The seed of the idea for this post came from my own reflections about the early days of my legal career. November 1 holds significance for me because it’s about the time that I started “getting it” as a first year lawyer. After reflecting upon my own experience, my thoughts drifted to the many first years toiling away for the last two months at law firms across the country. I hope they are starting to get it, too.

The fortunate few are able to hit the ground running in their legal careers. Often these are people with prior work experience, who are a bit older, more mature, and who previously learned how to navigate a corporate bureaucracy. For the rest of us, though, the first few months of practicing law is a harrowing time, fraught with stress and anxiety.

The are many reasons for this. Most new lawyers have never held a “real” job. They’re getting bombarded with emails, phone calls and work assignments for the first time. They’re trying to learn the work culture. They’re starting to deal with adversaries. Everything they are doing is new, and they’re fearful of the consequences of screwing up. They’re steeped in a cauldron of uncertainty.

My first day as a new associate at a large law firm in Chicago was on September 17, 2001. I was joining the firm’s Corporate Restructuring group which, given the prior week’s terrorist attacks and the resulting uncertainty about the economy, was suddenly thrust into a storm of activity. I had a sense going in that things were going to be rough, but the reality far exceeded even the high-end of my expectations.

Monday through Friday for the next several months all involved late nights, often past midnight. I typically worked a full day on either Saturday or Sunday, sometimes both.

Eventually, things settled down a bit, but I still found myself working late into the night. It was still rare if I got home before 9 p.m. Looking back, I didn’t need to work this schedule. I realize now that I simply never figured out how to structure my day. It’s like I became addicted to the busyness and adrenaline. When I did have a window of time that was not consumed by an urgent demand, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I don’t think my situation was unique. Few young lawyers are thoughtful about how to plan their days in such a way to avoid the exhaustion and burnout that affect so many.

It’s often said that there is no loyalty among law firm clients anymore and, therefore, that law firms should should expect increasing churn among their fickle buyers. This assumption is often framed as an inevitability.

But is that truly the case? Is there nothing that firms can do stem the tide of clients coming and going?

There’s no doubt that today’s law firm client has access to more information and is more discerning than ever before. But for savvy, creative law firms, this presents an opportunity to capitalize on this turbulent, transitional marketplace. By focusing on the brand experience that they provide to their clients, law firms can effectively distinguish and differentiate themselves from competitors.

Ever struggle with distraction and procrastination? Yeah, I know, rhetorical question. Of course you do. We all do.

Care to indulge me with five minutes of your time? I promise it will be more enlightening than reading about the sordid details of Kim Kardashian’s Paris robbery drama.

As a lawyer, it’s axiomatic that your time is your most valuable asset – one that is non-renewable. You can’t afford to get sucked into rabbit holes of distraction. This is a post about the tricky balance that we all must strike between consumption and creation. There’s room for the former, but time and energy must overwhelmingly be focused on the latter.

Here’s an immutable truth: As a young lawyer, you’re going to make a mistake. The question is: How are you going to deal with it? A simple question, yes, but one with profound implications for a young lawyer’s career.

Some people can let a mistake, and the implications that may result from it, roll off their backs. Lesson learned. Move on.

But for others, mistakes lead to longer-term harmful consequences. They become paralyzed for fear of making another one.

This happened to me, and if I’m honest with myself, I never quite got over it. Looking back, it was a moment that I never shook. It was a crossroads that took me down a path that I never anticipated when I graduated from law school.

I no longer practice law. I don’t regret my decision to leave the practice for a second. I love what I do now. But I can’t help but think that things could have been different. Making a big mistake was inevitable – it happens to everyone. But if I knew then what I know now, would I have chosen a different path?

Much of the discussion in legal marketing and business development circles focuses on law firm branding. But it’s important to realize that while firms have brands, individual lawyers do too. Unless you’re the boss, you may have little control over how your firm is positioned. But your personal brand? Well, good or bad, that’s in your hands.

Some balk at the term “personal branding” and argue that it’s a clumsy, meaningless substitute for “reputation.” But there’s an important difference.

A lawyer’s reputation is a critical component of her personal brand, but the terms aren’t synonymous. Branding requires a concerted, strategic and active effort to describe, position and promote how one’s skills and expertise are relevant and uniquely able to solve a client’s problems. It’s not just about letting your reputation speak for itself. Personal branding is a matter of purposefully injecting your unique value proposition into the marketplace. While reputation is something that happens to you, brand is something you make happen. Developing your personal brand, therefore, is critical to effectively positioning yourself to audiences that matter.

The issue of developing a niche legal practice is a hot one in legal marketing and business development circles today. It’s also one I address at length in my book, One of a Kind: A Proven Path to a Profitable Legal Practice.

Last week, Slaw, Canada’s online legal magazine, published a chapter from One of a Kind as its “Thursday Think Piece.” The chapter is entitled “Carving a Path: How to Establish and Sustain Expert Status” and addresses reasons to pick a niche and how to go about it.

We all make resolutions, and not just at the start of the year. Because we’re creatures of habit, we constantly seek to adopt good, new habits, and break bad, old ones. Eat better, write that article, quit smoking, exercise, make those phone calls, stop procrastinating so much, spend more time with family, learn that new skill. But inevitably another year passes without the results we desire and we are back to square one.

This problem is particularly acute for young lawyers, who are adjusting to the rigors of a new career and dealing with daily storms of inputs, demands and stresses. For most the problem is not one of indecision, but rather inaction. The desire for change is strong, but the will to make sustainable change happen is often lacking. For this reason many lawyers spend their careers on autopilot, attending diligently to client needs and priorities, but not their own. Days, weeks and years flash by in a whirlwind of emails, conference calls and court appearances. With demanding clients, bosses and adversaries to deal with on a daily basis, who has time to focus on much else?