<p>Is being a lawyer something that is learned or are people just naturally good at analytical skills, logical reasoning, etc.</p>
<p>I understand that even talented people have something to learn but are there like ‘early’ signs of ability?</p>
<p>Yes, there are some innate lawyers who are born with J.D.'s.</p>
<p>I think there are basically two types of lawyers. Office lawyers and litigators. The latter are a breed apart and definitely not everyone is cut out for litigation. The reason is that you have to be quick with the knowledge of procedural law as well the substantive law you are pleading. You have to know the rules of evidence and procedure extremely well to debate them spontaneously and you do not have the luxury time to research. </p>
<p>Office lawyers, on the other hand, do drafting and negotiating and research, but have the relative luxury of time. I would say that anyone of reasonable intelligence can aspire to office law. But rather few are cut out for litigation. I read in some firms only 10 or 15% of lawyers actually litigate.</p>
<p>I think there are basically two types of lawyers. Office lawyers and litigators. The latter are a breed apart and definitely not everyone is cut out for litigation. The reason is that you have to be quick with the knowledge of procedural law as well the substantive law you are pleading. You have to know the rules of evidence and procedure extremely well to debate them spontaneously and you do not have the luxury time to research. </p>
<p>Office lawyers, on the other hand, do drafting and negotiating and research, but have the relative luxury of time. I would say that anyone of reasonable intelligence can aspire to office law. But rather few are cut out for litigation. I read in some firms only 10 or 15% of lawyers actually litigate.</p>
<p>"Office lawyers, on the other hand, do drafting and negotiating and research, but have the relative luxury of time. I would say that anyone of reasonable intelligence can aspire to office law. "</p>
<p>You’ve obviously never experienced what it is like to work on cutting edge transactional deals in a large law firm. That’s too bad. Thinking on your feet, understanding the psychology of your counterparts on the other side of the table, as well as every nuance of the deal you are working on, tight deadlines and time pressure, both imposed by your clients and by the constraints of the market and various regulatory agencies (like the FTC, SEC and IRS) and incredible pressure to make sure that every single t is crossed and i is dotted is absolutely not designed for anyone of reasonable intelligence. There is no luxury of time. </p>
<p>If your experience as an “office lawyer” is different, I’d love to know what kinds of work you are doing.</p>
<p>That is why I characterized it as “relative” luxury - compared to having no time to prepare relative to debating points of evidence before a judge.</p>
<p>Negotiating an agreement in a room full of opposing counsel and opinionated and driven business people requires just as much preparation and ability to think on your feet as debating anything before a judge. Speaking with and persuading your SEC examiner or FTC/DOJ antitrust official requires no less skill than that required of a skilled and experienced litigator. There is no relative luxury. Preparation and experience are key in both litigation and “office lawyer”, as you like to call it, contexts.</p>
<p>toronto_guy -
sorry i also don’t see any “luxury of time” for non-litigators. just because you aren’t in court doens’t mean there aren’t real deadlines or that you don’t have to think on your feet. senior lawyers and clients want answers when they want them - not always time to say, “excuse me, can i run and research that” in the middle of a meeting – you often are excpected to have been prepared going in, just like a litigator.</p>
<p>a good litigator should be able to anticipate the issues that will arise at trial and be well prepared to them – evidentiary issues don’t just arise out of nowhere with no time to prepare – its part of preparing for the trial.</p>
<p>I am no way suggesting that transaction work and the type of activities described herein are not demanding. I agree that the contrary is the truth. My point is that litigation is a very demanding endeavour and not everyone is meant to be in litigation.</p>
<p>You actually were suggesting that transactional work, or the work done by “office lawyers” is not as demanding. Did you not say that litigators are a “breed apart” when compared to “office lawyers”? Did you not also say that (and I repeat): “Office lawyers, on the other hand, do drafting and negotiating and research, but have the relative luxury of time. I would say that anyone of reasonable intelligence can aspire to office law.”</p>
<p>If you want to revise your original statement, that’s fine, but you clearly made a distinction that is neither accurate nor true.</p>
<p>torontoguy - this comment really isn’t just limited to you – but comments about what the practice of law is or is not like carry a lot more weight if the poster indicates from what experience they are speaking (ie, are they are law student, a prospectice law student, a practicing attorney, etc.) i know sallyawp has clearly described elsewhere that she is a practicing corportate lawyer. i know i’ve mentioned elsewhere that i am a former attorney. perhaps it would help others understand your statements if you described the basis for your perscpective on the practice of law?</p>
<p>i think the OP was talking about lawyering as a skill that lawyers do; example of this is something called cause lawyering. sara weddington is the perfect example of a cause lawyer who wanted to change the status quo of abortion through her client in roe v. wade. she seeked to cause “something else.”</p>
<p>I’ve practiced law for over 20 years. The first dozen years, I litigated in small firms or as a solo (frequently appearing against large firms); I’ve worked in-house for most of the last decade, for a couple of years at a Fortune 500 company, a year at a small public company, and for the balance at a mid-cap bleeding-edge high tech company, doing predominantly transactional work (with a recent shift to managing high-stakes litigation).</p>
<p>My role in high-stakes corporate litigation is primarily as an observer, but my take on it is that not very much on-your-feet thinking is required in the courtroom in such cases. When the stakes are high, the parties have generally taken so many depositions (and conducted so much other discovery), and lived with the legal issues for so long, that there are not that many surprises by the time a case goes to trial. There’s more on-your-feet thinking required in litigation where less is at stake, where attorneys by necessity can’t afford to devote the same amount of time to preparing the case before trial.</p>
<p>As a transactional lawyer, I’ve had to draft a 70-page contract in about ten hours to memorialize a new business model for an international deal in the last week of a fiscal quarter, a week when I was also generating multiple revisions to a dozen other contracts every day, with the hard deadline of the end of a fiscal quarter at the end of the week.</p>
<p>Another time, I spent 38 of the last 52 hours of a fiscal year in do-or-die face-to-face negotiations with a stubborn team of negotiators for a stodgy Fortune 500 company. (Additional color: my counter-parts had insisted on generating the first draft of the agreement, but when I flew into town a week before to review the draft they had promised, the person charged with creating the draft had completely dropped the ball, and then announced (Friday afternoon) that she was leaving town for her sister’s wedding. The person who then took the lead for them told me he was leaving town on on business Monday morning, but if I had a draft for him to review at 9:00 a.m. Monday, he would read it on the plane. I spent Saturday and Sunday drafting the agreement, and Sunday evening reviewing it with the business unit, and our revenue recognition team. He had his draft Monday morning.)</p>
<p>Yes, transaction work requires a lot of thinking on your feet, whether you’re doing it in a law firm, or in-house.</p>
<p>toronto_guy = owned.</p>
<p>I stick to my original position. While I do state that the pace in corporate firms is extremely fast and onerous, it does not equate with litigation. </p>
<p>And certainly, if one is working in the firm there are other associates and paralegals to assist in proofreading and research. I know lawyers whose work consists strictly of drafting and wholly admit they are not suited for litigation.</p>
<p>toronto_guy,
Are you a litigator? I ask because while I don’t often venture into the courtroom to practice (though it is something I have certainly done in connection with some of my pro bono work), I also don’t see too many litigators attempting to do the work that I do every day. Therefore, since most of the litigators that I know respect the work the I and my “office lawyer” colleagues do, they would never compare our work unfavorably to theirs or suggest that we have it easy in any way. Accordingly, I would never do the same to the talented litigators that I am privileged to know. However, if you must compare, let’s not forget that while I completely respect the work that the litigators do, the vast majority of the work that most litigators do is outside of the courtroom, doing research, drafting and redrafting – motion practice. For those who enter the courtroom every day, more often than not the work involves putting in an appearance here, a pleading there – none of the courtroom antics that you see on TV. In fact, the idea behind the discovery rules embodied in, for example, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the procedural codes of most states, is to reach some kind of settlement between the parties before a jury is empaneled or a judge begins to consider witness testimony. </p>
<p>So, coming back around to my original question (one that I believe unbelieveablem alluded to before, and to which you have not responded), what is your experience that leads to your statements? Are you a litigator? If so, in what areas and in what courtrooms do you typically practice? I ask simply because I’ve never heard a practicing litigator (any lawyer, for that matter) belittle transactional practice, or any practice outside of their own area of expertise in the manner in which you have done so. What leads you to your conclusions? What experiences form the basis for your opinion?</p>
<p>sally, I notice that he hasn’t replied to the questions as to whether or not he is a litigator. I’m skeptical that he is ANY type of lawyer, based on a post he made on another thread about the process of law school education in Canada, which contained several errors.</p>
<p>Toronto_guy is a “former chemical engineer” who now does something in finance, according to his other posts.</p>
<p>Well, then, it’s a good thing that toronto_guy has illuminated such a dark and difficult question for all of us, isn’t it? </p>
<p>In any event, in my opinion, one of the most wonderful things about practicing law is the constant challenge of the work. You’ll certainly never be bored!</p>
<p>i think readers here can often see a difference between the postings of those who are lawyers and those who are not. lawyers, by training, know that merely stating your opinion, no matter how many times and how emphatically you do so, doesn’t really amount to presenting a persuasive argument. at least in my observations, it often seems to be those contemplating the legal career, rather than those who have been engaged in it, who seem to present very self-assured absolute statements without bothering to provide any basis or support for those statements. not that all prospective lawyers do this, but certainly, i think it says a lot about a poster if they have not yet learned the importance of clearly articulating not only their position, but the basis for it. and in fact i think this is an important point for those considering the legal profession – being arrogant and opinionated, while perhaps common traits among many drawn to the legal profession, are not what makes someone a good lawyer.</p>
<p>everyone on these boards will sometimes make broad statements - these boards lend themselves to that - but when all is said and done, those broad statements just don’t add much to the knowledge of those seeking answers here.</p>