It is customary in life for people to have New Year resolution of things they would like to change in the coming year, not minding the fact that most people don’t keep to their New Year resolutions.
The idea provides one with an opportunity to reflect on the life spent in the preceding year; one begins to ask questions like ‘what have I achieved this year?’ ’what mistakes have I made?’, ‘If given another opportunity what would I do or not do?’ with a view to being better than the last year.
This same ideology applies to the legal profession just as it traverses all aspects of life.
The legal year of 2013 has come to end, meaning another year has been added to the practice of a young lawyer. A young lawyer in active practice for the whole year would observe that the skill and experience one possessed at the beginning of the year has increased tremendously.
At the early stage of practice a young lawyer criticises almost everything going on in his immediate legal environs, then slowly he begins to blend into the environment, gradually he begins to realise that those things he was criticising are not really the crux of practice, finally he starts to create his own style and acquires more experience to aid his legal practise.
The year coming to an end doesn’t imply that the young lawyer has learnt everything he needs to know about the legal profession, just that there is more knowledge to be acquired to improve one’s attitude towards practice.
This is the time for a young lawyer to reflect on his practice for the year, rate his practice and find out areas where one was found wanting in 2013.
Maybe you are the type that always goes to court late or maybe you hardly make endorsements on a case file or don’t even read a case file before going to court, the time to stop is now. Every young lawyer has his own peculiar downside, what matters is realising where one is wrong and making a resolution to change it for the better.
The New Year provides an opportunity to make things better, an opportunity to do something we have not done before, expanding our boundaries and discovering what we would like to happen in our life this New Year.
A young lawyer should assess the cases he has handled this year to know which area that needs improvement; it could be the way one addresses the court.
A young lawyer should rate his performance to the law firm to know if he has being beneficial to the firm or costing the firm money and work on what he would like to change in terms of relationship with clients and packaging.
Goals give us direction, New Year resolutions are not always kept but they should be made to give us focus when entering the New Year. What would a young lawyer like to attain, little and big things? This young lawyer’s (i.e the writer’s) New Year resolution irrespective of the travails of a young lawyer, is to develop my attitude to the legal profession, improve my skill and expand my knowledge of the law by reading law reports and making meaningful contributions to the success of case files and start keeping to time.
“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a New Year, it is that we should have a new soul… unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.”
A young lawyer should ask what problems he would like to solve this New Year, what positive decisions he would like to make and what he needs to do to improve his welfare and practise. Take a few hours of your time and write it down in a 2014 diary, if possible on 1st January, 2014 let it serve as a constant reminder.
Dig within and make this New Year better.
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