But if new lawyers feel compelled to express their thoughts publicly, they invite scrutiny. This isn't always a nice, warm, tummy rub. A while back Seth Godin, marketing philosopher, made this point as well.
Sooner or later, you'll ask for something or read something or expect something and you won't like what you get. You'll feel like I wasted your time, wasted your money or didn't meet your expectations.
Not just me, of course. Everyone. Even you. You will disappoint someone, and the organizations you depend on will disappoint you. Expectations keep rising, and promises keep being made. We keep bringing more magic into the world, but rising expectations mean that there's more disappointment as well.
That's part of the deal of being in the world.
I've been told that I disappoint readers with regularity. It's the risk one takes in being a blawger, and the recognition that you can't please everyone is part of the deal. So the choices are take the risk or get out.
The alternative, I'm afraid, isn't to choose a path where we make everyone happy and always exceed their expectations. Nope. The alternative is to hide, to fail to engage and to produce nothing.
My view of new lawyers is far longer term than most readers, especially the new lawyers themselves. When I started SJ, many of them had yet to be accepted to law school, much less practicing lawyers. This isn't the slur most of them perceive it to be, but mere fact. Still, it's a fact that doesn't enhance their self-esteem and so they resist it with all their baby lawyer might.
Over the years, I've tried to come up with a way of explaining to new lawyers why their self-esteem may not be nearly as warranted as they think it is. One argument, that if they're so incredibly brilliant at one year out of law school, then how will they be ten years out, twenty years out, strikes me as fairly clear.
Yet this argument hasn't made much of a dent. They tend to chalk up the value of experience to a means of subjugation by older lawyers to keep the new lawyers down, to put them in their place. We lord it over the newbies because we have it and they don't, not because there is any value to experience.
From this, they argue that we're jealous of their savvy and fearful that they will steal our clients, and that's why we go to such lengths to diminish their worth. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with a concern that they are publishing their thoughts and "advice" on the internet for the world to see, and their thoughts aren't always as brilliant as they think they are. Indeed, sometimes they're downright dangerous.
They complain that older lawyers are condescending. I'm certainly guilty of that too. They say we're not sufficiently respectful, civil and sensitive to their fragile self-esteem. Guilty. But in my defense, it doesn't matter how much you think you know now that you've passed the bar, filled your briefcase with brilliance and collected adoring fans on twitter.
We may be colleagues, but we are not quite peers. Your pugnacious resistance to the value of experience belies the problem; old guys find it tedious to be required to rub your tummy and make you feel valued while trying to explain why your brilliant thoughts aren't nearly as brilliant as you think they are.
Aside: Sometimes, experienced lawyers will email or comment that they don't see this happening as much as I say, or that they don't see it as being as much of a problem. This is where my longevity in the blawgosphere comes into play. For better or worse, I read a lot of other blogs, mostly because people send me links to new blogs because they want me to mention them or promote them. The more I see, the more I realize both the scope and depth of the problem. If you don't see it, great. That doesn't change the fact that I see it. Perhaps if you saw what I saw, you would think otherwise.
The long term perspective may help to illuminate why this is. Every year, another crop of baby lawyers suddenly appears, filled with the same sense of self-importance and the compulsion to let the world know their deepest thoughts. And so old guys are constrained to repeat themselves to each new class, as if no one has ever before graduated law school and reinvented the wheel.
And like the class before you, you whine and cry and complain how we're mean old lawyer and don't appreciate you. And like the class before you, you parry and riposte with the same arguments we've seen over and over. And like the class before you, you want to insulate your world from the harsh voice of experienced lawyers telling you things you don't want to hear.
It's tiresome. There are some new lawyers on the internet who get it, but far more who don't. They write their little hearts out (see how condescending I can be?) and await the applause and adoration of their fans. Should a curmudgeon stop by, it ruins their dream. No one has ever been discouraging to them before, told them they aren't the coolest lawyer ever, or at the very least, softened the blow by first telling them all the wonderful things they are.
Does this disappoint you? It certainly disappoints me. Welcome to the real world, which is filled with disappointment and critical scrutiny. You can hide from it, but it's still there. What you need to do is be able to take a punch and keep on trying. That comes with experience.
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Source: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2012/10/22/ot-sowing-disappointment-in-the-blawgosphere.aspx?ref=rss
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