In a recent call I received regarding our Litigation Paralegal Boot Camp, I had a question from someone who wanted to see if we offered a payment plan and the conversation evolved into why she was hesitant to ask her firm to pay for the program and the advice she had received to “fake it till you make it”. In this blog, I am going to share why the faking it till you make it mentality is a bad idea and what you can do to avoid it.
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The Inspiration for this Blog
As I mentioned, I had a phone call from someone who was seeking a payment plan option for the Litigation Paralegal Boot Camp because she said, “I desperately need the course, I’m new to litigation and have no idea what I should be doing every day, and no one is available to help me.”
I reassured her that we do have a payment plan option, but, “Before we do that I wonder have you asked your attorney to pay for the course for you?”
There was silence. Finally, she said “No. I don’t think they pay for continuing education at the firm. We’re a small firm.”
I told her all of the stories of the paralegals who thought the same thing and then later reached out to me to take them off the payment plan and pay in full because once their attorney found out they were taking the course, and what it was about, they offered to pay for it.
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We talked for a while about it. I gave her specific examples, but I could tell she still wasn’t on board with asking her attorney to pay for it. So I asked, “What’s the real reason you don’t want to ask him?”
She said, “I’m afraid that he’s going to think that I don’t know what I’m doing and then fire me so that he can hire someone more experienced than me who does know what they’re doing.”
I’ve heard this before from new paralegals, but for some reason, this time it struck me differently.
Well, part of what struck me differently is that during the continued conversation, she said that inside a social media post with other paralegals, someone gave a new paralegal the advice of “Fake it till you make it.”
No. Do not do that.
Faking it till you make it might be something you can do as an actor or a model, or a salesperson. But doing that as a paralegal could be detrimental to your career!
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Where Did Faking It Till You Make It Come From
The phrase “fake it till you make it” started as a way to encourage people to act confidently even if they don’t feel confident, with the hope that this will eventually lead to actual confidence and success, a sort of mindset over matter movement.
That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, right? Wrong. Again, if you’re a salesperson it might be good, but they don’t have to carry malpractice insurance for a reason. If they mess something up, they have an angry boss or an angry customer who might not come back.
In the legal profession, you could have missed a critical filing deadline and now the client is forever barred from pursuing that claim.
Think about it like this…do you want your surgeon to be faking it till she makes it? No. Doctors have to carry malpractice insurance.
Do you want the engineer who’s building that 20-story skyrise office building that you work in to be faking it till he makes it? No. They also have to carry insurance.
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As I was outlining this blog and some of the key points I wanted to cover, I decided to jump into the Google rabbit hole and ask Google where this saying comes from. Yeah, don’t do it. I’ll save you those 2 hours that you’ll never get back.
Google said the phrase originated from a Simon & Garfunkel song in 1968. Yeah, so I don’t know if I want to let a Simon & Garfunkel song determine my paralegal career path.
Now there was something else out there that compared it kind of to the law of attraction theory and to this 1920s theory from Alfred Adler that he used to treat his patients who had dysfunctional behaviors. It was a thing he called “acting as if.” In other words, if you want a quality, act as if you already have it.
So if it’s a quality, like confidence, sure, fake it till you make it. Act as if you already have confidence. Although, that could be a whole other blog too because I don’t know if that works unless you have a little something behind it to fall back on.
Why You Shouldn’t Be Faking It Till You Make It
Anyway, let’s get back to the conversation with this paralegal. After telling her that wasn’t a good idea to take that advice, I told her the story of a paralegal who worked for me who also was faking it till she was making it.
We have to go back to around 2007 or 2008 for this one. This paralegal, we’ll call her Cindy. After a series of mistakes, some minor, a few major, she had a big project coming up on a big case.
Throughout this project, she was asked by the attorneys and by me “Do you need any help?” “No.” “Are you sure you’ve got this?” “Yes.” “Can we see a sample of what you’ve got done so far?” “Tomorrow.” And then tomorrow turned into tomorrow night. “Okay, that looks good. But how much do you have done? Are you sure you’re going to be able to complete this on time?” “Yes.”
She didn’t. And there were other issues. She was fired.
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It’s Okay To Ask For Help
Fast-forward to 2013 or 14. I’d left the firm to start my company in 2010. Back then, I used to do a lot of live training inside law firms. An Atlanta firm hired me to come teach the Billable Hour Boot Camp. I’m in the conference room as the paralegals and associates come into the room a few at a time, and then I see her, Cindy. My jaw dropped. And I wondered how she would react to me being the trainer.
She walked up to me and whispered, “You did the best thing you could have ever done for my paralegal career. I woke up and finally stopped faking it and pretending like I was going to be able to figure it all out eventually. I am a really good paralegal now, I know what I’m doing, and I know when to admit I’m in over my head.”
I could have cried. She made me so proud. There’s a whole other lesson in that because she took an adversity, a bad situation, and she used it to fuel her desire to do better. That’s not always easy to do.
Now I wasn’t saying to the person on the call that she could get fired for faking it until she made it. What I was trying to tell her with that story was that it’s better to admit you don’t know everything, admit that you need help, or additional training.
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Think about it like this – from somewhat of a different perspective – let’s say you go to your attorney and say “I found this course that I’d really like to take because I feel like I could use some help in this area. I want to be able to support you and the clients the best I can.”
Do you think they’re going to say “No, I’m not going to pay for it and by the way, you’re fired because I didn’t know when I hired you right out of school that you didn’t know what you were doing.”
No. They’re not going to say that. Well, unless you literally faked your experience on your resume or something. If a firm is hiring you with less than 5 years of experience, they know you don’t know everything.
Read this if you’re still waiting for on-the-job training.
Don’t Wait to Ask For the Help You Need
That’s actually the easier scenario. Let’s talk about one that’s a little trickier and one that I see often. You’ve been a paralegal for 5 to 7 years. You worked at a couple of different firms, let’s say one for 3 years and the last one for 4 years. But in those 7 years, you didn’t get much training. You didn’t do any outside training. You were doing the fake it till you make it route for that time, and it’s kind of worked. You didn’t have any major mistakes; you got by, but that’s all you did.
Now you’re going to work at a firm that thinks you know everything you should because you’ve got 7 years of experience. But those last four years were spent primarily focused on doing document review projects and you had little to no exposure to the other aspects of a typical litigation case.
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You haven’t been helping to prep for hearings, or cite checking briefs, or getting complaints filed. You haven’t been getting ready for depositions, or getting ready for trial. You’ve had a little bit of exposure to eDiscovery, but not as the project manager. You’ve just been reviewing electronic documents for privilege and responsiveness. Occasionally the eDiscovery project manager would get you involved in the production side, but not enough to where you could run an eDiscovery project on your own.
Now you’re at this new firm that thinks they hired a litigation paralegal with 7 years of experience. Someone who should have had lots of exposure to all of those other areas of the typical lifecycle of a litigation case.
That’s where it’s even more dangerous to have the Faking it Till You Make It mindset.
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Your Actionable Strategy
I’ve got an actionable strategy for you.
It’s a download I put together for you. But here’s the thing, it is geared towards litigation paralegals, because I was preparing it as an example to the litigation paralegals who are inside the Litigation Paralegal Boot Camp.
If you’re not a litigation paralegal, your actionable strategies are to share this blog with a litigation paralegal you know and to go online and look at a few job descriptions for paralegals in your practice area. Make a list of what skills are listed by employers who are looking to fill a senior paralegal position in your practice area. Make a list of all of those skills and think of it as your checklist of skills you want to obtain throughout the next year.
The one I prepared for litigation paralegals has a column for the categories of skills, and they’re divided up into sections that relate to typical phases of litigation: the pleadings & motions phase, the discovery phase, trial prep, etc. Then there’s a column to rate where your current skill set is in that area. Another column is for you to write out what your plan is to increase that skill set, for example, take an online course, attend a conference, find a YouTube video, etc.
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Then there’s a column for the date you want to complete it; I’d suggest putting a Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4 in the date column so that you can then make a quarterly plan for what you’ll be working on. Then finally there’s a column to check off that it was completed. You can create your own chart whether you’re in corporate, real estate, immigration, or estate planning – just use those column labels and the skills listed in those job descriptions.
If you’re in litigation, I’ve done that for you inside the litigation paralegal professional development plan. You can download it here.
Then join me inside the Litigation Paralegal Boot Camp and let me help you fast-track your career.
Meet the Author
Ann Pearson is the Founder of the Paralegal Boot Camp, and host of the Paralegals on Fire! Podcast Show, and passionate about promoting the paralegal profession.
Ann spent 20 years working as a paralegal manager and a litigation paralegal before opening the Paralegal Boot Camp in 2010. Her training programs focus on adding immediate value to a paralegal’s career and bridging the gap between what a paralegal learns in school and what they actually do on the job.
When Ann is not working, you can usually find her somewhere near the ocean – either boating, scuba diving, or rescuing sea turtles.
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