NQ blog - September 2016: Why solicitors should train like Olympic boxers

The Olympics this year was such a fantastic extravaganza of sporting achievements, most notably for Team GB, who performed exceptionally well! Each of us will be familiar with the analogy of law, in particular courtroom practice, as being akin to the sport of boxing – the judge sits as the referee (at least in our adversarial system) with the defence/defender and prosecutor/pursuer as the fighters. The rules of the sport (rules of evidence) govern the fight.

Boxers train in the gym on a daily basis, solicitors train in the courtroom. We train our intellectual abilities, boxers train their physical abilities. The point I’m making is that there are a lot of parallels with sport and legal practice. That being said, if a solicitor’s greatest asset is his/her mind then we need to train it and improve our abilities if we are to succeed in our chosen sport.

Like in any sport, there will always be new competitors that challenge us and motivate us to keep on top of our game. Additionally, the legal world is fast-paced and ever-changing and it is important for us as solicitors, regardless of whatever stage of our careers we are at, to keep abreast of changes in the law. We all need to invest time in our learning to constantly improve our skills and our knowledge.

This can benefit us as solicitors, in becoming better at our job, and also our clients, in having the best representation available. How we choose to do this is up to us; whether it be reading the latest legal textbook in our free time (if we are lucky enough to have any free time at all!) or taking ten to 15 minutes at the end of each day to read up on the latest case law. If we set aside some time and do this each day we can greatly improve our knowledge in a short space of time.

So, when we step into the arena to do battle against our competitor, we are fully armed with the knowledge we need to win first place.