When I decided to become a lawyer, there were many who told me that it was a very tough profession in which only a few resisted and very few succeeded. I remember that one lawyer that a relative of mine introduced me to. His office was in a fairly old building near the courthouse. Arriving at the door, we rang the bell and a secretary opened it for us. Darkness prevailed there, we went in and sat in a small waiting room while the clerk continued typing on her typewriter, drafting a document requested by one of the firm's two partners.

Sincerely, one of the owners ushered us into his office and told us:

– “Look at this table, I am once again with this inheritance that we will never solve!”, with a gesture of resignation and surrounded by thick files.

– “So you want to be a lawyer! Well, you can come here in the afternoons to see files and that way you become familiar with the cases”

– “But I warn you that practicing as a lawyer is painful and exhausting. The client does not pay you, the court officials do not treat you well and do not want to do their job, and the proceedings take years and years”.

I didn't come out of there very excited. That's why I didn't listen to my uncle and never went back to that office. On the contrary, I did internships in two law firms where the lawyers enjoyed every moment of their work, they seemed happy and encouraged me to register at the bar association as soon as possible.

Saint Thomas Aquinas considered that patience is a virtue related to strength and that prevents man from distancing himself from right reason enlightened by faith and succumbing to difficulties and sadness.

In his first years, the lawyer has to be patient and not be in a hurry. Many lawyers leave in the first few months or years because they don't realize that success doesn't come in a day. A good opportunity can come at any moment but we have to be there, in our position. That opportunity can be a good client, a good case, an important minute, a proposal to associate with other colleagues, a lawyer who wants to work with us and brings knowledge and prestige to the firm, etc.

But if we are not in the place we have chosen when that new opportunity to grow and succeed appears, the opportunity will pass before us or we will not even see it. Of course, the incentives and satisfactions must arise every day, but we are the ones who can promote them with our positive attitude.

The third meaning of the dictionary for patience is "the faculty of knowing how to wait when something is greatly desired". We must have a vocation and enthusiasm for the legal profession to know how to wait without the days getting too long. But we cannot remain passive, we have to do things. It is as if we go fishing in an area of ​​the river where the fish do not bite the trap and we continue there for hours and hours without changing anything. We will be able to throw the hook to another place, move somewhere else, change the bait to another the fish might like more, etc. And we will try to catch bigger fish and even think about changing our old fishing rod for a more sophisticated one.

Let us think if we have chosen a specialty of law that we like and that brings us clients, if we make good use of our contacts, if the world knows us because we write, publish, communicate who we are and what we can do. Let's not stay hidden. And let's study, dedicate time to training, learn from the best; in short, let's give the best of ourselves. Thus, at the least expected moment, success will come and we will be a reference in our specialty.

I remember how one of the first consultations I received, ten years later, provided me with the highest fees that I had charged until then and also my clients saved the bill since I won the case with costs. It took me ten years but it was worth it, but for that I had to be there and act without haste.

Constancy, perseverance and will must accompany patience. I remember how I convinced one of the first lawyers I hired in my firm not to leave the legal profession in her first months to work in a bank looking for a secure salary. Today, she is a great lawyer and she earns much more than if she had worked at the bank, an entity that, on the other hand, has drastically reduced her workforce, like most of them.

The wait will be worth it and one day we will remember how we started and progressed year after year achieving successes that we could not have imagined at the beginning of the race, a race full of obstacles that we have been overcoming like good athletes. This is how good athletes also achieve their goals: they have a mission and to achieve it they must follow their training with discipline, order and perseverance. As well as something very important: They must have a winning mentality.