TO WIT: MY FAVORITE MISTAKES
OK, OK, I can hear you snickering already. Yes, I have made mistakes in my career some of them whoppers, and I'm not afraid to admit it. Why should I be? I mean, isn't that what pseudonyms are for?
The truth is, of course, that we have all made mistakes, everyone of us. For some, it was a Miss, statute of limitations; for others, a failure to include the right defendant: and yet for others, it was going to law school.
There was a time I was afraid of my mistakes, paralyzed by them, just like some of you may yet be. And it wasn't so much the mistakes I actually made that had me catatonic, as it was the ones I knew lay lurking just up the road, hiding, waiting to pounce.
But that was in my earlier years, when the practice of law was yet foreign to me, when it's unfamiliar and intricate by ways and invariably led me blindly into many dangerous labyrinth. And it's in those murky environs that I might yet but for droplets of blood, I willingly dripped onto the ground behind me as I entered.
If the year, since then have taught me anything, it's that mistakes are pandemic in our business, and, globally speaking, simply unavoidable. I have dealt with some of the best lawyers in the state, and, sooner or later, they all make mistakes, not the least of which is litigating with me. But I no longer fret over them, I no longer constantly worry about them; I never no longer let them control my life.
I would not be honest with you if I didn't tell you, this liberating attitude didn't come easily and at a price. But comment did, the byproduct of a secret I have learned along the way. It's a secret. I'm perfectly willing to share with you gratis, and why wouldn't I? After all, aren't you my colleagues, my friends, the self-same people who would assuredly try to lift my scalp in trial at the very first opportunity?
Here's how I do it: I've come to realize that, depending on what kind of client we are serving, almost every mistake has a silver lining, almost every mistake has a quality about it that ameliorates the pain and suffering it might otherwise engender. the trick is to learn to recognize it and turn it to your advantage.
For instance, I still recall quite vividly the very first case I ever tried before a jury. I have been practicing only a few months when a senior partner walked into my office, plunged down a plane van vanilla auto accident file and told me I'd be trying the case next week. And My hast to get ready, ritual that included an awful lot of impromptu sponge baths, I neglected to call the only independent witness who could corroborate my clients account that the defendant had run through a stop sign and smashed into the side of his car.
Otherwise, and, at the time of the trial, the jury chose to believe his version over my plaintiffs, and the case was lost. For a long while, I blame myself, certain that if I called the witness, my client would have prevailed. The truth was the client had turned down and mentally settlement offer of $7,500, insisting that he had filed a complaint seeking $10,000, at the time the jurisdictional minimum for a jury trial, and, by God, that's what he wanted. Now I ask you, should anyone so selfish and irrational, so carelessly willingly to put his lawyer through such misery, be entitled to the fruits of his calumny? I think not.
See how it works? If you represent the greedy, the over reacher, the idiot, your mistakes only assist them and getting their just desserts. So stop fretting.
But what if your clients are really nice people? Well, a few years later, I represented a husband and wife in another auto case. I don't know how it happened, but I just missed the statute of limitations. Well, yes, I know how it happened. I wasn't paying attention. There, I've said it, happy now?
When I realized it, I decided that the only proper thing to do was to relocate my practice to Argentina. But as I didn’t speak Spanish, that was not a pragmatic solution. So instead I called the clients in and gave them the bad news straight up.
“Your case is worth about $5,000,” I told them, and they agreed. “After fees and expenses, you would have had about $3,500 left for yourselves,” I told them., and they balked. They told me they were reluctant to take any money from me for fear I would no longer represent them.
I was so relieved that the response I didn't bother to ask them why the hell they would want to continue to be represented by a lawyer who had grand Lee butchered their case. I also was greatly relieved to find out that my angst over this whole affair was for not. These folks, it turned out, were decent, caring human beings, whose primary concern was for the people they cared about, not for the filthy lucre their misfortune might secure them. Yes, I know they were "clients,” but there you have it.
If you've been paying attention, you've learned that if we represent selfish loud, our mistakes only serve to get them what they deserve, and if we represent really nice folk, people who are in touch with their feelings, they haven't got the heart to eviscerate us, no matter how richly we deserve it.
So, what are you fighting about? Don't worry; be happy. Learn to accept your mistakes and you'll feel ever so much better. A caution you, though, that this technique, no matter how skillfully utilized, only works for the lawyer. Your client may still be devastated by your mistakes, their lives still left in shambles. But hey, that's their problem isn't it?
©2002 S. Sponte, Esq.