The secret of my success

“I've finally figured you out,” says Mr. D over a cup of coffee at the Colonial Cup café which used to be a popular lawyers’ haunt before the courts moved to Jalan Duta.

Mr. D was formerly a litigator in my old firm before he moved to better things. He has now gone into management consulting. Even if he had started a nasi lemak stall I would have said the same.

“What have you figured out about me?” I asked, not really looking forward to his revelation.

“Well, I know you from student days and I know for a fact that you never really liked studying law as a subject. And when we meet up now and I mention any current legal issues, you never seem to add to the discussion,” Mr. D went on.

I was not sure I liked where this was heading but I was still interested to find out anyway.

“I thought that you just didn’t like to bore us with the stuff. But actually you don’t know much law, do you?”

“Excuse me?!”

“No, I mean it in a nice way. In fact it amazes me that you have got this far. You do get referred by clients and our former bosses seem to have a high regard for you.”

“Is there a compliment in there?”

“Don’t you see? Your ability to bullshit makes up for all your lack of knowledge. I’ve seen you arguing a case with just one case from a first year text book and as painful as it was, you did get the judge’s ear.”

In my mind I was agreeing with him. When I applied to law school, I really didn’t know what I was in for. Then I listened to my uncle who advised me that if you are unsure about what you want to do, just study law and it will sort itself out later. One legal career later, I’m still unsure whether this is for me. I do churn out case winning submissions every now and then but I’m not sure whether it’s due to real legal knowledge or just the ability to mash-up half a dozen obscure legal propositions (researched by my assistants) and fashion them to win my arguments. I suspect that most of the time I seem more impressive than other Malay lawyers just because I could string sentences in English without any obvious grammatical errors.

“So you are saying that my most redeeming feature is that I can bluff my way through legal practice?”

“Yeah. And I promise I won’t tell your clients.”

I’d better pick up the tab for the coffee then.