I think if you ask anyone that’s decided to pursue a career in some specific field, they’ll tell you if they had the opportunity they’d like to be the best at what they do. I mean, who wouldn’t? The same goes for being a DUI lawyer – if you’re going to to do it you might as well be the best, right? Hopefully this article will give you a little bit of insight on just how to do that.

1. You’re Going to Have to Work Hard, Really Hard

There’s a funny thing about successful people – they often look like they are doing whatever it is they are really good at effortlessly. And in some ways they are. That effortless feeling, though, didn’t just drop out of the sky. It was achieved by working countless hours, practicing, perfecting, rehearsing, redrafting, and re-reading until they’d achieved the level of perfection they expected out of themselves.

In the context of being a DUI attorney, what needs to be done should be fairly obvious. First, you need to outwork everyone on knowing the rules, the law, the procedures, the judges, the prosecutors, and everyone else and everything else that you need to know about where you will be working.

Second, you need to outwork your opponents on the specific case you are defending. That means doing the things that aren’t necessarily fun but that can get results. In the DUI context this might mean visiting the scene, taking pictures, taking video, talking to the breath test technician and toxicologist, talking to your own experts, and following up on every statement to test its truthfulness.

2. When You are Done With Step One, Repeat

I wish there was more to it, but the essence of being a great DUI attorney is putting in the work to become great. As I said before, we see people that are great at something and just assume they were born that way. That is pretty much never true. What happens is they find something they are so passionate about that they just can’t put the thing down that they are doing.

Here are just a couple of examples I can think of off the top of my head. The first is Michael Jordan – you know, the NBA hall of fame player. He was cut from his high school team he was so bad (and, in my experience, it’s pretty hard to get cut from your high school team). Instead of quitting he started working relentlessly on his game. We know how that turned out.

Second is Bill Gates, Microsoft founder. Yes, he is a smart guy. But did you know he was coding and working when he was in high school? I got this from one of Malcolm Gladwells’ books, but the way the story goes is Gates would go to school all day, do whatever he would do at night, and when his parents went to sleep he would sneak out of the house and go practice writing code! That’s how you get good at something, work relentlessly at it.

Every day when I wake up I think to myself, “what am I going to do to become the best Atlanta DUI lawyer out there?” and then I get to work doing it. Bottom line, if you want to become one of the best, you’ve got to outwork everyone else.