Reprinted with permission from the American Bar Association GPSolo eReport.

This article is the third of four installments exploring the stories, lessons, and advice of high-level athletes who went on to become successful solo and small-firm attorneys.

This article series explores the relationship between sports and the law, and how athletics provides the perfect training ground of hard work, discipline, strategic skills, competitiveness, passion, balance, teamwork, and sportsmanship—all desired qualities for running a successful solo or small firm legal practice. In my first article I introduced four notable athletes who went on to develop successful solo and small firm practices, and who will be featured throughout this article series: Kathleen McRoberts, Merrell Bailey, Bob Mionske, and Patricia Miranda. My second article explored how a background in athletics can impact an attorney’s fundamental decisions about his or her career. In this article, I will discuss how aspects of the athletic experience can influence an attorney’s approach to practicing law.

Work Ethic

Athletics demands a high level of commitment. When I was a senior in high school, my role as the top-ranked female on my tennis team was to assist my coach in ensuring that our team worked hard during our daily practices. One afternoon, one of our players appeared to be sneaking out of practice. I called out, “Hey, why are you leaving early? Practice isn’t done yet.” The player responded, “I need to leave early. Prom is tonight, and I have to get ready.” I’m sure my jaw dropped, as I stared at her in stunned silence. I had been working at a part-time job to pay tennis-related expenses, attending classes, studying hard, and practicing and competing in my sport. Between all of that, I had no idea until that moment that the prom, considered by some to be a hallmark of high school, was even occurring! As an athlete, clearly, my high school experience was atypical. Like many accomplished athletes, I cultivated a strong work ethic and the related ability to focus my time and energy on the elements most critical to successfully managing a variety of roles. This work ethic, fortunately, has never left me. It serves me well today as I tackle the ongoing responsibilities inherent in practicing law and running a small business.

Patricia Miranda explained how the lessons she learned about hard work as a wrestler apply to her current role as an attorney: “These are the skills I built before. It was simpler back then. But I still need to be my own friend. I still need to set little goals. I still need to be proud of what I do, and go to sleep tired every night. That used to be something that would go through my head when I was training: ‘I need to do everything I can do to earn this rest.’ And in a legal case, it’s like that too. I need to be okay with how much I put into it.”

As a bike racer, Bob Mionske developed valuable insights concerning his capacity for work. He stated, “I figured out how to push myself past the limit. I would pay a heavy price if I did that, but I could do it. I found that to be important. I thought: ‘Well, if I can do that with my body, if I could take on difficult odds like that and stay focused, I should be able to do the same thing as a trial attorney.’ The first trial I won felt a lot like winning a bike race. It was very gratifying. I had done a lot of work.”

For Kathleen McRoberts, “the defeats were the most defining moments, not the victories.” She continued, “In my entire tennis career, there was only one time when I felt I did not give 100 percent. And I know exactly what match it was. I lost, and it was a bad loss. And it has stuck with me to this day. I always remember that feeling of not giving my best. I hate that feeling. It was just awful. My mom was there, and I remember thinking, ‘Why did we travel all this way to this tournament so I could come out and not give it my all?’ I always gave a hundred percent when I stepped onto that court. And it’s the same now in law.”

Competitiveness

Athletes tend to be highly competitive. Merrell Bailey laughed as she discussed her competitive nature: “I was the valedictorian of my law school class, so I think the whole competitive thing is probably imbedded in me. Now, I absolutely get fired up about my law practice. I love what I do.”

A key difference in approaching an athletic competition as opposed to a legal battle lies in the very nature of an attorney’s work—representing someone else rather than, as an athlete, achieving a good result for yourself. Bob was quick to point out that competing as an attorney differed from competing as an athlete. In describing his first trial, Bob affirmed that he obtained “a good, just result for my client.” He paused, then continued, “And that was a different feeling than doing something for myself, getting a pat on the back in sports. It was a lot more powerful, to help someone else rather than yourself.”

Patricia expressed similar sentiments: “Any case seems like the entire world. And it really can be in a lot of ways. It’s much harder than wrestling, because it matters to somebody else and not just me. I think that makes it much harder in terms of the pressure. ‘Some dad isn’t going to see his kids anymore because I wasn’t able to learn all the right cases and arguments.’ My goodness, that is so much more important than, ‘If I don’t win the semifinals, then I will not be in the Olympic finals.’” She chuckled. “That matters to nobody but me.” Patricia continued, “I get very competitive when I see an injustice being done. That’s where you are going to see me get very revved up about something. I try to calm myself down and then be practical. If there’s an injustice, it’s very easy to mobilize my competitiveness. But if it’s something that I don’t feel is a deep injustice, then my competitiveness is limited to competing with myself. I need to know that I did not drop the ball. I need to know that I’m making a difference, and that my client is getting the best attention, service, and care.”

Strategy and Preparation

To achieve success in athletics, an athlete must prepare. As a tennis player, I needed to study my opponents, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and come into every match with both a plan of attack and a Plan B to implement if my initial strategies prove ineffective. As an attorney, I find the need for strategy and preparation in order to earn good results for my clients to be remarkably similar to my needs on the tennis court.

Similarly, Kathleen stated, “One of the things I’m really good at, and I’m assuming my athletic endeavors are what helped me with this, is that I have a keen understanding of strategy. It’s that idea that every point in tennis does not have the same value. It might look like it does, but it doesn’t. If it’s 30 all, that point has more value than the first point of the game, right? There’s a lot of strategy in tennis. The ability to strategize is a strength of mine. It’s knowing when to push people, push judges, and knowing when to step back. Having a really good read on the situation. Knowing when things are more valuable, at what time. I really think all of my athletic endeavors have honed that strategy piece.”

Merrell echoed these thoughts, in terms of her responsibilities as a business owner: “As a managing partner, you have to know what you’re trying to accomplish on a certain date, and then you back into what you have to do to get there, which is exactly what you do to get ready for any type of competition.”

“I was a race winner, I won a lot of races,” Bob explained. “I wasn’t necessarily one of the best guys, but that’s the beautiful thing about bicycle racing. It’s highly psychological. The strongest rider doesn’t always win. There are so many variables in a bicycle race. To lay out a simple example, if the best rider at the very end takes off, and the second-best rider decides to chase him down and pulls everyone up to him; well, it’s a guaranteed fact that neither of them will win the race. That leaves it open for the third, the fourth, or the twentieth best guy. Bicycle racing is highly tactical. There’s a lot of strategy. It really keeps your mind in the game.” Bob continued, “One comparison between bike racing and practicing law is that, what helps your strategy in cycling is having an idea of what your competitor is thinking, what their strategy might be. I notice some attorneys get so headstrong in their positions—it’s ‘us against the other side.’ They don’t stop to think about what the other side might be thinking, and what it’s like to stand in their shoes and the variables that they’re confronting. If you can take the time to do that, it helps you alter your strategy. I think knowing what your competitor in a case is doing and what motivates them is very valuable.”

My fourth and final article in this series will discuss how involvement in athletics can contribute to an attorney’s legal skills regarding teamwork, sportsmanship, and the ability to handle pressure.

Reprinted with permission from the American Bar Association GPSolo eReport.

This article is the second of four installments exploring the stories, lessons, and advice of high-level athletes who went on to become successful solo and small firm attorneys.

This article series explores the relationship between sports and the law, and how athletics provides the perfect training ground of hard work, discipline, strategic skills, competitiveness, passion, balance, teamwork, and sportsmanship—all desired qualities for running a successful solo or small-firm legal practice. In my first article (here), I introduced four notable athletes who went on to develop successful solo and small firm practices and who will be featured throughout this article series: Kathleen McRoberts, Merrell Bailey, Bob Mionske, and Patricia Miranda. This article will discuss how being involved in athletics can impact an attorney’s fundamental decisions about his or her career, including the initial decision to become an attorney, and later the choice of an area of practice and whether to start a solo or small firm legal practice.

Pursuing a Legal Career

For Patricia Miranda, her choices to pursue wrestling and, later, a career as an attorney were “tightly linked.” When Patricia began wrestling in middle school, her father actively sought to prevent her from pursuing her sport. As a recent Brazilian immigrant, Patricia’s father viewed wrestling as a “distraction” from what Patricia should be doing: studying, pursuing her career, and getting ahead in their adopted country. To discourage her from participating, he took active measures including scratching Patricia’s names from competition rosters. When Patricia was in high school, her father told her that he would sue the school district to prevent her from competing. Patricia stated, “I went to do a little research. Can he really sue the school? Can they really keep me from wrestling? And that’s when I stumbled onto Title IX. So I said, ‘Dad, we’re in America now! You can’t sue the school if they let me wrestle. We can only sue the school if they don’t let me wrestle.’”

Patricia continued, “I was so impressed that somebody, decades ago, had cared enough to fight for something like Title IX. That planted the seed for me to go to law school. I was amazed that someone, because of their profession, made that much of a difference in my life, and that law was the tool to do that. From that point on, I wanted to be an attorney.”

Choosing an Area of Practice

For cyclist Bob Mionske, his cycling career sparked an interest in marrying his knowledge of his sport to his desire to practice law and do trial work. As a result, Bob became the first attorney in the United States to focus his practice exclusively on bicycle law. After graduating from Willamette University College of Law in 1999, Bob moved to his home state of Wisconsin to work for a personal injury law firm. Bob stayed at the firm “for about 12 weeks” before deciding his new career needed to shift in a decidedly different direction. Bob stated, “I started thinking, this is not really what I had in mind. I got one trial in, and then there was nothing on the dockets for a long time. I was essentially sitting on my butt, between the drive there and the drive back, for nine hours a day. I realized I had made a mistake. The only way I was going to continue to be a lawyer was if I could find a way to do it for myself, and represent people that I had something in common with and that I could help. And that’s what led me to the cycling idea.”

Bob explained, “I actually was hired as an expert in law school on a cycling case. I realized that there were a lot of variables in prosecuting a bicycle injury case that were outside of the realm of the attorneys’ understanding. At that time, people weren’t sure what rights cyclists had. I lived in Madison, Wisconsin, which is a pretty ‘bikey’ town. I got this idea that maybe I could get some work that way, so I hung out a shingle.”

In 2001 Bob moved to Oregon and started a firm in Portland focusing on bicycle law. Primarily, Bob represents cyclists who suffer injuries owing to collisions with motor vehicles; however, he envisions a future in which his work may increasingly become obsolete. “Distracted driving has become an epidemic in this country. It’s not getting any better, unfortunately, notwithstanding that we have a prohibition from using handheld devices in Oregon. This area of practice is not going anywhere until we get smart cars. There’s been some talk that this technology will put us out of business. If that’s the case, that’s fine by me.”

Starting a Solo or Small Law Firm

My experience as a junior tennis player greatly influenced my choice, down the road, to start my own law firm. Unlike the experience of most junior tennis players today, my parents did not oversee my tournament play. If I wanted to play competitive tennis, I needed to manage all aspects of that commitment. For example, as a junior high and, later, a high school student, I needed to figure out what tournaments to play, how I would get there (including airline travel), how to pay for the associated costs, and how to sign up for housing. I often stayed with tennis families living near the vicinity of the tournament whom I had never met before. In addition to the logistical aspects of playing tennis, like any athlete, I needed to deal with the game itself—including playing opponents in a wide variety of weather conditions such as an Idaho spring snowstorm or a summer day exceeding 100 degrees, playing matches at midnight, and playing a variety of players with widely varying skill sets. Outside of doubles, when you play tennis, you play for yourself. You are solely responsible for your own results. Tennis taught me to be extremely independent, self-sufficient, resourceful, resilient, and adaptable at a young age. Later, when I worked in various law firms, I grew frustrated because I lacked the ability to make truly independent choices regarding my practice areas, clients, and case strategies. I longed for the ability to “fight through my matches on my own,” as I had always done in tennis. Like Bob, I decided that, if I was going to continue to be an attorney, I needed to make a course correction and hang out my own shingle.

Merrell Bailey, who competed in rowing, described the qualities needed to be a successful attorney in a solo or small firm law environment: “You have to be organized. You have to be detail oriented. You have to know what you’re trying to accomplish. You have a duty to yourself and your family to be successful. You have a duty to your staff to be successful. And you have a duty to your clients to do what you told them you would do, and do it very well.” When asked whether her experience as an athlete helped her cultivate these characteristics, Merrell responded, “Oh, certainly. The Division One athletes have to show up on time, they have to do what they say they are going to do, and they have to be coachable. Everything that makes an athlete successful also makes an attorney and business owner successful.”

Kathleen McRoberts, a former Division One tennis player, added an interesting note on how the competitiveness developed as an athlete contributes to the desire to start your own law firm. She laughingly commented, “I try to pretend that I’m not as competitive as I am.” She continued, on a more serious note, “As far as building my practice, wanting to have the biggest practice, wanting to be the expert in my region, that’s what the competitiveness means now. I want my law firm to be the very best in the region.”

In addition to influencing career choices, an athletic background may also impact an attorney’s approach to practicing law in terms of developing a disciplined work ethic and approaching cases with a high level of preparation and a well-thought-out strategy. My third article in this series will explore these concepts in more detail.