Lawyers - Evil or Good?

The topic of lawyers came up for me recently during a court situation I had to deal with.  It was nothing major but over the last couple of years or so I’ve had quite a few tickets pile up. In order to get all of them taken care of and dealt with I figured paying a lawyer $500 was a good investment because he would know certain insider information about the system to get me the best outcome.

I had known him for quite a while because he works out at the same gym I go to and we’ve had lots of talks about the economy, the state of the financial sector, and the overall state of America and the shredding of the Constitution.

He’s very versed on American history and the founding fathers, ancient Greek and Roman society, and the Art of War by Sun Tzu which leads to lots of interesting conversations because I’m also extremely interested in these topics.

One thing I know for sure is he has a fighter’s mentality and is known around the local courts here as “all Day Ray”.  Because his whole thing is to take it to trial dragging it out as long as possible to make the bureaucrats work.

And if there’s one thing bureaucrats hate its work.  But then again who doesn’t.

The point is he’s definitely one of the good lawyers in the criminal law sector.

It was interesting talking the other day with him about how many bad lawyers there are because he had brought up the topic.  And I was able to immediately chime in with “the 80/20 once applied 20-30 years ago but now I’m convinced it’s more of the 95/5 rule.”

Meaning 95% of attorneys are average, mediocre or downright horrible. And 5% are truly exceptional, gifted and valued members of your business and freedom loving personal team.

And we started discussing what a major decision it is and how important lawyers are because when you choose the wrong one it can mean a huge difference between your freedom and/or being in jail.

And this applies to lots of things in life.  It’s too bad there’s no owner’s manual for how to live your life and how to make good decisions.

But there are certain things you can do to make better decisions in your business and in your life when you know some of the basic foundational things like:

• Things like the 95/5 rule,
• Modeling people who are already successful and already have what you want,
• Following a proven path or blueprint,
• Having a trial period for anyone who’s going to work for or with you (including outsourcers) so you can see what the person actually does and not just what they say they’ll do,
• Working with confident, competent, productive business partners who get you results and cut out all the fluff.

No man is an island and to achieve anything in business you definitely need good business partners and people to work with.

Lawyers often get a bad rap but their profession is no different than any other.  5% of them are really exceptional high quality professionals who get you outstanding results and the other 95% are averaged to mediocre and you want to stay away from them.

So learn from this story and follow the five basic rules and you’re certain to get far better results in your business and your life because these are fundamental rules which have always worked and will always continue to work.

I’m sure there are some rules you’ve applied in your life which work almost all the time that I’ve left out of this article.  Post those in the comments and I’ll look forward to our lively, productive conversation.

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Originally posted 2009-04-09 09:13:22. Republished by Old Post Promoter

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