When our son was a boy, I said something along the lines of, "The key to success is. . ." and he interrupted me with a question: "How many keys to success are there?" Good question. That's what I get for using the same cliches over and over.
Today I was thinking about a few tips I have received from other lawyers during my career. They aren't keys to success but they help cope with the occasional failure.
I was a young assistant city attorney in Boca Raton and the prosecutor in our municipal court. One day I came back to the office, furious that I'd lost a case I thought I should have won. So I asked my boss, "Red, what do you do when you lose a case you think you should have won?" He looked at me and grinned. "First," he said, "you say "Aw, shit.' And then you move on to the next case."
A friend of mine in Clearwater put it more elegantly: "I don't design 'em, I just fly 'em."
Another friend of mine from Boca Raton, who was not a trial lawyer, gave me this observation: "The basic duty of any lawyer is to give his client the best advice he can give - once. After that, the client is on his own." That has stayed with me because it helps me understand the basic relationship between lawyers and clients. Their problems are not really my problems, and they have the right to make "business decisions" on their own, as long as you point out the potholes and stumbling blocks they will encounter along the way.
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