Dear Sister and Brother Lawyers,

Congratulations on conquering the July Bar Exam. Well done. You started your journey on Day One of law school, soldiered on through getting your J.D., and now others will be entrusted to your care. It's game time. So, here are five mindsets learned from practice and professorship to guide you into becoming the best versions of your lawyer selves.

Mindset No. 1: Words Matter. A lot.

Lawyers are like surgeons, but we use words instead of scalpels. In Professional Responsibility, we study the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility and we drill on what words could have been use in a rule instead of the one selected. Example: the rule on confidentiality states that lawyers shall keep confidential anything that “relates” to the representation. Alternatives? “deal with”, “involves”, “concerning.” Why was “relates” the No. 1 draft pick? The drafters wanted an expansive word, not a cramped one, in order to protect the greatest amount of information gained in the representation. Justice Holmes was dead on: Words are the skin of a living idea. Remember that the next time you send an email or write a brief or when you read one of these from the lawyer opposite. Be a scalpel.

Mindset No. 2: Know the Rationale for a Rule, Not Just the Rule

I learned this mindset from a PR student. My question to her: “How to you like class?” (Insecurities do not evaporate upon becoming a law professor.) Her answer: ”Fine, but you focus a lot on the reasons for the rule and its history more than the rule itself.” Wow! Then: I realized that I was doing a poor job of framing my purpose. Now: a reframe where I say “you will be in thousands of firefights with other lawyers and the lawyer who knows the rationale for the rule is always at an advantage over the one who knows only the rule. We are talking winning, not theory.” Be a winner.

Mindset No. 3: If This Wasn't the Rule, Then What are the Consequences?

Asking this powerful question compels the students to consider carefully the reason for the rule. Look at the Model Rule on allocation of authority between lawyer and client. It says that a lawyer must “abide” by a client's objective in a matter. (Abide is used 187 times in the Bible and is peppered throughout the movie “The Big Lebowski”.) It means to accept patiently. While you sometimes will disagree with the client on her objectives, you must accept her objectives. If the rule was otherwise, then lawyers would be deciders, not counselors. Want an answer? Go to Google. Want a penetrating question? Go to a lawyer. Be a questioner. And speaking of questions, here is No. 4.

Mindset No 4: Think Threshold Questions

We learn this in torts, don't we? Threshold question No. 1: Is there a duty? If “no,” you flowchart one way, and if “yes” you flowchart another. And in PR, students flowchart the rules. In PR the Big Bang threshold question is this: “was an attorney-client relationship formed?” (Explicit, implicit, prospective?) Duties only flow from formation. Learn to start at the start, not in the middle. Be a flowcharter.

Mindset No. 5: Think Small Ball, not Grand Slam

Somewhere along the way “Hard Work” was hijacked by “Big Picture.” We now care more about the Hollywood-like theme of our case than the more mundane “blocking and tackling” of assembling facts, preparing directs and crosses, getting the pre-trial order right. According to writer Malcolm Gladwell, the great Bill Walsh turned the San Francisco 49ers football team (a real wreck ) into a Super Bowl winner—not by inspiring speeches of imagining wearing a Super Bowl ring—but by teaching the ins and outs of interior line blocking. A recent article in the 538 blog credits the success of the Oakland Athletics' this season with training batters to hit the baseball at a slightly different angle of elevation. The result: Fewer ground balls leading to more double plays and outs (bad) but more sacrifice flies and hits leading to more runs (good). ( Check it out, “The A's Changed Baseball Once. They May Be Changing It Again” by Travis Sawchik. Maybe I will assign watching “Moneyball” as homework.)

Yet these Mindsets are mere scaffolding unless we ”love” our clients. A client's greatest fear is not losing a case or of a deal gone bad. No, their greatest fear is isolation, that no one cares about them. Isn't that true for all of us? In World War I, British soldiers in the trenches constructed a delusional fantasy that Dutch farmers to the rear were tilting their windmills in such a way as to direct deadly German artillery fire on their positions. The soldiers could accept—and even thrive—on the belief that someone cared enough to kill them. What their minds could not accept, however, was that no one cared at all. (Check out a great book, “The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves” by Stephen Grosz by for a modern-day application.)

I believe that your most fulfilling days as a lawyer will not be when the jury sides with your client or when you make partner or when year end bonus time rolls around. No, none of those. I suggest your most fulfilling days will be triggered by assuring a client that things will get no worse, or by telling them that this travail will pass or by relying on the timeless truth (I paraphrase), that the arc of life is long but it bends toward justice. And the client in response gives you an even look and remarks simply, “Thank you for caring. I feel so much better just talking with you.” Those will be your best days. I promise.

Have a Great Career, Mike