This posted was written by Mark Bennett: "Try this:
Stand up. Raise one foot off the ground. Now shift your weight forward. Don't set your raised foot down. What happens?
You fall down.
But if you do the same thing and set the raised foot down to stop your fall, you take a step. Raise the other foot off the ground, shift your weight forward, and set your raised foot down to catch you. String a series of these events together, and you're moving across the ground. Walking.
The walking metaphor is so common that it is easy to stop noticing it (when you choose your path in life, know that you can't walk on water, but you can walk the walk and march to the beat of a different drummer--Soundtrack: I Walk the Line). Walking is a model for much of human existence, including the practice of law (which begins, after all, when we pass the bar): a series of controlled falls.
Show me a lawyer who claims not to make mistakes, and I'll show you a lawyer who's either a liar or pathologically unselfaware. We make mistakes (missteps, faux pas). Usually we are able to recover (get back on track), but sometimes our mistakes harm our clients, endangering their futures, their freedom, and their lives..."
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Source: Defending People, 22 January 2010. © 2010 Defending People, reproduced with permission of the author.
