Success
“Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.””
A colleague recently asked me how my definition of success has evolved over the course of my career. This is what I came up with:
I used to define success solely as winning, defined differently by each client or case. Money for the client, a favorable settlement, a legal problem solved: those were the marks of success for me. I still consider those scenarios important.
We lately celebrated a win for our client in a groundbreaking case in the Tennessee Court of Appeals in Oldsmith Group, LLC et al. v. Mosby Cool Springs, LLC. (For those of you with access to Westlaw, click here.) We worked very hard on this complicated commercial appeal and saved our clients $13.5 million, and made some appellate law as well. The Court decided the issue of how a party should handle a trial court ruling that an issue was wrongly certified as final under Tenn. R. Civ. P. 54.02. Spoiler alert---a party who thinks the issue was wrongfully certified as final cannot wait to appeal, but must appeal within 30 days of the entry of the Order both (1) that the ruling was in error and (2) that it was wrongly certified as final,. If you wait more than 30 days, the ruling is forever final. I certainly consider that result a success.
Now, however, I view success more broadly. If I distill its essence now, success boils down to the feeling that I have done the right thing, win or lose. I look to effect positive change in my community as much as my sphere of influence allows, while also pursuing justice for my clients. Justice can be as simple as righting a wrong. It certainly isn’t win-at-all-costs. Success is striving for justice in a way that my colleagues, adversarial and otherwise, will say I did it ethically, professionally, and well.
I once secured a good result for a client in a fraud case. A couple of years later, opposing counsel in that case referred to me a matter in which his mother had been seriously injured. I view it as a success that my opponent thought highly enough of my work to refer me to a member of his own family. Virtue is its own reward, but it’s encouraging to see it validated by a referral.
An example of success in my broader community is the founding of The Nashville Shakespeare Festival. I’ve spent thirty-eight summers selling t-shirts in the Park sporting the Bard’s greatest quotation about attorneys: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
What seems on its face to be an attack on lawyers is actually a great compliment to our profession. The character who said that line wanted to become a murderous tyrant. Shakespeare knew that ethically motivated lawyers were and always will be a threat to tyrants.
I have been fortunate to experience the synthesis of two of my great passions, the pursuit of justice as a lawyer and building a theater in my community. That feels right. That feels like success.
I invite you to send me your own definition of success. If I get enough responses, I will publish a compendium of them. If you send it to me, let me know if you want to remain anonymous, or have your name associated with your definition.
