“When I was a young lawyer…”

There it is. The legal version of “Back in my day…”
You can almost hear the oak paneling creak when it’s said.

Lawyers repeat that phrase not because anyone asked, but because it’s a reflex—like objecting on instinct or billing .2 hours for thinking about billing. It’s the throat-clear before a story that’s half confession, half humblebrag, and fully immune to interruption.

Here’s the truth: when lawyers say “when I was a young lawyer,” what they mean is “before I knew how badly this job was going to mess with me.”

It’s not nostalgia. It’s trauma with better tailoring.

When I was a young lawyer, I believed the rules mattered more than the people enforcing them. I believed preparation guaranteed fairness. I believed judges read everything. I believed opposing counsel played by the same ethical rulebook I did. I believed that being right was enough.

Adorable, really.

That phrase is a permission slip to admit—without actually admitting—that you once believed the profession’s marketing materials. Law school sold you precision, logic, justice, and reason. Practice handed you delay, leverage, ego, and a calendar designed to break your spirit one adjournment at a time.

So older lawyers repeat the phrase because it’s the only socially acceptable way to say:
I didn’t know a damn thing—but I was very confident about it.

It’s also how lawyers talk about mistakes without ever using the word mistake. Nobody says, “When I committed malpractice-adjacent behavior out of sheer optimism…” They say, “When I was a young lawyer, I trusted that client.” Or, “When I was a young lawyer, I thought the court would be reasonable.”

There’s your punchline.

And let’s not ignore the ego piece. The phrase lets lawyers remind you they survived something you’re still drowning in. It says, I made it out. I have opinions now. I wear comfortable shoes. It’s a subtle flex wrapped in mentorship language.

But underneath the snark, there’s something else going on.

“When I was a young lawyer” is code for this job will change you in ways you don’t see coming. It’s how seasoned lawyers try—awkwardly, imperfectly—to warn you that intelligence won’t save you from exhaustion, that integrity won’t shield you from cynicism, and that the system doesn’t reward virtue nearly as much as it rewards endurance.

So yes, the phrase is overused. Yes, it’s usually followed by a story you’ve already heard. Yes, it often ignores the fact that the profession has gotten harder, not easier.

But one day—after your own illusions have been professionally dismantled, after your own “this will be resolved quickly” predictions have aged poorly—you’ll hear yourself say it.

“When I was a young lawyer…”

And in that moment, you’ll realize the phrase isn’t about age at all.

It’s about the version of yourself that still believed the law was what it claimed to be—before experience, reality, and a lifetime of footnotes corrected the record.