The Value of Experience | Estate and Trust Litigation

I’m Mike Hackard with Hackard Law. We’ve been sharing our videos on YouTube for over seven years now. It’s been a fun, challenging, and invigorating process.

It’s also a reminder that talk is different than experience. Some of the subjects that we address are new to us. They might be our initial forays into a niche. Or they just might be something that I thought would be fun to write and talk about.

That said, we have made a concentrated effort to share the lessons from experience in our field of litigation – in particular, estate and trust litigation. There are many aphorisms about the benefits of experience and the detriment of its counterpart – inexperience. Here’s one:

“Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.”

This adage is often referenced in the medical field. New interns fresh from medical school join a teaching hospital’s workface at the same time more senior trainees move on to higher roles. It is a time when everyone is most inexperienced and there are concerns that it will have an adverse effect on patients. Some United Kingdom medical literature has referred to this as the “August killing season.” That’s harsh.

While we don’t have an equivalent adage in the legal field, it’s hard to argue that inexperience is a benefit to the legal process. We all start inexperienced, and our experience vary in depth, understanding and time. Still, experience is necessary to hone our skills and comfort with our profession.

Warren Buffett, “The Oracle of Omaha,” shares his idea of gaining experience:

“There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning … I always worked in a job that I loved doing. You really should take a job that if you were independently wealthy that would be the job you would take. You will learn something, you will be excited about, and you will jump out of bed. You can’t miss. You may try something else later on, but you will get way more out of it and I don’t care what the starting salary is.”

I love that advice. It was something shared with me long ago. Following the advice of acquiring knowledge requires a great deal of time, energy, and sacrifice – including some financial sacrifices. It’s worth it.

We have the enormous benefit of representing clients in the field that we love – while there’s always something new, and there are always cases with paths well-trodden.

If you’d like to speak with us about your estate or trust litigation case, call us at Hackard Law: 916-313-3030. We’ll be happy to speak with you.

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