Any tips on how to be a superstar litigation associate besides providing support to the partner and senior associate? One way to be a really good litigation associate is to become a very good writer. The better writer you are, the more effective you're going to be.
You need to learn how to write in a very succinct way and very cleanly. You need to learn how to get rid of different types of words and get as much writing feedback as you can. I think that's one of the most important things as a litigator. To not gloss over issues and to make sure, when you're turning in things that you understand the issues as well as you can.
And then the other thing for litigators have to take the side of a client.
So you want to do whatever you can to take the client's side and figure out and have their back. And so whatever you can do to get passionate about their case is very important. I was up against an extremely well thought of litigator on another side of a case.
And, what he did is he would work himself into a frenzy-believing that this client was right. No matter what his client had done, he would get so fired up about this. It was ridiculous. I think that enabled him to win cases because when you're a litigator, what you're doing is you're presenting your version of the truth to a judge and the other side . You need to convince other people to have your version of the truth as opposed to their version of the truth. And the truth is, of course, open to interpretation and a trier of fact wants to select, wants to do something fair. So you need to be very passionate about your version of the truth and make it believable.
And so the more you can do that , the better off you'll be. I've seen people become very good litigators from being average litigators once they've learned how to write very well. They did that by learning to write succinctly by not overwriting, analyzing things, and that was something I think that became very helpful to them in the long run.
So that's my advice. And I've written articles about how to be a good litigator on BCG search, and you should also review.
