Sometimes You Win, and Sometimes....

I love the Olympics.  It's a shame they come around only every four years.  I love the national pride, the competition, the chance to watch sports I really love but which are never televised.  I also love that so much of the Olympics provides fodder for the Trenches.   The Olympics is the gathering of all of the best athletes in the world in a given sport.  It's hard to remember that when you watch the competition on TV.  Someone wins, and many lose.  Some win by an awful lot; and some by just a nose or a point. The ones who don't win, however, are still elite athletes who could beat most people in the world in their sport on any given day.  Every single one of them is a superstar, but when push comes to shove, someone has to win and someone has to lose.  It all comes down to that one competition, that one moment in time.  You can't say the losers aren't prepared; most of them prepare at least as well as the winners.  Maybe you could say the winners have more innate talent, and for many of them, it's certainly true, but there has been many an "inferior" athlete who's won.  Sometimes, what it comes down to is that the winner is having a better day physically, they woke up feeling stronger and faster than anyone else.  Sometimes the external conditions favor one athlete's talents over another's.  Sometimes, they're just plain lucky.  Compare this to the Trenches (don't I always?).  All of us here in the Trenches went to law school.  Some of us did better than others in school.  Some of us are just smarter than others.  Some of us regularly continue our legal education and work on our advocacy and trial skills.  Some of us perform better in the courtroom than others.  We all work really hard to help our clients.  We prepare their cases to the best of our abilities.  We make sure all of the evidence is there to prove our case, that our witnesses are lined up to reinforce our points.  Most of the folks who toil here in the Trenches on a regular basis are really good at what we do.  On a given day, we are better than most at representing our family law clients.  Still, sometimes we lose.  When that happens, it's almost always the lawyer who gets blamed.  Sometimes, that's true.  Sometimes, however, the conditions and the facts favor our opponent in court.  Sometimes, our client reminds the judge of his least favorite relative (that would be the unlucky part).  At its most basic, court is a competition, and in any competition someone has to win and someone has to lose.  A win/loss record is no measure of talent.  Just like in the Olympics.  Here in the Trenches.