Access to The Champion archive is one of many exclusive member benefits. It’s normally restricted to just NACDL members. However, this content, and others like it, is available to everyone in order to educate the public on why criminal justice reform is a necessity.
When I was a young lawyer, I had the good fortune of co-counseling a case with a great lawyer named David Freedman. That year, his face appeared on the cover of a magazine declaring him the best lawyer in North Carolina. Half-jokingly, I asked him what it took to become the best lawyer in North Carolina. He answered thoughtfully: “I realized when I was 40 how much I’d grown as a lawyer between 30 and 40, and I thought — if I can stay healthy, physically and mentally, imagine how much more I can help my clients by the time I’m 50.”
That advice, grow so you can serve, raises an obvious question: how do we actually learn as lawyers? The spirit of his message, the sooner we grow, the more we can help our clients, is a call to action.
Most of us learn by osmosis. We go to work every day, absorb what we can from research, trial, and error, and improve gradually over time. It works. But the research on skill acquisition tells us something more useful: the fastest way to improve at anything is through deliberate practice. Deliberate practice means identifying what you want to improve, building a plan to improve it, conditioning that habit with honest feedback, and sticking with it.
This isn’t a foreign concept to us. Most of us already used deliberate practice once to pass the bar exam. We set a target score, took prep courses, sat for practice tests, absorbed the feedback, and — by hook or by crook — passed and became lawyers. Anyone who has trained for a marathon knows the same formula: it can take you from the couch to 26.2 miles in a matter of months. So what happens if we apply that same discipline to cross-examination or motions practice? If we set a three-month goal to master the shifting landscape of the Fourth Amendment and digital search technology, how much would it sharpen our practice — and how much would our clients benefit?
A fellow NACDL member I practice with regularly has taken this idea to heart. He decided he wanted to become a better negotiator, which is a skill fundamental to our work. He started with podcasts, moved to a book, then a seminar, and now meets weekly by phone with another NACDL member across the country, where the two of them practice what they’ve learned. At best, this plan will produce better outcomes for his clients. At worst, it will let him walk into negotiations with more confidence and less of the stress that used to come with it. Either way, he wins — and so do his clients.
Every improvement plan should start with a candid self-assessment. For criminal defense lawyers, the categories that matter most usually include legal research, motions practice, cross-examination, client communication, negotiation, and courtroom presence. A good audit also asks where the friction lives in your case process — intake, investigation, pretrial motions, plea bargaining, voir dire, trial, or sentencing. Name the friction, and you’ve found your starting point.
NACDL’s programming can give that plan a strong foundation. Browse the Live CLE calendar or the On-Demand library to build a course of study around your goals. Beyond the course materials, NACDL offers more than 80 books and resource guides to deepen your knowledge, and The Champion archive is fully searchable online for further reading. And don’t overlook the members themselves: find someone at a conference or through NACDL’s listserv, and ask that person to be your accountability partner. Put a standing call on the calendar to discuss what you’re learning, test each other’s knowledge, and talk through how to apply it in practice.
NACDL’s mission is to ensure “that its members and others in the criminal defense bar are fully equipped to serve all accused persons at the highest level.” Ask yourself: how much better could we serve our clients if each of us, individually, became just 10 percent better? And what would it mean for a fairer, more rational, more humane criminal legal system if the entire defense bar rose by that same 10 percent?
It is incumbent upon us to try.
About the Author
C. Melissa Owen is a founding partner of Tin Fulton Walker & Owen. Missy Owen’s personal practice areas include state and federal criminal defense, with a focus on white collar matters, financial crime, defense of sex offense prosecutions, and Title IX representation. She is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and a Fellow of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers.
C. Melissa Owen (NACDL Life Member)
Tin Fulton Walker & Owen, PLLC
Charlotte, North Carolina
704-338-1220
cmowen@tinfulton.com
