Fortune is the arbiter of one half of our actions. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Someone else decided every case you have won. Someone else picked the opponent. The court gave you the judge. You controlled part of the record and the other side controlled the rest. A judge who sat through four days of it handed down the result. The result tells you one thing. A tribunal agreed with you. Nobody has asked what your reasoning was worth.
Cicero tells a story about a temple wall covered in painted tablets. A sailor prayed in a storm, reached port, and painted a tablet. A friend showed the wall to Diagoras and said it proved the gods look after people. Diagoras asked him where the tablets were for the men who prayed and drowned. Every tablet on that wall was true. The wall only held the ones who made it back.
Three from thirty six years in commercial litigation. I won a trial where the other side’s main witness was overseas and stayed there. I settled a case in the week the other side ran out of money, and I put the number down as a good result. I lost a point I still think was right. Two wins and a loss. The reasoning behind all three stayed in my head.
A loss gets examined. There is an advice on appeal, a file note, a conversation with the partner who referred the matter, and a client who wants to know how it went that way. A win gets an invoice. When did anyone sit down and work out why you won? The client was happy, the bill was paid, and the file went into storage.
You only look at your own reasoning when a tribunal tells you it was wrong. You have used the same judgement every working day for twenty years, and you have checked it on the days it lost.
Put it to yourself the way you would put it to a witness. You won, therefore your judgement was sound. You would take that apart. You would ask what else was going on. You would ask him what he would say if the same reasoning had lost. You would get him to agree that the only thing holding his answer up is the result. Then you would sit down. You would go back to your office and believe the same thing about yourself. Nobody has ever asked you those questions.
The cases end. A result comes down, the file closes, and it goes on your record. Then there is the senior hire. The rate you have held for four years. The partner whose billings you have carried for three. The succession you have kept to yourself, including the person you have picked for it. You make all of those with the same judgement. No court sits on any of them. You find out how they went in about six years. By then the same judgement has made four more.
You have cross-examined other people’s accounts for twenty years. Nobody has cross-examined yours.
Your record shows that twenty tribunals agreed with you. That is all it shows.