What Makes a Good Lawyer?
“Good lawyers treat the client professionally. Great lawyers personalize the relationship by recognizing the unique styles, interests, and needs of the individuals with whom they work. “Good lawyers do their best to keep promises about when work will be completed.
These examples could come from a range of places, including a:
Part 2 Part 2 of 5: Learning Essential Skills
Unprofessional or unethical behavior can include:
Academic acumen is obviously important when studying to become a lawyer. But, ultimately, a career in the law requires you to empathise with, relate to and connect with a wide range of people; from clients and clerks to judges and jurors.
Throughout your legal studies through to your career practising law, you need to learn and retain huge quantities of information and be able to utilise that information and translate it into arguments and strategies to win your cases.
The skills and personality traits listed need to be consistently developed throughout both your training and when in the role as well. By doing this, and putting the proper time into preparation for every case, you will be more likely to provide quality representation to your clients in court and build your reputation as a good lawyer.
For you to be a successful lawyer enjoying a well-argued discussion with people is a good one, because this shows you are on the right track.
Persuasion is another skill a good lawyer must possess. Being able to develop this skill can make a difference not only when presenting the case, but also to “convince” the court about your client’s position So, if you are considering to be a good lawyer, you’d better start training your persuasiveness.
Negotiating is a key success factor that must not depart from the mouth of any good lawyer. In almost any case reaching agreements between the parties involved are essential in the profession. It is important to have a bargaining skill that will allow you to reach good deals before falling into more cumbersome procedures.
Due to the verse nature of the profession, lawyers are exposed to many arguments, which could affect their moods and even possible threats; so, not having a good emotional armor will be difficult to bear. Becoming a good lawyer, you must be ready to balance your emotions irrespective of the case before you.
With life being organized shows how serious you are as an individual, and this could speak a lot about your achievement. Becoming a good lawyer also depends on your level of good organization of both time and your job, knowing this secret shows you are one step closer to being a good lawyer.
Persistence is synonymous to this profession and is another great virtue of a good lawyer; as a lawyer is never allowed to surrender. A successful lawyer must be willing to fight to the end to achieve your goals. As we know, all know failure is inevitable, but you will have to be prepared to stand up as many times you fall.
Another success factor of a good lawyer will always depend on his/her patience because the profession requires much waiting for the courts and other actors in the legal system. This could even last longer than expected. You must cultivate the character to learn to wait for hours, weeks and even months to resolve a case.
Compassion is an emotional response whereby one perceives another’s problem and authentically, genuinely wants to help resolve the problem. This is part of what lawyers do: People come to us with their problems, or to avoid future problems, and we help resolve or avoid the issues, whichever the case may be.
Effective communication skills are essential to good lawyering. One of the most important aspects of communication is listening. Of course, what we say, how we say it and when we say it are important. But we can only do it right if we listen first. Listen to your clients. Listen to your adversaries, your colleagues and the judges.
I often hear people say, “She’s not aggressive enough to be an effective lawyer.” That’s not right. You don’t need to be aggressive — though you must be assertive. Assertive lawyers state their opinions and make themselves heard while remaining respectful of others. Aggressive lawyers attack or ignore others’ opinions in favor of their own.
We need to be creative to find real solutions to the issues our clients face. Each matter is unique; each client must be handled differently, and each solution carefully crafted. While on the whole we lawyers are a rather risk-averse group, we must learn to think outside the box.
Success is achieved with perseverance. We must keep working, keep trying and keep going. We must be able to walk away when things are not working, take a break and come back fresh and ready to “fight,” negotiate, or whatever the matter requires.