I spent more than twenty years riding hunter jumper horses, which means I spent a very long time learning that preparation matters. Horses are wonderfully intelligent animals, but they are not particularly interested in following your five-year plan. You can walk into an arena believing you have everything figured out, and your horse may have a completely different opinion about the matter. Sometimes the horse is right. Sometimes you are right. Occasionally, neither of you has any idea what is happening, but you proceed anyway. Looking back, I realize that riding taught me quite a bit about practicing law, particularly about preparation, adaptability, and keeping your head when things do not go according to plan.
Preparation Happens Before Anyone Is Watching
I started working in barns and stables when I was young because I needed to earn money for riding lessons. There is not much glamorous about cleaning stalls, hauling equipment, or doing the work that has to be done before anyone gets to watch you ride. But that work mattered. By the time you entered the arena, the preparation had already happened. You either knew your horse, knew your equipment, understood what you were trying to accomplish, and had put in the hours, or you did not. No amount of looking confident while sitting in the saddle could substitute for preparation that had never occurred.
The courtroom is not all that different. A trial may look like a series of questions and answers to someone sitting in the gallery, but the actual work begins long before anyone says, “All rise.” There is research to conduct, evidence to review, arguments to consider, weaknesses to identify, and questions to ask yourself before the opposing side ever has an opportunity to ask them. Preparation is not particularly exciting most of the time. It involves reading, thinking, organizing, rereading, and occasionally discovering that the answer you were hoping to find is not the answer that exists. That is not failure. That is the point of doing the work.
You Cannot Control Everything in the Arena
One of the first things you learn when riding is that you are working with another living creature. You can prepare beautifully and still encounter something unexpected. The horse may spook. A stride may not come together the way you expected. Something outside the arena may distract the horse. The weather may change. The footing may be different. Suddenly, the plan you carefully constructed five minutes earlier needs to be adjusted.
Trials have their own version of this. A witness may answer a question differently than expected. Opposing counsel may raise an argument you anticipated but approached from an entirely different direction. A judge may ask a question that requires you to rethink how you are presenting something. A juror may react in a way you did not expect. The answer is not to panic because the script has changed. The answer is to understand your case well enough that you can adapt without losing sight of where you are going.
That is one reason I have always valued preparation so highly. Preparation does not mean believing you can predict every possible event. You cannot. Preparation means knowing your material well enough to respond intelligently when something unexpected happens. There is a difference between memorizing what you intend to do and actually understanding why you are doing it. The second one is considerably more useful when the first one goes sideways.
Confidence Comes From Doing the Work
There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from knowing you have done the work. It is not arrogance. In fact, I think the two are almost opposites. Arrogance assumes you will succeed because you are certain you are right. Confidence allows you to acknowledge that something may go wrong because you know you have prepared for the possibility.
Riding taught me that confidence is built through repetition. You do not become a better rider because someone tells you that you are capable of becoming one. You become better because you get back on the horse, correct what needs correcting, and do it again. Then you discover something else that needs correcting and do that too. Eventually, you realize that you are not finished learning, which is probably a more accurate description of most worthwhile things in life.
The same is true of practicing law. Every case presents an opportunity to learn something. Every courtroom experience gives you another piece of information about preparation, communication, strategy, and people. I have prosecuted cases in four Texas counties and later represented clients in criminal defense, civil litigation, family law, probate, and trust and estate planning. The subject matter changes, but the fundamental requirement remains the same: know your work, prepare thoroughly, and be willing to adjust when reality refuses to cooperate with your plan.
Sometimes You Have to Trust Your Training
There is a moment in riding when you cannot stop and reconsider every decision. The horse is moving, the jump is coming, and you have to trust the work you have already done. That does not mean abandoning judgment. It means understanding that overthinking can become its own problem. At some point, you have to rely on your preparation and make the decision in front of you.
Courtroom work can require the same discipline. There is plenty of time to analyze a case before trial, and I believe strongly in using that time. But once you are standing in court, you have to listen, think, respond, and make decisions. You cannot pause the proceedings because you would like another twenty minutes to contemplate the perfect answer. Sometimes you simply have to take the information available to you, trust your preparation, and move forward.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons I still think about those years riding horses. They taught me that preparation and adaptability are not competing ideas. They depend on one another. Preparation gives you a foundation. Adaptability keeps you from falling apart when the foundation gets tested.
The Work Is Never Really Finished
I have always considered myself a lover of perpetual learning and a work in progress. That description has followed me from the barn to the courtroom, and I suspect it will follow me wherever I go next. There is always another case to study, another legal question to research, another skill to sharpen, and another mistake available for the ambitious person willing to make one. I do not particularly recommend mistakes as a learning strategy, but they do seem to arrive without being invited.
What I learned from riding is that excellence is rarely the result of one dramatic moment. It is built through thousands of small decisions, most of which nobody sees. You prepare when nobody is watching. You learn from what did not work. You listen. You adjust. You try again. And when the moment finally arrives when someone is watching, you hope that all those quiet hours have done what they were supposed to do.
That is probably the greatest lesson horses ever gave me. You cannot control every outcome, and you certainly cannot control a horse’s opinion about your carefully constructed plans. You can control whether you showed up prepared. In a barn, in a courtroom, or anywhere else that requires you to perform under pressure, that is a pretty good place to start.