How To Move From Risk Averse Lawyer to Strategic Risk Taking Legal Entrepreneur

You know what I remember most about law school? The legal textbooks recounting the most complicated fact patterns on earth. A case would start off with a parent and child going into a department store to buy a vacuum cleaner. But, it would end with the child going into anaphylactic shock because she ate a sandwich in a locked employee break room. Guess what I got the last time I shopped for a vacuum cleaner? Yup, just a vacuum.

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong in those fact patterns. So those scenarios were great teaching tools for legal concepts. The cases taught you how to identify and manage risks for your client. They also instructed you on how to prepare for any legal challenge that might come your way.

While the ability to protect your client against potential problems is a great lawyerly skill, seeking out potential hazards at every turn can have a negative effect on a lawyer’s personal life. No matter the decision to be made, lawyers end up analyzing it down to the sm…