The Most Brutal Week of My Life

Old buzzards like myself have been through a lot, and I’ve had my share of hell-on-earth stretches. But none quite like my week at ITAW.

It went something like this. Our little law firm was doing very, very well indeed, with lots of good work pouring in. Too much, actually, and it was apparent that several of the larger cases were headed to trial, large, complex trials. The problem was that none of us had argued a serious multi-week trial in a long time, a not unusual situation in a climate which encouraged mediation and other forms of pre-trial settlement.

I knew I was pretty rusty, but I didn’t realize how rusty until I pulled my court gown and vest out of the closet and tried them on. The shirt had grown yellow with age, but worse, the vest had shrunk several sizes. Even the tabs were pretty tight. When I tried to think of the last time I’d gowned for a trial, I simply couldn’t remember.

What really put the fear into me was not the realization that I’d been eating too well for years, but that frankly whatever instincts I ever had in the courtroom were faded memories. I was worried that I’d look like the old hockey star who laces up after thirty years only to make a fool of himself in front of the youngsters. Except that I’d never been a star, just competent.

So, I did the smart thing: I signed up for Gary Watson’s Intensive Trial Advocacy Workshop, exactly the kind of boot camp designed for mid-career lawyers who had gone rusty and wanted to get back into the courtroom game. For me it was not so much “wanted to” as “needed to”.

ITAW is hell, and it’s meant to be. Courtroom advocacy is hard work even for those who do it every day, and packing in all the theory and tactics into seven days is a challenge even for those who designed the course, let alone those poor souls who submit to it. Classes started at eight o’clock, half hour for lunch, went again until six, then a quick bite and off to our rooms to prep for the next day, typically until two-thirty or three in the morning. And then do it again. I don’t imagine I got more than four hours sleep a night for the entire week, and for sure I slept on the train the whole way home.

Classes were partly theory, but mostly hands-on, with some of Toronto’s finest as tutors. They took no prisoners and told no lies, and they pushed, and they pushed, and then they pushed some more. They tag-teamed and worked in short shifts, we were going eighteen to twenty hours a day. But we hung on — who wants to look bad in front of all your professional peers?

By Wednesday I was, like most of my colleagues, mightily humbled and thoroughly exhausted, with four more days to go. “Who needs this?” I asked myself, knowing that the files were just piling deeper on my desk back at the office. Others had gone home, so if I quit, I would not be the first, or the last.

“Who needs this?” Well, the truth is that I did need it. I knew that a week of exhaustion and eating humble pie would make the difference between success and humiliation in the upcoming trials, and I’m not fond of failure and humiliation.

But even more important to me, my four teenage kids at home “needed this”. They had heard all my fine lessons about “finishing the job”, “never quitting”, and “making your family proud”. Now it was the old man in the cross hairs. How could I quit and face them? I finished the course, got the certificate, and, quite literally, the tee shirt. It said, “I survived ITAW!” I still have the shirt, although it too has shrunk.

But the week ended up being even more important for another reason.

It made me come to grips with who I am, and who I’m not. During the week, according to the top-flight litigators, I was writing killer pleadings and trial briefs, but found myself awkward and slow in cross-examination. Even in examination-in-chief, I stumbled, not fatally, but just looking bush-league.

What formed in my mind, and in my spirit, not as an epiphany, but as a growing certainty, was that I just wasn’t born to be a courtroom superstar. At the same time, during the week, my legal drafting had been singled out as exceptional. These are very different skill sets.

At that point in time I had not really thought much about the notion of Giftedness, but I began to grasp the notion of letting go of areas of “un-Giftedness” and focus on what I did naturally and really well. Some key parts of my Principle of Alignment grew out of that brutal week.

More clever people than me figure this out a lot earlier in their careers, ideally even before they start. Really smart people identify their Giftedness and they enter into the calling where they can shine, and once they’re in the calling, they methodically shed the areas of their field where they are “just ordinary”. For me it took a lifetime, which is why I now speak, write, and teach about the Alignment Principle.

No point in letting everyone do it the hard way, right?