're going to read the case, they're going to read the statute, and thatheadnote that you cited is going to be taken out of context, and they're going to nailyou on it before the judge. and so, you've
gotta do the work. there's no alternativeto it, and frankly, you gotta like doing the work. if you don't like the law, if you don'tlike reading it, if you don't like talking about it, if you don't like studying it, youprobably shouldn't be a lawyer. cuz that's what we do. number 2: bad lawyers don't communicate.so let me tell you a story about a local lawyer, that i had a case with, recently, within thelast 2 years. the clients hired this lawyer to file a bankruptcy petition for them. avery nice couple, having financial problems, job losses and things like that. they hada house, they had cars, and they wanted to keep them, and so they filed bankruptcy andproposed a plan that would enable them to keep their property. unfortunately one ofthem lost their job, they fell behind on their
payments to the plan, and they were in default.the trustee, as is his job, moved to dismiss their case for failing to make their planpayments. now, what a good lawyer would do is meet with the clients, figure how whetherthere's some way to modify the plan based on their new circumstances, and propose amodification, and not allow the case to be dismissed. this lawyer told his secretaryto tell the clients that unless they had the money to cure the default in full, he wouldnot speak with them. so their lawyer wouldn't talk to them. they're facing dismissal oftheir case, which would mean the loss of their home, and their cars, and a lot of their personalpossessions. they're being represented by a lawyer who won't talk to them to see whetherthere's a solution, and they heard about my
clinic and they came in begging for help.what do we do?? and i felt sorry for them. i agreed to take their case to try to helpthem, and i sent a substitution of attorney to the lawyer, and i said, send me the legalfile. i'm gonna represent them. you're not. here's the substitution of attorney. sendme the legal file. and the rules of professional responsibility, which you'll learn next year,say that the old law firm is required to promptly provide the new lawyer with a copy of thelegal file. well, i called three times and he wouldn't send me the file. and so i senthim three letters over a month and a half, and he wouldn't send me the file, so i drafteda complaint to the state bar, saying that i requested for the last month and a halfcopies of the legal file for my client's case,
and he won't send it to me, and i sent itto him, saying i'm filing this tomorrow. and of course the next day i finally get the legalfile, along with a letter saying how offended he was that i would threaten to turn him into the bar. the file was a mess, as you might expect, random papers stuffed in the file,including, right on the top, a letter from their home creditor saying, if you don't callus back, we're going to move for relief from stay in the bankruptcy case to foreclose ontheir house. and of course he didn't call them back, and so of course they moved forrelief from stay. just gross incompetence. if you're going to be that kind of lawyer,do us all a favor and drop out of law school now. my god, if you can't comply with professionalstandards, if you can't return your client's
calls, what are you doing? that is not a professionallaw practice. you gotta say to yourself, i'm going to do this business. i'm gonna returnmy clients' calls the day i get them. if there's some reason i cant, i'll return them the nextmorning. there's no reason to not timely return peoples' calls. and the same with opposingcounsel. we've got these rules here to protect the clients, and it's your responsibilityto make sure you follow the rules. so, return client calls promptly, return calls from otherlawyers promptly, send confirming letters to confirm conversations, to confirm deadlines.read and respond to email promptly, and always meet deadlines and responsibilities. that'sthe bare minimum that's required for the practice of law. bad lawyers don't prepare. last year,my research assistant took an externship.
as part of the externship program here, weoffer an externship class, where they're required to do some projects. one of the projects thathe was given was to go to court, watch the court proceedings for a day and write a journal.and he thought, what a stupid assignment. i'm gonna write a journal, give me a break.so he goes to the bankruptcy court, actually, and he sits in for a day, and he was shockedat what he found. he found lawyer after lawyer coming up before the judge with their file,having not read it before going up before the judge, being asked questions that theydidn't know the answer to, and fumbling through the file trying to find the answer to thequestion. he said that the whole day there was only one lawyer that had read the file,and came in prepared, and knew the answers
to the judge's questions. the rest of themwere a joke. and that's what i see too. i see all of these really bad lawyers out there,who don't bother to read the file before they go before the court, and they get what i liketo call battered attorney syndrome when they get there, because they're like hiding fromthe judge, who's asking them obvious questions about the case, and they don't know the answer,and their papers are falling all over the side, and it's an embarrassment to the legalprofession. if you go to court, you gotta prepare. you've gotta review the file beforeyou get there. you've gotta know what the case is about, and you've gotta be preparedto answer the judge's questions. there may be a question that you don't know the answerto, that you have to look up, but not simple
questions like, when did you file, what'sthe case about, basic questions you gotta know. and if you're arguing a motion, you'vegotta know the law, you've gotta read the cases that you've cited in your brief. it'sso common for lawyers to show up to argue cases, they've cited these cases in theirbriefs, and they've never read them. and the judge says, didn't so and so happen in thecase, and they're like, yeeeeeah i don't know, your honor, i haven't read the case recently.you've gotta read the case. that's part of your job. that's one of the things we're tryingto teach you here in law school: when we call on you class, we're trying to get you in thepractice of knowing that you're going to have to respond to a judge's question some day,and they're gonna be a lot tougher than the
ones we ask in class. bad lawyers don't everovercome their fears. we all have fears. some of you have a fear of public speaking. yousit in the back of the class, praying that you're not going to get called on today. andwhen you get called on, your mind suddenly goes blank, and you can't answer any questions.this is very common. sure there are other people whose hands are waving all the time,but most people are hiding and we're in the business of communication. we can't hide.i don't think you can be a successful lawyer without being able to speak in public. thatis a fear that you simple have to get over. you have to force yourself to get over it.you have to sit yourself in the front of the class and try to participate. you can't hidefrom it. you have to take a trial practice
class, and videotape yourself responding toquestions and see how to improve. it is a learned skill. i was shy, afraid to get upin front of people and speak when i was in law school. and you get over it. you forceyourself to do it and you get over it. so, fear of speaking is something that can beovercome. fear of confrontation: the law is a very confrontational process. you're goingto have people yell at you, and you're going to have to respond in a polite way and notget flustered. one of the hardest, i think, is a fear of losing. one i've had troublegetting over. and i wanna tell you about two outstanding lawyers that i've worked withthat kind of illustrate the idea of a fear of losing. these two lawyers were the twotop partners in my law firm. their names were
jon and jim. jim graduated from boalt lawschool at the top of his class. he worked in the criminal division of the justice departmentfor 20 years, and then he was appointed to run the civil division of the justice department.he was very proud of the fact that he never lost a trial his entire time at the doj. hewas always impeccably dressed, very smooth, and he was the highest-paid partner at thefirm. jon had a somewhat similar legal background, but a very different personal background.jon came from a blue collar family, he was a commander of a boat during the vietnam war,he graduated first in his class, not from a prestigious law school like boalt. but healso worked in the criminal division of the justice department for 15 years, and thenran the civil division after jim ran it, before
he went in to private practice at our firm.jon had tried many more cases than jim, and he lost a few cases. he had about a 90% winrecord. and he was the second highest-paid partner in the firm. and there was a lot ofdiscussion in the firm: which of these two guys was the better lawyer? well, i was ata retreat once, and jim, having imbibed a little too much alcohol, and in a reflectivemoment, told me that he thought jon was the better lawyer. and he told me that the reasonis that the reason he had a 100% win record was that if there was any chance of losingthe case, he would settle. he did not want to lose a case. he was very concerned aboutprotecting his record, and very concerned about losing a case. he had a fear of losing.jon, on the other hand, was willing to take
the tough case to trial. he had the internalfortitude, and the belief in his case to say, win or lose, i'm going to go forward withthis case. and so he had a very good win record, but he was willing to take the tough caseeven if it meant he might lose. he wasn't afraid of losing. and i think everyone inthe firm pretty much agreed with jim that jon was the better lawyer. when you workedwith jim he was always second-guessing himself, he wasn't confident in his decision. he wassecond-guessing everyone that worked for him, which is a very unpleasant thing to have happenwhen you're working on someone's team. jon, on the other hand, made you feel like youwere part of a great team, and you were gonna win the case. he was teddy roosevelt, chargingthe troops up san juan hill. everybody liked
working with him, and he got fantastic resultsbecause the other side knew he wasn't bluffing. he was willing to take the case to trial,even if it was a tough case. and most people on the other side weren't willing to takethe risk. they were both great lawyers, but jon was the more confident, better lawyer,because he was willing to risk losing. after 30 years of doing this, i don't have the levelof confidence that jon has, but i try. i try to recognize that all my cases, i am willingto take it to trial if that's what i have to do. i am not going to settle the case cheap.so, if i can't get a settlement that my client deserves, we're going to fight it out allthe way through trial. that approach, i think, makes me a better lawyer, and gets betterresults for my clients. you've gotta kinda
overcome the fear. you may lose a case hereand there, but you're going to win a lot more than you lose. bad lawyers don't build relationships.no one is successful on their own. our success depends on the connections that we have withothers. some people are lucky enough to have family connections. others have to build connectionsfrom scratch. but you must learn to build strong relationships, and you should startthat process now that you're in lawschool. your colleagues in law school are all potentialreferral attorneys. they are potential partners of yours in a future law firm. when i wasnot happy with my first job at latham and watkins, it was one of my close friends fromlaw school who said, come and work at our firm, it's a great place, and recruited meto join the firm. and i stayed there, became
a partner, and we became partners in the samelaw firm. he not only built bridges with me, but with numerous other people in the lawschool who regularly referred him business. he was involved in bar activities. he wasinvolved in training young lawyers in trial practice. his legal work was always top notch.and everyone thought he was a great lawyer. he built a strong practice and he is now aprofessional mediator, aribitrator, getting referrals from other lawyers. and very successfulat it. building those relationships is key. although you are kind of technically competingwith your classmates, you really aren't. and showing a little courtesy, and a little respect,and being a good person to the other people that you are in law school with is as importantas your law school studies. the last person
i want to tell you about is my friend andlaw school classmate, mr. johnson. mr. johnson has an entire row of his living room librarydevoted to his law school casebooks, all of which, he is very proud to say, are stillin the original shrink wrap. he never opened them. he likes to say he graduated secondin his class, because he graduated in the spring of his third year, when there wereonly two people graduating. he passed the ca bar on his seventh attempt. which meanshe was not in practice for the first three and a half years of his legal career. he workedas a paralegal, at a very low salary, and he had a family with three kids, and he hada very hard time those first three years. he became a plaintiff's personal injury lawyer,and he has only tried, in his entire legal
career, two cases. he lost both of them. hetook them to trial and he lost. and one of them, he was telling me about the case beforeit started, and i thought, this is the unlosable case. a 35 year old mother of three is havingextreme headaches, is cross-eyed, goes in to the doctor, and the doctor sends her homewith an aspirin. she has a stroke and dies. and he got defensed. [laughs] that takes realskill. so, he's not what i'd call a lawyer's lawyer. but, he is a very good businessperson,and has developed a thriving practice handling rear-end car accident cases. he's made moremoney in the practice of law than anyone i know. he loves what he does. he wakes up everymorning hoping for rain, because if it rains there's going to be more car accidents. hekeeps up with all of his referral attorneys,
and he gets a lot of referral from his clients,who seem to get in an awful lot of car accidents. they get into car accidents, and their extendedfamilies get into car accidents. and he has very strong skills outside of the law. asi said, he's very good at dealing with referral attorneys and adjusters. he's good with clients,he communicates regularly, and i think maybe most important, he knows his limitations.after his two defeats, he has not tried any more cases. in anything that goes to litigation,he refers out. he's basically an adjuster. he gets the cases in, he writes a demand letter,he haggles with insurance companies, and he gets a settlement in these relatively smallcases, and in anything bigger than that, he farms out to someone who knows how to litigatea case. he's done very well in the law, he
likes what he's doing. i think he does a goodjob for his clients, except for the two he took to trial. so there are roles in the legalprofession where you don't have to be a great kind of technical lawyer. they're hard tofind, and they take a lot of planning to get into them. and if that's you, you've got todo the planning up front, to get into a position where you can utilize your skills. but i thinkfor most of you, you've got to decide, do i love the law? and if you do, if you liketalking about it, if you like thinking about it, i think you're going to find that thisis a good business. so, to kind of sum up, in law school you've got to take the rightkind of classes, in an organized way, and get advice from people on how to do that.you need to seek out the kind of experiences
that will develop your skills and impresspotential employers. you need to challenge yourself in areas in which you are weak, ratherthan avoiding your weaknesses. you don't want to be like the student who came to my officein tears at the end of her third year, telling me no one would ever hire her, and she couldn'tblame them, saying, i'm never gonna get a job. who would ever want to hire me? and itook out the box of kleenexes, and i tried to be sympathetic. but the truth was, shewas right. no one is ever going to want to hire her with that attitude. if you don'thave confidence in yourself, if you don't seize the law school experience, to betteryourself, so that you can explain to the world what you have to offer, why they should hireyou, then i fear you're not going to have
a happy legal career. on the other hand, ifyou squeeze everything you can out of the law school experience. if you love talkingabout and thinking about the law, if you plan your professional life in an intelligent way,i think you're going to look forward to a bright future as a lawyer and your investmentin law school will pay off handsomely. and so now i would like to answer your questions.[applause] we have time for one question. actually maybe we have time for many questionsand no answers, but one question...? okay, the practice is to raise your hand if youhave a question. hi there. yes? oh. -- you were just waiving goodbye. -- h was wardingme off. -- okay, well, good luck with your midterms. do well, and i hope to see all ofyou over the next couple of years.
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