"There is a quiet but growing problem in our profession: too many young lawyers want to be trial lawyers, yet too few ever get near a trial. That's not a knock on them. It's a structural reality. Cases settle. Clients are risk-averse. Firms are cost-conscious. And the traditional training ground, years of incremental courtroom exposure, has eroded. Yet we still hold up "trial lawyer" as a gold standard. We still market courtroom experience. We still expect lawyers to step up when a case doesn't settle."
"Trial experience isn't just about standing in front of a jury. It teaches judgment, decisiveness, accountability, and perspective. It forces you to live with outcomes instead of endlessly revising drafts. It sharpens instincts in ways no memo ever will, even lawyers who never try a case benefit from the discipline that trial experience imposes. So, if you're a young lawyer who wants trial experience, and most litigators should, you have to be intentional."
Too many young lawyers seek trial work but rarely see trials due to structural realities: settled cases, risk-averse clients, cost-conscious firms, and diminished incremental courtroom training. Trial experience confers crucial skills beyond public speaking, including judgment, decisiveness, accountability, perspective, and the ability to live with outcomes rather than endlessly revising drafts. Trial work compresses time, stakes, and responsibility, forcing real-time decisions with incomplete information and teaching prioritization, simplification, and how to read people. Those skills cannot be fully learned secondhand. Young lawyers must be intentional and actively pursue incremental opportunities to build trial capability.
Read at Above the Law
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