When I practiced law, I wanted the lawyers who worked with me to not be content. I wanted them to not think they had arrived. I wanted them to strive to become a better lawyer each day.

Now that I am recruiting lawyers for firms that I know and respect, I hope to find lawyers who share those traits.

I was never content. Over my many years, I would wake up in the middle of the night and worry about continuing to create a pipeline of work to keep myself and others in my practice group busy.

I always had matters in the works, but my practice generated a few very large matters rather than many small ones. So the development of these matters came at their own pace, not always the pace I wanted.

I told my friends and colleagues I had “healthy paranoia.” I believe most super successful people have it.

They are successful in part because they feel the strong need inside to be successful and they worry when things are not going just the way they want them.

If you look at the quote above, you will likely see the connection. Having healthy paranoia is a key to greater success. It will cause you to think more creatively. But, paranoia goes from healthy to unhealthy easily and unhealthy paranoia will cripple you. Don’t let that happen to you.

As you may know, I wrote a book called Rising Star about a lawyer who had healthy paranoia.