War Stories: How to Deal with Making Mistakes

A real theme this week for me has been learning how to deal with making mistakes. This week I realised that in a witness statement already served on the other side, I had written a few incorrect cross-references: I felt embarrassed, like I'd let my team down, and that someone reading the witness statement on the other side would, not being able to find the document on the right page, think to themselves "the person who did these cross-references has NO IDEA WHAT SHE'S DOING!! JUDGEMENT JUDGEMENT JUDGEMENT".

This post is about the marvellous, heart-warming, response to making mistakes which seems to exist amongst lawyers, which I will call the 'War Stories' effect.

Essentially what I've found is that, if I'm feeling a bit down because I made an embarrassing mistake, someone will say to me: "you think that mistake is bad, I once [insert worse version of mistake that they have made]". It's wonderful!! It makes you feel so much better! It reminds me of the lawyers' equivalent of the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch: "only five referencing mistakes? YOU WERE LUCKY"

Quickly escalating to:

So far examples of this that I've come across have been:

• My friend asked the printing centre to print the wrong documents and wasted a few hundred pounds. Feeling so embarrassed and guilty, she confessed to an associate. He said (I'm paraphrasing here): "only a few hundred pounds?? You were lucky! I once asked the printing centre to print all the wrong versions of some documents and wasted £12,000!"

• A more senior associate told me about how as a newly qualified (NQ) she accidentally disclosed two privileged documents to the other side. Her supervisor dealt with it expertly, explaining to the client what happened, and the other side were also professionals about it - deleting the documents before they had read them. But her supervisor also told her (I'm paraphrasing again): "Only two privileged documents? You were lucky! I know of a firm who accidentally disclosed 50,000 privileged documents to the other side!"

• An NQ told me how he'd been asked to draft an email for his supervisor to send, and prefaced the email with: "See below for the draft email, please let me know if you would like me to take out [this part] or whether I should leave it in". He then accidentally sent that to the other side who responded "I am sure that your supervisor would approve of the email, and would have asked you to leave it in!" Compare this mild embarrassment to the classic "reply all" scenario, or where you accidentally email the other side a privileged document, etc. 

In other words, as a baby lawyer, it feels like you are being let out into the world on your own, and no matter how diligent or careful you are, you are going to mess up sometimes:

As my senior associate said: as a trainee most (if not all) of your mistakes are going to be inconsequential. This means you need to learn how to deal with them now, so when the time comes that you make a "colossal" (her word) mistake, you know how to approach it. The advice that I've been given from my team, which I've found incredibly useful, is:

• adopt a problem-solving attitude: move on, and think to yourself 'how can I fix this?' Then present both the problem and a potential solution to your supervisor
• learn to separate your personal self from your work self: making a mistake, or losing a case, or not getting the exact outcome that your client wants - these are not reflections on you as a person. This is part of your job.

And lastly, you are working in a team. As my senior associate put it: nothing is just your fault. There is a system in place where those above you will be responsible for allocating you work, making sure you're well-prepared, and checking your work (if need be). If something slips through the cracks, it is everyone's responsibility. I'm not saying that every group or every law firm sees it in this way, but I am lucky to be part of a solid seven person team working on one big case, and in practice, it means that there are always people to help you up when you fall down:

I do though think that a lot of groups see it this way.

Arguably the best part about making so many little mistakes in your first few months, is that you feel AMAZING AND SUPER QUALIFIED AND CONFIDENT when you DON'T make a mistake!! SUCH LAWYER! SO EXPERT! Now when I do something completely on my own, with no (or hardly any) mishaps, this is how I feel....

...only for the cycle to start again :-)