The moment I fully grasped the extraordinary lengths to which a lawyer’s responsibility and authority extend will always stay with me. Allow me, if you will, to stage the scene:

I am a second-year associate sitting in a colleague’s office discussing a particularly contentious case. We discuss the client’s goals in the litigation and share ideas for our next steps to accomplish those goals. The conversation eventually leads to our expectations as to what steps our client will authorize, especially considering the particular opposing counsel and the tenor of the litigation. As the conversation winds down, this colleague says to me, “Paul, you have no idea how much authority you actually have.”