The Best Advice You Never Got

In this episode, Josh and Aaron discuss the things they've learned over the years that they wish they had known as they were just starting out.

 FVF Law is a well-credentialed, overwhelmingly 5-star reviewed personal injury law firm in Austin, TX. FVF strives to be the educational resource for the injured, available to guide those with questions about what comes next. It is FVF’s mission to ensure clients are prioritized and informed throughout the injury claim process, and to secure the best possible outcome. Josh Fogelman and Aaron Von Flatern founded FVF Law to offer a different kind of injury law firm, and a dignified alternative in the marketplace. They hope to show injured Texans that consulting a lawyer after an injury is a natural, and responsible thing to do.

Transcript

0:00:00.1 Josh: Hey, Aaron.

0:00:01.5 Aaron: Hey, Josh.

0:00:03.2 Josh: Hey, buddy.

0:00:05.6 Aaron: What's up? What do you got? What do you got over there? 

0:00:09.6 Josh: What's the best advice you never got in law school about being a lawyer? 

0:00:18.8 Aaron: Best advice I never got in law school about being a lawyer. In other words, advice I wish I'd have gotten? 

0:00:25.9 Josh: Yes.

0:00:26.4 Aaron: Can we make that digestible for my tiny squirrel brain? 

0:00:29.6 Josh: Hey, Aaron.

0:00:30.4 Aaron: Hey, Josh.

0:00:31.8 Josh: What's some advice that you wish you had gotten in law school, but that you never got? 

0:00:37.3 Aaron: I wish someone had told me that stress can actually be beneficial in some contexts that when your blood pressure rises and your head starts pounding, whether that starts to age you or starts to aid you, depends on your perception of that. I learned that later from not even sure. Some book.

0:01:15.1 Josh: What are some ways in which stress can be beneficial for you in the practice of law? 

0:01:19.2 Aaron: Well, it's that healthy tension. It's eustress instead of distress. The idea that you've got high stakes, that you have a level of fear associated with what? With doing something rather courageous. Going and standing in front of a bunch of people making arguments, asking for things, asking them to believe in you and believe in your client, despite the fact that there's someone on the other side literally just tearing you down and tearing your client down the whole time.

0:01:54.3 Josh: That is their job.

0:01:55.5 Aaron: That's their job.

0:01:56.0 Josh: Their whole job.

0:01:57.2 Aaron: The stress of going into that and the fear of not being prepared for it can be overwhelming. But if you start to recognize the elevated pulse and start to recognize the palm sweating as what the body does to bring blood into the core to get you ready to do something significant, whether you're about to push a boulder off a cliff or go make an impassion plea for your client, that is what the body does to get you ready. And if you view it that way, instead of spiking your cortisol levels, instead of turning all your hair gray like mine did, it actually can propel you forward and keep you healthily attached to your work and allow you to access a deeper meaning in your work. So, I wish someone had told me that, and I'm gonna turn the question on to you now, and I'm gonna try to remember how you asked it. What's advice that you never got that you should have got but you never got that you wish you'd gotten? 

0:03:11.5 Josh: Before I answer your question, I want to comment on your answer to my question. 'Cause your answer was interesting in the practice of law. Because being a plaintiff's lawyer where your job is to carry the burden of evidence to prove your client's case, you can't do nothing and win. You have to do everything to win, which means performance after performance after performance. And what I mean by performance isn't acting, I mean literally getting the job done and performing in a way that's beyond just competent exceptionally well. That is the expectation that we as people who care about our craft place on ourselves in every single case, in every endeavor that we take, in every single case. And it's so adversarial. Our job is so adversarial. As you pointed out you got people trying to tear you down all the time. But even beyond that, even if you didn't have people trying to tear you down all the time, there are so many instances in the duration of any personal injury case where you are taking a giant risk.

0:04:29.4 Josh: You are putting yourself out there to be vulnerable and put yourself in a very uncomfortable situ... Taking a deposition, you're going and you're facing a witness that's adverse to you, doesn't want to give you information, might be nervous, you've gotta be extra, I mean, expert witnesses. You've gotta be extraordinarily prepared to go toe to toe and have a due with people in order just to do your job well before you even get to the courtroom where you're putting yourself in front of a dozen oftentimes, or a bunch of strangers depending on the court, a bunch...

0:05:07.4 Aaron: Plus a bargaining judge.

0:05:08.5 Josh: Plus a bargaining judge. And it induces that kind of adrenaline rush that gets you in your head, has your wheels spinning all the time about have I prepared enough for this? And that thought process of have I prepared enough for this? And I am terrified that I have not, is what has always propelled me to prepare even more and show up inevitably over prepared, way more prepared than anybody else in the room most of the time. But that's kind of one of these necessary components of being successful in this line of work. So, that's good advice, good advice.

0:05:57.3 Aaron: Let's go back in time and give it to ourselves.

[laughter]

0:06:01.4 Aaron: Hop in. That's a deep cut for people that like our time machine metaphor. But seriously what advice would you... What would you go back and give yourself as advice? 

0:06:13.4 Josh: Yeah. I think I would tell myself, don't be afraid to set boundaries. Don't be afraid to say no. But as I thought about my answer to that question, what I meant by that answer is there are times, particularly early on in your career when, for sort of the same related type of fear, fear of failure you start a law firm or you're just starting out in your career and you want to take every case on and you think that you can be a hero for everyone, and you don't know when the next phone call is gonna come in of somebody wanting to hire you. There's a lot of unknown in the early stages of the practice of law before you've really established yourself, where you know that you have a higher level of confidence that people are gonna wanna hire you and seek your advice.

0:07:04.0 Josh: But early on that fear drove me to saying yes in a lot of instances that in retrospect, I wish I had said no to making commitments to people that I would handle their case or give them legal advice or take on their burden, take on their problem. That ultimately ended up being just a massive drain on my time. And it's not really about whether you made money or whether you didn't make money. It takes an emotional toll on you.

0:07:37.3 Aaron: Yeah. Stressful.

0:07:38.5 Josh: That can be at the expense of other things that might be more important to you in life, or in your business. So, it's hard to say no when someone's asking you for help. It's just hard. And I wish that I had maybe set some better boundaries for myself early on, but something that you and I have talked about routinely when we're mentoring young lawyers is sometimes the only way to establish yourself in this industry is to take on that case that nobody else wants to touch with a 10 foot pole and turn it into something special. And even if it doesn't produce the type of reward that you might be expecting, just showing up and having that fight, fighting so tenaciously for your client that nobody else would fight for, builds the type of character that is the foundation of your reputation.

0:08:49.4 Aaron: Yeah. And I would say your reputation with yourself, because that ends up being the most important as you get older and you look back on things and how things went and the money can come and go. But how you performed in those instances really will stick with you if you took it on and made something out of it. I think there's just something really special there. And I think I would agree that not only if I was giving advice to myself, I would say like, look for those opportunities where you can make something special happen, wake up with gratefulness that you have a license that allows you to make something special happen every single day. Like you can wake up as a lawyer and at least in our practice, and it might not be convenient.

0:09:42.3 Aaron: You might have to set lunch aside and work through the night, and you might not sleep that night, but if you wanted to, you could make something very special happen for somebody. And it's a blessing to have that opportunity when so much of the world is focused on diagnosing ourselves. It's like, why am I depressed or anxious or why am I not achieving goals and in all this? And if what's cool about our practice is we get to turn that completely on its head, look at our client's problems, and in one day, sometimes one week, apply ourselves, go to extremes, stay up all night, make something special happen for them and fix it. It's not some vague issue in our own lives that we can't fix. And magically, because we're doing that repeatedly, we get this beneficial effect for ourselves. And it keeps us going.

0:10:34.6 Josh: Absolutely. But we can't turn back time. But we can certainly learn from the past and be a little bit more reflective about how we handle ourselves in certain situations. And I think that's kind of part of the journey of life. Part of the journey of starting a business too, and a part of the journey of becoming a professional in what you do. So, yeah.

0:11:01.5 Aaron: Yeah. And for those of our lawyers listening to this podcast, make sure you heard the part that Josh said about setting boundaries. And then make sure you really heard my part about staying up till two in the morning.

[laughter]

0:11:13.9 Josh: Doing the right things.

0:11:14.0 Aaron: That's right. Doing the right thing. It's a noble cause.

[laughter]

0:11:17.0 Josh: Good talking to you, Aaron always.

0:11:19.4 Aaron: You too, my friend.