You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
Working as a lawyer for the firm you clerked with (or at least, the firm I clerked with) versus a new firm is kind of like driving your parents around versus driving anyone else around. Your parents still think of you as the girl who almost crashed into the mailbox. Anyone else just assumes you can drive unless you prove otherwise. I like the presumption that I can drive.
I wrote this about nine years ago. My first real lawyer job started as a 2L clerkship and ended after only a year, as the Great Recession was showing its teeth. I had just started my second job out of law school, and felt pretty confident, even though I was branching into some new areas of law and working in a wholly new environment.
Here’s a little secret that they don’t tell you, even after a year in—you still don’t know it all. In fact, you know almost nothing. Sure, it’s an upgrade from the absolutely nothing you know when you first start practicing, but not by much. And you’re a good ways away from knowing, exactly, what it is you know and don’t know.
To stretch that tortured analogy, after a year I knew where the brake and gas pedals were and how to avoid the mailbox and get to work. I didn’t know that sometimes, I would making a three-point turn in a tight underground parking garage with minimal lighting, poles every 20 feet, and two-way traffic. And sometimes it would be in a new SUV owned by my boss. (No, Dan, I’m not gonna borrow your car.)
But just like traffic laws and the laws of physics impose the same duties on new drivers as they do to veterans (and I promise that’s the last driving reference I will make), the Rules of Professional Conduct don’t carve out exceptions for new lawyers. Day 1 attorneys are held to the same standards as Day 3,812 attorneys (which is where I am today!) or Day 11,456 attorneys (which will be my last day, if I retire at 65; it’s a Thursday).
New lawyers have some advantages here, though—the versions of the Model Rules and state equivalents they learned in law school are likely to be a lot more current than what an experienced lawyer learned in law school, and chances are the youngs are whizzes at computer research (though those of us who learned to Shepardize using the books can take consolation that if we are ever on a desert island and the only way out is through book research, we’ll survive.) As every lawyer has an obligation to stay current with changes in the law as well as with the risks and benefits of relevant technology (it’s in the Duty of Competence, SCR 20:1.1, see the ABA Comments), experienced lawyers can learn a lot from newbies.
I can’t comment about what 21 years from now is going to look like, but I do know this—you don’t know everything on Day 3,812 either (sorry to spoil that for my younger readers). A large part of my practice involves advising and representing other lawyers, but I am still learning. There’s a lot I don’t know—true, I’m better at figuring out what I don’t know and remedying the situation through research or referral, or simply admitting I don’t have an answer.
Realizing I didn’t know as much as I thought I did was something I probably had to figure out for myself, with a bit of stumbling and crashing (not into mailboxes, I’m keeping my promise) and a whole bunch of humility. It’s probably something everyone needs to learn on their own.
But if you give your baby lawyer self some advice, what would you say?
