There’s an old saying, credited to so many people over the years that I’ve stopped trying to figure out who said it first, that the harder you work the luckier you get. I’d tweak it a bit. Hard work doesn’t make you lucky, but it puts you in the path of luck far more often than sitting still ever will. When I look back at the clients I’ve gained over my career, many of those relationships started with what looked like a lucky break: a referral out of the blue, a phone call at just the right moment, a chance conversation at an event I almost skipped. The truth is that none of those moments happened by accident.
Think about what actually goes into “luck” for a lawyer or any other professional. That referral came because someone remembered I did good work on a matter years earlier and got it done when I said I would. The call came because I had kept in touch with someone even when there was no business reason to do so. The conversation happened because I showed up after a long day at the office when going home would have been so much easier. Each of those was a small deposit made long before anyone could see a return. From the outside it looks like good fortune, and I’ll gladly take it, but I know where it came from.
The flip side matters too. When you coast, opportunities still come around; you just aren’t ready for them or aren’t in the room when they arrive. The young associate who knows the file cold is the one who gets pulled into a big trial when a senior partner gets sick the week before. The business owner who has spent months building relationships is the one a larger company calls when it needs a vendor on short notice. If you haven’t done the work, you may never even know what you missed, because the chance quietly went to someone who had. That isn’t bad luck. It’s the math of preparation.
None of this is a guarantee, and I won’t pretend otherwise. You can work incredibly hard and still have things go sideways, which is part of life for all of us. What hard work does is tilt the odds. It multiplies the number of doors that crack open and makes sure you’re standing close enough to walk through one when it does. So ask yourself honestly how many chances you’re giving luck to find you. If the answer isn’t many, the good news is that changing it is entirely up to you, and you can start today
