Don’t let yourself get blindsided in court by someone better prepared.

Here’s the situation: you’re arguing your issue, and you wrap up your presentation. Opposing counsel responds with a case that hurts you. It’s not directly on point, but it’s analogous. It’s close enough and damaging enough that you should have known about it beforehand.

Opposing counsel was better prepared, and your client suffered because of it.

You feel bad, but you researched the issue. You had no idea this damaging case was out there. You didn’t research the matter in such a way that you’d uncover the case the opposing attorney found. It had never occurred to you to research in such a manner as to find that case. You didn’t know enough to approach the research like opposing counsel did.

Unfortunately, you didn’t know what you didn’t know, and it bit you on the ass.

The unknown is scary. You just don’t know what you don’t know, and it can keep you up in the middle of the night.

How can you minimize the risk of the unknown?

You can get back to learning. Most of us slow way down on learning when we leave law school. We know how to do the research, and we’re prepared on our particular issue, but we stop keeping up on things we don’t (we think) need to know. We stop learning the law that doesn’t apply to our particular practice and situation.

That’s dangerous. You don’t have to let this happen to you. There’s a simple approach that will largely solve the problem.

Here’s what you do in four easy steps:

1. Subscribe to a legal newspaper or other service that provides you with summaries of all the appellate decisions in your jurisdiction.

2. Read the summaries on family law (assuming you practice family law), plus read anything applicable to civil procedure and/or evidence. Skim, at a minimum, everything else.

3. Read the full text of any opinion that requires further attention.

4. Repeat each week.

If you’re willing to go one step further, I’d suggest that you write a paragraph or two about each important decision and maintain a database so you can reference this material later.

What difference does staying current make if you’re going to do the research on issues as they arise anyway?

The difference is that, in reading the opinions, you’re confronting issues that aren’t arising in your practice (at least, not yet). These opinions are forcing you to think through scenarios you haven’t considered. You’re expanding the scope of the things you know that you don’t know. You’re opening your mind to the possibility that there’s more out there that you haven’t previously considered. That’s a good thing.

With this approach, when it becomes necessary to research an issue, you’ll approach it with a broader perspective. You’ll research in ways you wouldn’t have otherwise considered. You’ll be far less likely to be surprised by a clever opposing counsel.

Start reading the decisions. Start reducing the unknown. Next time, it will be you pulling the unexpected case out of your litigation bag and leaving your opposing counsel wondering how that happened.