Tiny Daily Improvements Drive Success, Personal Growth in Law

Summary

• Success at legal practice—and success at life—comes when you make tiny, incremental improvements day after day.
• If you define your success based on outperforming other people, you’ll hold yourself back.
• Great lawyers develop skills that have nothing to do with the practice of law and everything to do with personal growth.
• To be really successful, you must free yourself from your own preconceived notions of what type of law you’re supposed to practice.

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Being a successful lawyer is more about a constant striving toward personal growth rather than learning a series of skills, completing tasks, or outcompeting others. Success comes when you move beyond viewing yourself as a person with fixed traits climbing up a ladder and instead work to improve and change yourself incrementally—not just as a lawyer, but as a person.

Ask Mentors the Right Questions

I used to believe that becoming a great lawyer was about mastering legal tasks. I’d ask senior lawyers what to do or how to do things. Instead, I should have been asking why. Understanding how all the pieces fit together makes it easier to learn additional skills and new areas of law.

After 25 years of practicing law, I’m still growing. Success at legal practice—and success at life—comes when you make tiny, incremental improvements day after day. Every time I finish a court hearing, a presentation, or an important meeting, I ask myself, “What could I have done better?” Focusing on drawing small lessons from every experience has, over time, translated into large-scale growth.

I ask myself how I can improve even after my greatest successes. Separating process from results is important because you often succeed through dumb luck or fail through no fault of your own. What’s important is that you find a way to grow each and every time.

The Flaw with Comparing Yourself to Others

When you focus on self-improvement, you train your mind to measure success based on your own development rather than external validators like job titles or comparisons with others. If you define your success based on outperforming other people, you’ll hold yourself back.

Maybe the people around you aren’t that great!

Conversely, maybe you’ve surrounded yourself with people who constantly push you to be better through their own experience. The important thing is to constantly move yourself forward to be the best lawyer and best person you can be.

Being a great lawyer involves developing skills that have nothing to do with the practice of law and everything to do with personal growth. To succeed as a lawyer, you need to develop the discipline and focus necessary to complete complex tasks within severe time constraints. You need to learn how to regulate your emotions in challenging circumstances. And you need to use empathy as a tool because understanding the motivation of your clients and your adversaries is a necessary part of success.

Grow Beyond Any Practice

To be really successful, you must free yourself from your own preconceived notions of what type of law you’re supposed to practice. Throughout my career, I’ve handled everything from complex appellate briefs to gritty jury trials. More recently, I shifted my practice in response to unprecedented regulatory change and upheaval. Often, the best opportunities come when you learn areas of law that are emerging.

You may be tempted to view success as a destination. But it’s really a journey that you’ll complete little by little, day after day. Developing as a lawyer comes from embracing that iterative process and savoring each small success along the way. Developing a growth mindset and being open to change will enable you to unlock the best version of yourself.

Endnotes

Authors

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Authors

Renato T Mariotti

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