Where’s the Real Attorney?  You fill in the blank with your chosen profession/calling.  I’ve heard this a number of times from other lawyers and people from outside of the practice of law like ministers, dentists, etc.

One of the main concerns people (potential customers) seem to have is with a young person’s lack of experience.  It’s going to be a problem, so if you are a young professional doing whatever you will have to exert a little more energy to get someone excited about hiring you.

The first thing people do when you have a lack of experience is confuse this with a lack of competence.  That is so far from the truth in most cases.  For most people you have had to go through rigorous training to get where you are.  In my case, I went to college for four and a half years, then to law school for three years, studied like a machine to take and pass the bar exam and now the South Carolina Supreme Court says I am competent to be an attorney.  There are similar stories like this for everyone.

You are competent to do what you are doing  - you just don’t have the experience.  So, what do you do?

The first way you can make sure people know you are competent is by giving them “free” information.  I try to answer as many questions as I can for my prospective clients.  I try to make sure it appears that I know the process and know how to make their case work.  I give them the good and the bad about their case to show them I can look at the big picture as well as the minute details.

The place where I always get tripped up is trying to give too much information.  I have found myself talking about something and then I get to the point where experience would play in and I “forget my line.”  So, I would recommend that you give enough information to show you know what you’re doing, but you don’t have to give them all of the answers at the first meeting.  Besides, if you do that they may just not hire you and try to handle things on their own.

You can immediately gain experience by finding a mentor or three.  When my situation got rolling at work and the word got out, I had many more experienced attorneys offer their assistance.  I called many of them and they graciously gave of their time and knowledge.  For them I am truly grateful.  It may cost you a little cash so you can take them out to lunch to pick their brain, but that is an extremely small price to pay.

One thing that I have found by talking with some older, more experienced attorneys is that they are constantly presented with questions that they have never heard before or they have never participated in resolving.  That gives me comfort that I am not the only one who feels like they don’t have all of the answers.

My mentors provided me with the “experience” element that I was missing.  They told me a lot of the things you can’t learn by reading a book.  Like what preferences certain judges have, what is the protocol for certain types of cases, how to deal with large government bureaucracies like the Department of Social Services, how to draft certain legal briefs, and types of questions to ask at depositions to make sure you get everything covered.

I don’t want to keep rambling on, but there is more that I want to say.  I will post the second part of this post later on.