Today marks exactly 10 years of lawyering for me today…

These are some lessons that I have learned:

1. Legal ethics is an aspirational concept and one that few legal practitioners are familiar with.

2. Always be reasonable in your dealings with the court and the parties, one day you may need a favour or an extension of time.

3. Stressing or getting emotional doesn’t change the situation, put your feelings to one side and then look at the next steps to solve the problem.

4. Don’t take on a client if your ‘spider senses,’ tell you that you don’t trust them (even if they are prepared to pay your account).

5. Civil procedure in WA is so unnecessarily complicated that I have no idea how self-represented parties manage.

6. Never give a personal undertaking or make any assertion on your own behalf. It should always be an undertaking or submission on behalf of the client.

7. Always check the court list the day before your hearing and the morning of. It is untidy if you tell your client to go to court on the wrong day. It is equally as untidy to find out that the room or court has changed or is in another building.

8. Separate claims should be dealt with on separate files and sent under the cover of distinctly separate letters or emails.

9. Set calendar reminders for court deadlines and case management deadlines.

10. Don’t run arguments that you know aren’t going to work (this is just going to put the court offside and put your client in the firing line for an adverse cost order).

11. Don’t switch off when you are in court, you are a lawyer for every minute you are there until you get home or back to the office.

12. Don’t put emotional comments in correspondence it just wastes your own client’s money and annoys the other side.

13. As soon as you file something and it is accepted for filing serve it immediately (you don’t want to forget).

14. It is always easier to get money on trust before doing work as opposed to after.

15. I have somehow turned into my old boss David Fleming.

16. Courts and tribunals don’t have a sense of humour.

17. Don’t trash talk or speak disparagingly of other lawyers outside your practice. Equally, don’t gossip about your clients outside of your practice (Perth is a small place).

18. Lawyers don’t actually get paid that much money.