Miscellaneous

The most recent issue of Litigation (available to members of the ABA Litigation Section) has a terrific article by Gerry Spence: Persuading Yourself You Can Win. Its purpose is to convince inexperienced lawyers that they really can win at trial, no matter who the opponent is or how experienced the opponent may be. Along the way, he imparts wisdom for all of us:

I tell lawyers that it all begins with you. Let me repeat it: It all begins with you. Yet we have been convinced from our earliest times that we do not measure up. We are not as bright as our older brother; we are not as beautiful as our younger sister. We are dumped into school where we are sorted and graded like cattle at the killing pens, according to the standards of teachers and administrators who have no idea about who we are?or, for that matter, who they are either.

...

But the truth? The truth is each of us is unique! Each of us is the only person in the world like us. There has never been a person like us?not from the beginning of time. Never. Our beauty is distinct and singular. Our worth is incomparable. Moreover, there will never be another like us. No, never! Not if the human race endures forever.

...

Why, then, would you want to discard your own beauty to concoct a poor imitation of someone else?s? Why would you even want to be like someone else rather than celebrating your own one-of-a-kind self? The fact that we are unique and therefore incomparably beautiful is a truth we have not been permitted to see. It is as if our eyes for our own beauty have been burned from our piteous skulls, and so far as seeing ourselves, we are blind.

Gerry Spence, Persuading Yourself You Can Win, 36 Litigation 14, 15 (Winter 2010).