EP 1020: The Loosey-Goosey Years: Lessons from Attorneys’ First Twelve Months

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Heels in the Courtroom, where the trial lawyers of the Simon Law Firm break down what it takes to win in the courtroom and in life.

Liz Lenivy [00:00:16]:
Welcome back to another episode of Heels in the Courtroom. I’m Cindy Marino, and today I’m joined by my colleagues Liz Lenove, Elizabeth McNulty, Katie St. John, and Mary Simon. Hi, ladies.

Liz Lenivy [00:00:26]:
Hey. Hello.

Sydney Marino [00:00:27]:
Hi, Cindy. Hello, everyone. So this is my first ever lead of the podcast, so I’m a little nervous. I’m going to put that out here.

Liz Lenivy [00:00:37]:
You’re doing great.

Sydney Marino [00:00:38]:
Okay, thank you. I was— I fumbled a couple names already to begin with, but, you know, we’re going to let that slide. But so when I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about today and, you know, reflecting on what was happening to me late September of last year, oh, I was getting my bar results and I got licensed. And so I thought, okay, this episode’s probably going to come out right around the same time that I was getting licensed, and also there’s going to be a lot of new attorneys joining the profession because they’re going to be getting their bar results as well. So I figured what better topic to do than sort of a look back at what are some expectations versus reality of being a young attorney. And I thought, you know, I can go back through memory lane of this past year and what I expected things to be like as an attorney. versus what they actually were like. And I thought, you know, you ladies also are all young attorneys and—

Liz Lenivy [00:01:34]:
Thank you. I appreciate that.

Sydney Marino [00:01:36]:
Yeah, no, you all are. And you have some wisdom to give me. I think every single time we all either do a podcast or I come to someone’s office and ask them loads of questions or just we chat, I always am learning something new and That’s something that I would think anyone that’s listening would also want that knowledge. I put a list of expectations together, but I didn’t think we needed to kind of abide by that list. Some of these are a little, I think they’re better than others on, you know, law school prepared me to be a lawyer. We can talk about that all we want and the fact that it didn’t.

Liz Lenivy [00:02:15]:
Yes.

Sydney Marino [00:02:15]:
Or we can, yeah, or we can kind of go off book a little bit and just chat and maybe tell some good stories. I’m sure Katie has a couple stories that she could tell of me coming down to her office to ask her multiple questions or to have her read an email before I send it or something like that. So yeah, I figured we could kind of get into that and go from there. I should know what I’m doing. I’ve been in 3 years of law school and, you know, I took the classes that should have prepared me for whatever area of law I’m going into. And, you know, I took moot court or I did trial ad and Okay, I know what I should be doing to some extent, but in reality, that’s probably the last thing it prepared me to be an actual attorney who actually is going to court, who’s actually dealing with clients on a day-to-day basis. So I kind of wanted to get everyone’s thoughts on whether or not there is something that law school actually prepared you for and what that is. If there’s something that, as a law student who’s now graduated, sitting, waiting for their bar results, what’s something that they can think about and use as, you know, a practical skill that they should go into their first few weeks, months as an attorney?

Liz Lenivy [00:03:33]:
Always happy to voice my opinion.

Katie St. John [00:03:35]:
All of us are looking at Liz.

Sydney Marino [00:03:37]:
Yeah, I was going to say.

Katie St. John [00:03:38]:
Take it away, Liz.

Liz Lenivy [00:03:39]:
Yeah, so, you know, the question you posed is, what did law school actually prepare you for? And I thought of 2 sort of just general ideas. First, obviously, it teaches you the legal theory. Right. What are the basic elements of a contract? What are the basic elements of a tort? What do you need to prove in order to have a criminal case? So it gives you that basic educational background that you need in order to then begin thinking like a lawyer. I don’t think law school actually taught me how to think like a lawyer, though. This job has taught me how to think like a lawyer. The second thing that I think law school does, in a way, teach you is maybe they start exercising that muscle a little bit. Like, you do oral arguments.

Liz Lenivy [00:04:22]:
And of course, I’m speaking from the perspective of a litigator. So you have to do oral arguments maybe in your first year LRW class, which they don’t even call it LRW from what I understand. That’s how old I am.

Sydney Marino [00:04:34]:
Young attorney. You’re still a young attorney.

Liz Lenivy [00:04:35]:
Yes. We did look it up. And based on the most generous definition I could find, I have 9 more months of being a young lawyer. But again, you do moot court. You do trial ads. So you kind of get to work that muscle a little bit, maybe You take negotiations, more of like the practical skills classes. But I compared it to law school kind of is like playing like T-ball, and then when you get into the actual practice of law, suddenly you’re in the majors. Like, okay, great, I’ve got this little stick I can knock a ball off of, and then 4 months from now, I’m going to be having like someone throw a ball at me 98 miles per hour, and I have to just swing it.

Sydney Marino [00:05:12]:
I think that’s exactly how it feels.

Liz Lenivy [00:05:13]:
Yeah.

Sydney Marino [00:05:13]:
I don’t— yeah.

Liz Lenivy [00:05:14]:
It’s so— So I think it teaches you the theory, it teaches you the basic exercise of it, but it doesn’t truly teach you how to be a lawyer. And something that I have been preaching for years, and that I think our colleagues on the medical side do such a better job of, is on-the-job training. Like, I went to the doctor’s office a couple of years ago, there was a med student in the office with me. And I was like, yeah, that’s fine. You know, obviously, they got my consent for it. And I said, of course, like, they need, they need to learn how to do this. But after med school, you go into a 4-year residency and maybe you go into a fellowship. I’m not saying that lawyers need quite that extent of training, but I think something where we have, frankly, get rid of the 3rd year of law school.

Liz Lenivy [00:06:03]:
I don’t think the 3rd year of law school actually does much for us, maybe other than you can take some more bar prep courses, maybe some more practical skills courses. I think an apprenticeship or clinical work, something along that line where you’re actually working with clients is so much more helpful. I learned so much more from my clerkship here my third year and the clinic where I was working with real clients than I did in any of my classes. We all joke, like, law school really does not prepare you to be a lawyer. And I think that that is something that me preaching to new grads, recent bar Passers, you know, be patient with yourself because you really don’t know what you’re doing.

Katie St. John [00:06:47]:
I also think that one of the things that law school doesn’t teach you, that if I had to zoom back almost a decade now to graduating, something that I wish would have been taught more as a practical skill is just getting used to arguing with people. I laugh about it sometimes. I’m like, I wake up in the morning and like my job is to move this case forward in, you know, whatever ways, and then there’s an entire group of people who wake up in the morning and their job is to stop me from doing mine to a certain extent. And so, like, I remember the first time that I went to court, and it’s like I said something, and the other attorney, who honestly could probably have been my grandparent with the age gap, he said, everything you’re saying is ridiculous. And I was just kind of taken aback. Now, I’ll tell you, that doesn’t happen and hasn’t happened since that. I mean, I think that was a very lawyer-specific example, but it caught me off guard, and I shouldn’t have been, because if that happened now, I wouldn’t think twice about it and would carry on the conversation with— The opposing lawyer, but like, just learning to be across the table or even standing up with another grown adult who’s looking at you in your face, just adamantly telling you, you are wrong about every single thing you’re saying, and being able to just look back at that person completely confident and engage, whether that means you’re arguing or just continuing the conversation in whatever appropriate way it’s going to be. And it doesn’t mean everything has to be an argument, You know, you do oral argument in law school, but it’s like timed, and you say your part, and it’s more kind of structured, and the other side says their part.

Katie St. John [00:08:16]:
And this is just like, you got to know how to have a phone call or a coffee or a hallway conversation with another grown-up who’s going to look at you and tell you that what you’re saying is wrong.

Liz Lenivy [00:08:26]:
I think law school should have a class where you come prepared to, uh, present an argument to a third-party neutral, and your opponent says, Judge, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and that’s just not how we do things around here, and you’ve got to figure out how to respond.

Katie St. John [00:08:41]:
Yes, and that’s the thing. I remember one of the attorneys who I was working for here, and she’s not at this office anymore, but I called her, and she’s like, that makes total sense. He’s going to disagree with everything you say. And I was like, oh, this is not— this is the least shocking thing that this lawyer’s ever heard. Like, when I was calling the lawyer I was working with, she kind of laughed and was like, Yeah, it’s like his job to disagree with every— I’m like, I even offered other dates. And she’s like, I know, he’s not going to agree to any of those. You just need to ask the judge. And in my head, I was like, oh, why am I shocked? Yeah.

Katie St. John [00:09:14]:
And it’s like, I, you know, the longer you practice, the least shocked you get about those things. But I do remember that feeling of being nervous, knowing that I was going to say something that everyone was going to pick apart. And that’s just, you got to get so comfortable with that. And law school does not It’s not set up to do— I mean, Socratic method, I guess, a little bit, but not really. I don’t know.

Liz Lenivy [00:09:34]:
I feel like law school focuses on conflict resolution when so much of our job is just conflict handling. I’m not trying to resolve it. We’re going to disagree, but I have to be ready to stand on my own.

Elizabeth McNulty [00:09:46]:
Yeah.

Katie St. John [00:09:46]:
Yeah.

Elizabeth McNulty [00:09:46]:
To that point, when I was, I don’t know, maybe a year out, Tim described our job as being gravediggers while someone else is filling in the hole and then another person is beating you in the head with a shovel.

Sydney Marino [00:10:01]:
Okay.

Elizabeth McNulty [00:10:02]:
And that always stuck with me because it’s like, well, that’s true. Yeah.

Katie St. John [00:10:05]:
Yeah. You got this, new lawyers.

Announcer [00:10:07]:
Yeah, I was just going to say, and this is really fun.

Sydney Marino [00:10:09]:
We’re starting the episode off on a really exciting note for everyone.

Elizabeth McNulty [00:10:13]:
But to kind of help with that is I think in law school you feel really overwhelmed and you think that this is the hardest thing you’re ever going to go through. And then you become a practicing attorney and you’re like, oh shit.

Liz Lenivy [00:10:24]:
I loved law school.

Elizabeth McNulty [00:10:25]:
I was wrong. And so I think One thing you can try to learn then is like build up your stamina and try to find like healthy outlets for that stress because it doesn’t ever, ever go away. I think it gets a little bit easier, or maybe you become numb to it, but you have to figure out a way to deal with it because it doesn’t go away.

Mary Simon [00:10:44]:
I was just thinking about that as well, Elizabeth, because when I think about something that I did learn from law school is although the skills might not translate directly into being a practicing attorney, I think what what I learned a lot in law school was like my work ethic and my ability to understand that just like there are going to be days that you have as a lawyer and that you had as a law student where class might be out, you might not be in class, but you’re still studying or preparing. And so I think that understanding that that doesn’t end once you graduate, that there are going to be, I mean, I guess depending on where you go, what kind of law you go into, but as a litigation attorney who does trial work, you know, there are nights that It might be 5 o’clock, but we’re still here at the office prepping for something. And so that is something that I did appreciate about law school is that I felt like in terms of like balancing your workload and figuring out how to find other outlets or manage your life, manage relationships while you’re in law school, that is going to translate again with the caveat of depending on what kind of law you go into, it will translate nicely. So there’s not a huge, at least in my opinion, there wasn’t like a huge transition. learning curve when I stepped into the role of an actual attorney, I kind of still understood, okay, it’s 5 o’clock, but I still have to prepare. I still have things I have to do. And so that is something where maybe it’s not like a practical skill, but something that I feel like law school did prepare me for well, now that I do litigation work.

Sydney Marino [00:12:07]:
Law school is great. I also want to preface that it’s a great place. I do think what it taught me, and to give a little caveat, I know I wasn’t going to actually talk about this topic because for me, I felt like, and Liz, you touched on this, everything that I learned that prepared me or could best prepare me for becoming an attorney was something that I learned in my clerkship at this firm. And I mean, I was so grateful to have worked here for throughout the school year, throughout the summer. And so all of the skills that I learned from here, I could then put those towards actual work and then working here. So that kind of makes a difference for me, at least when I was trying to think about that topic, because— I knew that going into class each day and when I was studying and when I was studying for the bar, that a lot of these things were not going to be something that would necessarily benefit me as a practical matter. But what I did think it helped me with was you’re dealing with different people on a scale. There’s so many different people that you’re interacting with, and I think that helps so much in terms of dealing with opposing counsel.

Sydney Marino [00:13:17]:
now in terms of dealing with judges, in terms of dealing with clients. And I think law school was a whole different world of people that I had never met or interacted with before, coming from, you know, living in St. Louis my whole life and then going to Mizzou with people that also lived in St. Louis their whole life. It was kind of the same general group of people. So I think that was something that benefited me. And I wrote down in my notes when I was thinking about this, that on days whenever work was getting super difficult, For me, at least in this first year, I was talking to my dad. I would talk to my dad about it, and he’s like, you know what you need to remember? It goes back to the people that you’re dealing with.

Sydney Marino [00:13:54]:
Remember that you’re just dealing with people on a day-to-day basis. And so being able to have like a normal conversation, you know, connecting outside of the level of your— this is a job and you’re having to talk to this person because it’s part of your job. So I think that’s something that law school helped me with, was that I was able to, you know, connect with professors just on a level that’s not, you’re my professor and I’m your student and I need to know what to do to get a better grade in this class, or connecting with my peers because we needed to study for a test. So I thought that was, you know, to bring it back around, that law school is not all that bad in preparing you for something.

Liz Lenivy [00:14:30]:
I think if I could add, maybe keep it on a lighter note, with now 11 years of perspective under my belt, Law school is such a, like, a microcosm. It’s such a small environment. And the way that law school is typically structured is that it feels like every little thing matters because typically, like, your grades are really the only metric you have by which to judge your success. And your grades are often dependent on maybe you have one exam or you’ve got one final trial or you’ve got one brief due at the end or one seminar paper, whatever the class is. The actual practice of law, obviously, If you do litigation, you’ve got one chance with a trial, but maybe there’s appeals. Really what you’re finding is that you’re making hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of decisions every day. And when you really sit back and look at it, you kind of have to say to yourself, does this really matter? Like, am I going to lose my mind over every little decision I make? And I remember going to an older attorney with a problem that I had. I mean, it was a problem, and I had it, and I had tried to think of solutions and work around it.

Liz Lenivy [00:15:36]:
And I presented it to him, and he kind of— I was kind of waiting to get chewed out. He looked at me and he goes, so did you do XYZ? And I go, yeah. And he goes, this is the XYZ? Yeah. Okay, then what’s the matter? Like, what’s the problem? Like, I can see where you’re worried, but like, it’s not that big of a deal. And that’s the healthy side of coming out of law school is when you’re in law school, every little thing matters. It feels so important in that moment, but then when you actually get into the practice, you’re going to find that rarely are there any singular decisions or singular actions that you take that are going to completely derail anything else going on. So it’s harder on this side, but it is better, and it comes with time and perspective and just ability. And so, you know, keep that in mind.

Elizabeth McNulty [00:16:20]:
Yeah, although that lesson does take a long time to learn. Like, I remember like the first year, you’re just like, every single thing you do feels kind of crippling because you’re just like, is this the right thing to do? So that— but that does go away eventually.

Katie St. John [00:16:33]:
So it’s like the first motion that you lose, and you go back and tell the lawyer that you’re working with like, hey, yeah, so, uh, Oh, we lost, uh, we lost the motion. And I remember even that happening. The lawyer I worked with, she was like, yeah, we either win them or we lose them. That’s, that’s it. Like, good job, you propped. We, we read it. Like, I know what you wrote. Uh, it’s fine.

Elizabeth McNulty [00:16:54]:
That’s nice. I got yelled at.

Katie St. John [00:16:56]:
Yeah, that tracks.

Sydney Marino [00:16:57]:
Not everyone’s first experience, right?

Elizabeth McNulty [00:16:59]:
You know, it builds character.

Katie St. John [00:17:00]:
And it goes one of those two ways. Yeah, yeah.

Elizabeth McNulty [00:17:02]:
So it’s okay, you survive it.

Liz Lenivy [00:17:03]:
I learned that I got set up to lose Which was also a really important lesson to learn. They gave you like, yeah. They gave me a, they gave me a losing motion.

Katie St. John [00:17:10]:
The nice thing though is when they tell you beforehand, hey, you know, it’s gonna be a tough one. Odds are, yeah. Mm-hmm. This is kind of against us. Just, you know,

Liz Lenivy [00:17:18]:
it’s good practice.

Katie St. John [00:17:19]:
Try your best. Yeah.

Liz Lenivy [00:17:20]:
It’s great practice.

Mary Simon [00:17:21]:
No, I was just gonna say that reminded me of one of the very first times when I started working here and I, um, with Johnny and he sent me to Kansas City, uh, for a motion to compel hearing and I was literally getting out of my car, walking into the courthouse, and he’s like, hey, I just want to let you know, like, you’re probably going to get shut down. They’re not going to want to hear anything you have to say. And he’s like, so I know you’re prepared, but— and I was like, uh, okay. I mean, yeah, I’m walking in right now, but sounds good. Um, and I’m happy to report that we did not lose that motion, and it’s just been like a series of wins since then. Um, wow. Yeah, I know, it’s been good. But I was also thinking, Sydney, When Elizabeth was talking and she said it does get better with time.

Mary Simon [00:18:02]:
There are so— Sydney and I work closely together since we’re on the same team, and there are so many times where I feel like you just have that experience right now where you’re like, is this okay? Is this right? Where you’re still like, so—

Sydney Marino [00:18:14]:
I’m getting better.

Mary Simon [00:18:14]:
You are.

Sydney Marino [00:18:15]:
I was going to say I’m getting better.

Mary Simon [00:18:16]:
You are.

Sydney Marino [00:18:17]:
Especially being here with everyone. I feel like I have a lot more confidence in myself. Katie sees it on a firsthand basis every single day. But I was going to say that’s something, and that leads me into one of my other expectations, that I think, and this is a personal thing, but I’m sure there’s a lot of people that can relate to it, especially if you’re a perfectionist and I think very Type A, that you have to know everything. Mm-hmm. And I think there’s a lot of pressure on you as a first year to know everything because you’re scared to mess up, you’re scared to make a mistake, you’re scared to disappoint the senior attorney you’re working for. Or Mary, like you said, you’re scared to lose a motion. I remember me preparing motions as a law clerk, and I would help with writing them, and I’d be so excited because they would win.

Sydney Marino [00:19:04]:
And then the first time I had one in practice that did not go my way, as someone who’s very competitive, that was a tough pill to swallow. So that expectation definitely is one that you have to get over, and the sooner you can get over it, the better, but it does take a lot of time. And I think that I’m getting better at not needing to know everything and that it’ll come with time. And there’s still a lot of people that are probably not a first year, they’re probably a couple years down the line and they don’t know everything. So it’s okay. It’s a little bit of a loosey-goosey is the term that we were talking about, that sometimes there’s things that are a little loosey-goosey and you just have to accept that. There’s not strict rules all the time that you have to follow that you can kind of find the answer through different avenues that maybe you wouldn’t have expected. I did write down, you don’t have to know everything, but Katie has to know the answer to it.

Sydney Marino [00:19:59]:
In my world, that’s kind of a joke because she does know it. To me, you are someone that I can go to. Oh, thank you. But to put a practical spin on that, you don’t have to know everything, but you do need to know where you can go and find answers. So, you know, not being afraid to go and ask someone for help. For a young attorney, what is the best way to ask a senior attorney for help without it feeling like an imposition? Because that is something that I’ve struggled with, was I was a little nervous to ask questions. I got over that nervousness pretty quickly with you, but for someone that’s listening that it’s their first year and maybe they’re in a big firm with a lot of partners and they work for a bunch of different partners, what’s the best way do you think someone could go and ask for help without feeling like a burden?

Katie St. John [00:20:41]:
I mean, I’ve got 2 thoughts on that. The first is, I don’t even know what it means to know everything. I have no clue what that means. If you have any issue that comes up in a case, and like, I’m assuming where you guys are hitting or landing on anything being loosey-goosey, it’s like, not what does the law say on this issue, but I’m in this email chain, and if I say the, how should I say this to get this, can I offer this in exchange to you? And that, I mean, I’m telling you, if you went to every single lawyer in this office and asked the same question, you might get a different answer from every single person. Yeah. And all of them could work out.

Sydney Marino [00:21:13]:
Yeah.

Katie St. John [00:21:13]:
Every single one of them. When it comes to asking a, a lawyer who you’re working for a question, having been on both sides, I’m an attorney who’s worked with lawyers on cases that are not my cases, that they’ve brought me in to work for them on that case. I’ve had law clerks, I’ve had lawyers come in to work on my cases. Anytime that an idea is getting thrown around, and I will say I love working at this firm because we are advocates of Ideas. Like, we roundtable issues and cases with which, between teams, it’s really helpful. The way that I would advise an attorney before they’re going and asking a more senior attorney or co-counsel, even in their own office, another colleague, a question is, you need to have some proposal for the answer when you go in. I mean, we all know and we’ve all experienced it. John Simon way is you go ask him a question and he just looks at you and says, what do you think?

Mary Simon [00:22:08]:
Yeah.

Katie St. John [00:22:09]:
And like, that’s what he says. I mean, I’m this, well, what do you think we should do? And you need to have an answer. You need to have thought about it. You need to know the law on it. You need to know the rules that are around it. You need to have thought about 3 different options. And that’s my advice. Before you’re going to ask a question, you need to show your colleague, and I think it does you well in your practice, that you’ve thought about it and you actually have a game plan.

Katie St. John [00:22:34]:
That’s like a pretty good place to land, and apart from that, the only thing I would say is if you’re working with someone who you got a groove with and you’ve worked with for a while, there have been times where I’ve walked down to like Tim’s office in a case and been like, I have no idea what to do with this, or like whatever the issue is, and at that point you have that rapport. Yeah. So it’s like, okay, look, let’s think about it this way, you know, you have to show that you’ve put thought into it as a lawyer.

Sydney Marino [00:23:00]:
Thank you for prefacing about the loosey-goosey. I did not mean that in terms of the law. I meant it in terms of someone could give you a bunch of different ways to do something and they could all work out. So that’s what I meant by that.

Katie St. John [00:23:11]:
Yeah. And it’s like that feeling of like, I don’t know if I have the authority to send this email and this thing. I remember that sort of. Yeah.

Mary Simon [00:23:17]:
Or it’s like when you walk into to get a trial setting for the first time and like in St. Louis City it’s this way, but in the county it’s this way. And then if you’re in a small county in Missouri, it’s a completely different way. Just like those kinds of like first is what Sydney and I were talking about the other day where it’s like she was going to, I don’t even remember what county it was. Anyways, I’m like, you just walk in and act like you know what you’re doing and, you know, you’ll figure it out once you get in there because it’s all a little bit different. So, um, and that’s something that like I was thinking about when you were just talking, Mary. It’s like, I feel like there were so many days when I was one year out and I graduated in 2020, so it was the pandemic. So the whole like collaboration amongst lawyers wasn’t happening because nobody was in the office.

Katie St. John [00:23:59]:
Yeah.

Mary Simon [00:24:00]:
So it was like me and the partners and I started off at a defense firm and so many days I would, I’m like, there’s no way I am a real attorney. Like I cannot be taking a deposition already. Like, this is crazy. I think you have to go back to the fact that remind yourself you have the training, you took the test, you passed the test, and rely on your own skills that you do have because so much of what we do is I mean, you develop the skills as a litigation attorney, right? But like, everyone knows how to ask a question. So if you boil it down to the basics and kind of just, I don’t know, fake it till you make it kind of thing, till you feel like that switch gets turned on and you’re like, okay, yeah, like, I do know what I’m doing. And I think time helps, right? But reminding yourself the basics of what we do on a day-to-day basis, you have been developing those skills as a human being for forever. So.

Elizabeth McNulty [00:24:45]:
I think that’s great advice. And as far as asking questions, I think, Sydney, you did the right thing. You find your Katie that you can ask questions to. I think we’ve all been there. And that’s kind of on the flip side of it. As lawyers, we like to help people and we like to be able to solve people’s problems and answer questions. So even if you’re going to someone more senior, sometimes you can get quick answers without anyone thinking like, oh, you’re an idiot, because they just like to flaunt their knowledge. So that is something that you can just use to your advantage.

Elizabeth McNulty [00:25:13]:
Yeah. But having someone a couple, a couple more years your senior always helps because they’re the people that you can ask what you feel like are really stupid questions because we were all in that position once.

Sydney Marino [00:25:26]:
I’m sure you’ve heard me say, okay, this isn’t a dumb question, but like, I’m going to ask you it anyway, and you can be honest with me.

Katie St. John [00:25:33]:
Yeah, or like, I go to Liz and say, is it weird if I just—

Sydney Marino [00:25:36]:
I love that voice.

Katie St. John [00:25:37]:
Usually as time goes on, it’s after I’ve sent the email, and I’m like, huh. And then I walk down the hall and she’s like, oh no, typically I— and I’m like, oh, okay. But it’s like the confidence over time. I’m like, I’ll just Just send it. And then I’m like, hmm, you know, I’m going to go see what Liz would have done. Right, exactly.

Liz Lenivy [00:25:56]:
Yeah, so I’ve got a couple of thoughts. Coming from a defense background, I will say the big piece of advice I can give you is obviously go to older attorneys for advice, go to older attorneys for their knowledge. You need to get rid of this idea of, I’m a first-year associate, I must know everything, and accept the fact that you are a first-year associate and you really don’t know anything, especially when you’re coming from the defense side, where we track our time, and that’s what I was very hyper-aware of. Every 6 minutes I am sitting in someone’s office asking a question that maybe is worth it or not, I am taking away someone’s 0.1 billable, right? So, you want to be respectful of people’s time, and that goes to your point, Mary, of coming prepared. I think preparedness is, is key if you are going to be asking your colleagues for their time. The other thing that I thought of is Because frankly, I don’t trust any attorney who claims to know everything or predict everything. And I tell that to clients when they tell me, you know, I talked to XYZ lawyer and he told me that my case was going to be worth $1.5 million. And I go, well, you know, sounds like you should hire that lawyer.

Liz Lenivy [00:27:02]:
But I’m going to tell you now, I don’t trust anyone that is going to tell me that they can predict the future. So, right. Yeah, that’s, that’s the other thing. And then the last thing I’ll mention, because I think all, all the points made so far have been great. Again, I guess as the old attorney in the room now, I don’t think about the people who don’t know everything or who come to me with questions. I don’t think about them negatively. I think negatively about the people who don’t know and then aren’t willing to try. So you say yes, jump in there, put yourself out there.

Liz Lenivy [00:27:37]:
No one is going to fault you for not being good at something the first time. In fact, I think you have to be bad at something a couple of times before you find finally get good at it. And it’s so funny that we’re having this conversation about firsts. I’m 11 years out. I will have been sworn in, I think I’m 5 days out from my 11-year anniversary of being a licensed Missouri lawyer. I went to court this morning and did something I’ve never done before. I had a hearing that I have never done before. And you know what I did? I found a colleague who has done it before and I called him and I said, hey man, I have this hearing tomorrow.

Liz Lenivy [00:28:16]:
I hear that you’ve done this before. I can’t find anyone else who has. Give me an idea of what to expect. And he walked me— he was so gracious. He walked me through it. And I walked into that courtroom, again, not actually knowing what to expect. And it went fine because, because I had someone that had given me that advice, had been gracious enough with their time. Again, 11 years in, I’m doing something for the first time.

Liz Lenivy [00:28:42]:
But at least I tried, and it actually turned out successful. It turned out exactly how I wanted it, but it was still a little nerve-wracking walking in there, but it was fine. It was fun.

Sydney Marino [00:28:54]:
No, I love that. The stories of walking into the courtroom, I now continue to add to my list of all the different places that I’ve been in. I don’t know, they do something different every single time. It’s like a game now that I’m playing in against myself of what’s going to happen this time I walk into this courtroom and they’re going to do something completely differently. But I just, I love to hear that because for me, that’s every single time that I’m going to court, except now I’ve been going to the city more often and now I kind of got a little bit of a groove. But the second that that gets disrupted, that’s— you will be hearing about it from me. But I think I wrote down a quote, and Liz, you kind of talked about this with the fact that there’s something about not everything’s going to go your way all the time. And I wrote down a quote that you need to learn to lose and that it’s okay.

Sydney Marino [00:29:45]:
I think I need to write that as like in my manifestation journal or something to remind myself that it’s okay, that there’s things aren’t going to go my way and you’re going to have a mis— maybe not a mistake, but things are going to, you know, not go according to plan because you don’t know everything, especially in your first year. You don’t know everything and you don’t know these experiences. And sometimes you haven’t even had an opportunity to ask someone how it’s going to go. Like, Liz, you were able to ask someone and you could sort of prepare for what that was going to be, but sometimes you don’t have that. So not to say that losing is, you know, let’s embrace losing, but you need to embrace it to be prepared for that.

Mary Simon [00:30:25]:
I’m still learning that. In the case that I tried in Madison County, I mean, sometimes we are just on, unfortunately, on the wrong side, like your fact pattern or whatever it is. You’re just on the wrong side of the law and you’re going to lose it. I’m also super competitive. And so I remember it was a motion to compel and it was for medical authorizations. I literally will never forget it. I feel like I can still, like, see my face when I close my eyes, how pissed I was. And we’re like arguing it.

Mary Simon [00:30:50]:
And the judge, you know, grants the defendant’s motion to compel. And I was like visibly upset on my face, right? Not thinking about it. Go on with my day. We have that judge the rest of the, you know, up until trial. She tries the case with us. And at the end of the trial, we were walking out of the courtroom. It was after the jury had returned a verdict in our favor. She was like, Katie, can I talk to you for a second? And I was like, yeah.

Mary Simon [00:31:11]:
And she’s like, do you remember many months ago when I granted the motion to compel? And I was like, yes. And she’s like, and you were upset. And I was like, I was. And she’s like, I saw it on your face. And she was like, I want you to know that, like, I didn’t hold it against you. And she’s like, I appreciate that. Like, you know, you’re an advocate for your client. You were prepared.

Mary Simon [00:31:31]:
You, made a great argument. You just— she’s like, but think now at the trial, did any of that discovery stuff, did it come into evidence? Did it matter? And I was like, no. And she’s like, so think of that. Like, think of when you’re up in those motions to compel and I’m letting discovery happen. She’s like, obviously advocate, be prepared, but don’t wear it on your sleeve because if you do that with the wrong judge, they might hold it against you. And, you know, that might not be so favorable for you when you’re sitting in front of them trying a case. And it is still something where, like, I have to remind myself, like, that was the most great piece of advice I’ve ever gotten.

Katie St. John [00:32:05]:
Yeah, that’s fantastic advice.

Mary Simon [00:32:07]:
I mean, wow, that was just like such a surreal moment for me. I was so appreciative of her, but I still have to remind myself where I’m like, just smile and say, thank you. Thank you, Your Honor. Sounds good. And just go about my way. But it is really, really hard when you’re competitive.

Liz Lenivy [00:32:22]:
I keep a note on my phone. And it is several paragraphs long, so I don’t want to read all of it, but it is from On Becoming a Trial Lawyer by Rick Friedman. And again, I put this in my phone after I lost a trial that I was devastated by. I’ll just read a little bit of it. And I truly advise everyone to take this section of On Becoming a Trial Lawyer and keep it somewhere, post it in your office. I keep mine in my phone, but it is just a good reminder. Of what this job is about. So he says, I hate losing as much as the next person.

Liz Lenivy [00:32:58]:
Nothing is quite like putting your heart, soul, and mind into a trial and then having a jury reject it all. I go to great lengths to avoid losing. There is a difference, however, between going to great lengths to avoid losing and going to great lengths to avoid the risk of losing. In our risk-averse society, most people, including lawyers, want a no-risk, predictable case, career, marriage, child, life, society, you name it. In this culture, the risk of going to trial and possibly losing is for many people terrifying and simply unacceptable. And then he kind of goes into talking a little more about the risk of losing, but he talks about then, and where he ends it, and where I wanted to end this particular quote in my notes app, is about the fact that you fought for someone. You fought for a client. And the last paragraph is, your client had someone who believed in her and fought hard for her.

Liz Lenivy [00:33:47]:
Some people may never get that from anyone in their life. Some of my most grateful clients have been those whose trials were lost despite our intense efforts. You are stronger and smarter for having done the trial you lost. Your future clients will benefit. Again, I keep this in my Notes app, and it’s something I turn to if I’m having, like, I just had a really bad loss, and I hide it from the judge. I learned that one early too. But yeah, I think everyone needs to have just those little reminders of you are not going to win everything. And if you do win everything, what that tells me is you are not putting yourself out there enough.

Liz Lenivy [00:34:24]:
The attorney that says they have a 100% win record is the attorney that is not trying cases.

Sydney Marino [00:34:30]:
Well, that’s probably the best way we could end this episode. And whether or not you’ve survived losing or you’re surviving the first couple years of practice, And you can stop panicking every time you don’t know something. I think there’s a different question that shows up now, and I think that’s what we’re going to handle in part 2 of this. And it’s not the, do I know what I’m doing in these early stages, but it’s, who am I as an attorney and did any of this turn out the way that I thought it would? So if you want to keep listening, stay tuned as we continue this conversation in part 2. And for our listeners, remember that new episodes of Heels in the Courtroom drop every other Wednesday. And if you’d like to join the conversation with us, you can reach us at heelsinthecourtroom.law. Thank you.

Announcer [00:35:14]:
Thanks for listening to Heels in the Courtroom. At the Simon Law Firm, we know that trial success isn’t just about experience. It’s about strategy, resources, and the power of collaboration. That’s why attorneys across the country partner with us to strengthen their cases and deliver justice for their clients. If you’re interested in working with our team of seasoned trial lawyers, call 314-241-2929. And if you enjoyed the podcast, be sure to subscribe and send us your thoughts at heelsinthecourtroom.law.

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