If Someone Helps You, Help Somebody Else

Dr Mark Bellamy PhD, CPsychol, AFBPsS
Chartered Psychologist | Founder, LegalPsych

One of the things I have noticed repeatedly in my conversations with lawyers is how clearly people remember those who helped them earlier in their careers. Sometimes it was a partner who took an interest, a barrister who made time after a difficult hearing, a clerk who quietly explained how something worked or a colleague who noticed that somebody was struggling and offered support without making too much of it. Years later, people can often remember these relatively small interventions with remarkable clarity.

This makes sense psychologically. Early professional environments contain considerable uncertainty, and much of what somebody needs to learn is not contained in formal training. There are questions about judgement, relationships, confidence, professional behaviour and how to respond when things have not gone particularly well. Having access to somebody more experienced who is willing to share what they have learned can shorten that learning process considerably.

There is also something important about what helping communicates. When a senior lawyer makes time for somebody more junior, they are providing information as well as advice. They are demonstrating that questions can be asked, that uncertainty is compatible with competence and that development is something in which other people are prepared to invest. Those messages gradually contribute to somebody's understanding of what it means to belong within a profession.

The opposite can happen as well. Many successful lawyers have stories about people who were not particularly helpful to them. They may have worked in environments where asking questions was discouraged, mistakes were dealt with harshly or development was largely left to the individual. Some understandably look back and decide that because they survived that experience, the next generation should probably be expected to do the same.

I am not convinced that is the most useful conclusion. Surviving a difficult developmental environment tells us that somebody adapted successfully to it; it does not necessarily tell us that the environment was optimal for learning or performance. There is an important difference between retaining the challenge and responsibility that helped somebody develop and reproducing unnecessary difficulty simply because it formed part of our own experience.

This is where experienced lawyers have considerable influence over professional culture, often in ways that are easy to underestimate. Culture is not only created through organisational policies or statements about values. It is also created in the few minutes after somebody makes a mistake, in whether a junior feels able to admit that they do not understand something, in how an unsuccessful piece of work is discussed and in whether busy people are prepared occasionally to make time for somebody who cannot immediately offer them anything in return.

From a performance perspective, these interactions matter because high-quality learning requires both challenge and access to information. People need opportunities to attempt difficult things, occasionally get them wrong and develop the capacity to think independently. But independence does not require isolation. Some of the most effective development may occur when somebody is given genuine responsibility while knowing that experienced judgement remains available when they need it.

There is a broader professional consequence as well. Knowledge accumulated over a 20-, 30- or 40-year legal career has considerable value, much of which is difficult to capture formally. Experienced lawyers possess pattern recognition, judgement and an understanding of people and situations that has developed through thousands of professional encounters. When some of that knowledge is passed to the next generation, the profession retains something that would otherwise disappear when individuals eventually leave it.

Perhaps this is why I like the idea of helping somebody else when we have been helped ourselves. It recognises that very few successful careers are entirely individual achievements. Somewhere along the way, most of us have benefited from somebody else's experience, patience, encouragement or willingness to open a door.

But I would take the thought one stage further. If somebody did not help you, help somebody else anyway. We do not have to reproduce every aspect of the environment in which we learned simply because we managed to succeed within it. One of the privileges of becoming more experienced is having some influence over what the profession feels like for the people coming behind us, and perhaps one measure of a successful legal career is not only what we achieve ourselves, but what becomes easier for others because we were there.