Do Things That Seem Easy Have Value?

Things look easier once you know how to do them.

Once upon a time, you didn’t know how to walk.

You could only crawl. You could only imagine walking.

Watching others walk was amazing. How did they do it? How did they stand up so high? How did they move so quickly?

Walking was priceless. It was the most valuable thing in the world. You desperately wanted to walk.

You would have given anything to be able to walk like the others.

That was a long time ago.

Time passes.

You went to high school, then college, then law school. You learned things.

Now you take walking for granted. You rarely think twice about it.

Now you just walk. Walking has no value. It’s like air. It just is. It’s not priceless anymore.

What changed?

You learned how to do it. It became easy. You mastered it.

The value went away once you acquired it.

Unfortunately, that’s the way many of us feel about our legal skills.

Do Your Legal Skills Have Value?

If we think that something is easy, that it’s routine, or that we’ve got it down, it has no value.

For example, a client asks us to write a quick letter or make a brief call. We can do it in our sleep. It’s easy. In our minds, it has little, if any, value. The value went away once we acquired the skill.

When a client asks how much we charge for letter or the call, we’re embarrassed to charge much of anything. How can we ask for money when we feel it’s worth so little?

How much would we charge to walk from here to there? Not much.

Remember the Value in Your Skills

We can’t remember the days before we learned to walk. We mostly can’t remember the time before we could draft the letter or make the call. But there was a time when we couldn’t do either one very well.

I watch young lawyers now who struggle with the basics. They spend hours preparing for a call. They rack their brains trying to get a letter just right.

You, however, can do those things blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back.

If it’s that easy for you—just like walking—then how can it possibly have value? How can you feel comfortable taking money for something that requires so little of you?

Regain Your Perspective

You see, you’ve lost your perspective.

• Your clients aren’t you. They don’t see the world the way you do. They don’t know the things you know.
• Your clients are like you when you couldn’t yet walk. They’re in awe. They’re amazed at what you can do.
• You would have given anything to be able to walk. Walking had value.

So do you.

You’re able to give you clients what they need. You’ve spent thousands of hours learning what you know. It has value to someone who doesn’t already know what you know—lots of value.

That’s hard for us to internalize. Even when we understand the value we convey to others, sometimes we feel awkward about being compensated. We’re uncomfortable.

We live in a world where all of our peers know what we know. We can all walk, we can all draft a letter, and we can all make a call. How much value can there be when we can all do it?

You’re right about one thing. Our skills aren’t of much value to those who can do it themselves with the same level of skill as us.

But you’re wrong about your value to others. Most clients can’t do what we can do. And those who can often can’t separate their emotions sufficiently from the problem to do it well themselves.

We have value to others. We’ve got to believe.

When we doubt our value, we lose our nerve. We lose our willingness to stand up and be compensated. We end up doing work for free.

You can walk. They can’t. You can show them how.