CELL Blog | Center for Engaged Learning in the Law

“What if I got it wrong, and no poem or song could put right what I got wrong…?”
-Coldplay-

My mother makes the most beautiful baskets. From scratch. By hand. Really, they’re just unbelievable. I told her to sell them, and her response was that she couldn’t possibly; not because she’s attached to them, but because “each one contains at least one tiny flaw, and I wouldn’t feel right selling them that way.” My mother is paralyzed by perfection. Guess who inherited that trait?

Bingo. This week at Legal Aid it truly occurred to me that I, too, am paralyzed by the thought that I have utterly no business doing anything, let alone representing a client in court, if I don’t know how to do it flawlessly. I mean, hello! This is someone’s life. These are someone’s rights. And they’re in my very inexperienced hands. Oh. God.

While preparing for an in-person client interview with the very intelligent woman I’m soon to represent in Randolph County 50B court, I started writing out a few preliminary questions I’d like to ask her on the stand. OK, I’ll start with a little background, I thought. No, that’s not compelling. Start with a nice heart-wrenching statement of why she’s here – her fear of her husband and desperate need of a 50B – then move on to how awesome she is at her job of being a bioterrorism expert (seriously, this lady rocks). No, that won’t do either. That’s just freaking hokey. What is this, daytime television? OK, skip the plaintiff and move to the defendant. He’ll never admit to this on the stand. And if he won’t admit to it, how the hell will the judge know who to believe. We have very bad pictures of her eye after he shot her point-blank with a bb gun, but that doesn’t prove he shot her, only that she was shot. How the hell do I pin this guy down? Maybe I should have subpoenaed people. But who? Her kids? How awful would that be?? OK, f-ck this. Just wing it. Ahhhhhhh! This is so much harder without the little spiral-bound notebook of already-admitted facts!!!!!!

That was pretty much the thought process, and has been the thought process for most of my very short legal career and all of my pre-legal career. I just cannot fathom the idea of taking on a job I seriously do not know how to do … perfectly. It seems so … wrong. But, luckily for me there is an ounce or two of common sense to calm the fiery delusions, and here is what that common sense has to say:

One: the only way to learn is to do. Everything I have ever done in law school has filled me with dread (a fact my ego lies about rather effectively in the form of statements like, “Psh. Please. I don’t get nervous.”). Every time I’ve argued to a fake jury or stood before Justice Exum to rehearse an oral argument or submitted a faux motion or prepared a memorandum of law – every single time – I’ve been terrified. It would not be perfect. It would not even be close to perfect. But every single time I’ve gained invaluable amounts of confidence and even more valuable feedback from those who arguably know what they’re doing. And with each time, I get better and the given task gets easier. The hard part is convincing myself I have any business starting.

Two: no one does it perfectly; in fact, there’s no such thing. Sitting in Guilford County court on any given morning reveals this fact with PAINFUL force. Are these people really lawyers? How much did you, the client, pay him? Pay me half that much right now and I’ll do ten times better than this dweeb. I’ve seen lawyers ask questions to which they very clearly didn’t know the answer; lawyers fail to ask even a single follow-up question to actually make the point they started; lawyers whose idea of preparation was a legal pad of scribbled notes not even they could read; and lawyers whose “closing arguments” were terrific except for failing outright to mention the law upon which the argument rested. Seriously, some of it is appalling. And it really ought to teach me that it doesn’t take a mental giant to be a lawyer in district court, and that even the slightest bit of preparation on my part ought to do the trick. At the very least, I ought to be learning that there is no such thing as perfect and no matter how effective a given attorney might be, even effectiveness does not equate to perfection.

Three: we learn best through our mistakes. It’s trite and tired and true. What’s really scary is that whole fiduciary duty thing underlying the concept of making mistakes. I could make a mistake that allows a woman’s battering husband to abuse her again. Me. I could do that to her. Oh. My. God. But just like doctors will inevitably make mistakes that kill people (eeek! One more reason NOT to be a doctor!!), I, too, have to cope with the mistakes I will make and their ramifications. And instead of allowing myself to be paralyzed by fear at that thought, I should simply resolve to work harder to ensure it doesn’t happen.
Now if only I could convince my mother to sell those baskets…