Attorneys, Play to Your Strengths

Each of us has strengths and weaknesses.  Each of us has talents and shortcomings.  Each of us has passions and apathies.  If you want to achieve greatness as a lawyer, focus on your strengths, talents and passions.  Focusing on our weaknesses takes time and energies away from developing into the experts we were born to be.  Each of us was destined for greatness.  Each of us was born to become the best at something.  You need to discover what you were born to be and pursue that wholeheartedly.  For lawyers, what type of lawyer were you born to be? In which practice area were you meant to specialize? What skill sets - whether writing, speaking, oral argument or persuasions – do you excel at?  Discover your destiny and chase it.

           So, ask yourself, what are you good at? I mean what comes naturally for you?  I’m not asking for skills that you have developed over the years.  I’m not asking about something you used to do poorly, and now, after years of effort and practice, you do well.  I want to know your innate talents that were there with you at birth, lying dormant until the time came that you got to use them.  Maybe from a young age you beat everyone at chess.  You picked up the piano at nine and never looked back.  You were the fastest student in your middle school track team.  You were the captain of your brain bowl team in high school.  You were easily elected president of the student body in college or advanced to the nationals in moot court in law school.  I’m talking about that one thing (or more likely, several things) that you were simply better at than most others.  Sure you practiced, or studied or did whatever else to improve your talents.  But at the core, you simply did it better than most everyone else.  You were better at math, or writing, or telling stories, or leading, or shooting a basketball, or running, or debating or at science.  Or maybe you had a huge ego, and thought you were better at everything.  Confidence is a talent too.  The things you did as a child, teen and now as an adult that are second nature to you, write those down.  It is not a coincidence you have those talents.  You were meant to use them for your good and the good of others.  You weren’t meant to squander them.  You have them for a reason.  Write them all down – the little and big talents alike.  You need to identify all of them before you can fully use them. 

           Also, what things do you do that require little preparation or effort?  Preparing for a hearing? Preparing for a client meeting?  Research?  Organizing an event? Leading an organization?  Writing an article? Preparing a speech?  I have some quirky talents.  First, I have an endless list of ideas for articles and books and once the idea strikes me I can reduce it to writing very quickly.  Some of my books have taken me 4 weeks of nights and weekends to write.  Two hours a night, several hours each weekend.  That’s it.  I’m not bragging on myself.  I’m just acknowledging that I have this talent of developing ideas and reducing them to writing.  One can appreciate why this skill helps my career as a lawyer.  I can write a lot, in a short period of time, and share my ideas with lawyers across the country who may need local counsel in Miami, where I live.  So that talent is easily transferable to advancing my career.

            I also have a unique talent to figure out the ending of a movie (most any movie) within 15 minutes of watching it.  I often can even predict dialogue before it’s spoken.  Somewhere along the way, altogether unconsciously, I realized I knew where a movie was going based on what was said, what was done, the setting, the themes and the foreshadowing.  By the way, I’m a terrible companion at the movies.  Often I’ll whisper in my wife’s ear what I’m expecting to happen next.  Luckily, she’s a good sport about it (and to her credit, she has a similar talent and at times beats me to the punch).  So, how, exactly, does this “talent,” if you want to call it one, help with my career?  As lawyers, we tell stories.  We tell them to the judge in our motion practice, to the opposing party in mediation and to juries at trial.  So if you know the elements of good story telling, and know intuitively where a story should go, who should say what and how it should end, you can translate that skill into better storytelling in your practice.

            So take the time and ask yourself what comes easy for you?  No skill is too small or too unique or even too silly to jot down.  You just never know when it can come in handy.  Often you hear you need to work on your weaknesses.  I believe you need to identify your strengths and make them stronger.  These strengths are what will distinguish you from the rest of the pack.  These strengths are what are going to set you apart.  Identify them.  Develop them.  Focus on them.  Play to your strengths.  Chase your destiny.