Hard Lessons of Law Practice
What lessons have people learned in law practice that surprised them, lessons for which they weren't ready? I wonder about this a lot. I had one lesson that caught me a bit by surprise last year while I was in the clinical program at my law school. I had expected some of the other things I ran into -- clients reluctant to be fully honest (I found the ideas in the Binder and Price client counseling book helpful in that regard), clients who don't get back to you, don't provide the documentation you need, and little things along those lines. But this one snuck up on me just a bit: you can do your best legal work, even the best legal work possible in a situation, but you cannot save a client from him- or herself. In the end, you can only represent and advise.
It seems like common sense when I put it like that. But I was a new student lawyer who really wanted to help my client, and actually feeling what it was like to reach the limits of my ability to help was different from just knowing that those limits existed.
So, what have you learned about law during a case when you didn't expect to?
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no way I'm posting my name on this one, but, really, the most surprising lesson I learned was that a lot of judges are horrible lawyers. They know nearly nothing about the law.
No way here, either. The most suprising thing about the law (shoulda read Planet Law School :), was the fact that most profs really did not give a shit about preparing us for the days outside university, as well as the fact that most Seniors REALLY knew what they did, while judges and justices, the guys I've been looking up to most of my life, had a hard time even recalling the basics of black letter law.
I guess that, if you're subjsct to daily atty arguments involving obscure case law written in the fourties, your priorities change a lot.