Defining Wins

My son, the coach.

Final score?

Trial outcome?

Do results tell the whole story about whether we have been successful?

I’m a huge believer in competition. Playing to win. I hate participation trophy culture. Final scores matter. We should strive to win. I hate losing more than I love winning.

Football is ultra-competitive.

So is trying cases in court.

Play to win the final outcome.

But there are other wins too. Things that matter in addition to scores or results.

Process matters. There are many wins available in process.

My son and I coach a youth football team of 10-year-olds. We have 13 players. We struggle sometimes to get 11 to the game.

2 of them are 9.

8 of them have never played a down of football.

1 of them is tiny and cannot physically catch a football. He puts his hands out and the ball bounces off his chest or flies right by him.

1 of them actually turned in fear and ran in the other direction through the back of our own end zone in our first game.

Not only have we not won a game, we haven’t scored.

That doesn’t matter to me; what matters is process and progress.

Yesterday was the payoff. We scored for the 1st time. That was great, but here was the beautiful thing. The boy who ran away in fear in week 1 threw a great devastating block to spring the runner for the score. I immediately ran over to him and enthusiastically gave him a high five. He beamed.

We had a chance to win late in the game. Down 8-6, we needed a defensive stop. They threw a pass and my little cornerback was in perfect position to make the play. But the bigger receiver jumped over him, snatched the ball out of his hands, and turned and ran toward the goal line 50 yards away. My cornerback didn’t pout or give up. He gave chase. And he caught him and tackled him at the 1-yard line.

You know what those two defining plays were?

Winning football.

We still lost.

As lawyers, we tend to think of winning by looking at the outcome. Criminal defense lawyers in particular I think sometimes get frustrated by “win-loss record.” But as I said not long ago, sometimes we must define winning by context. If a prosecutor is doing his job right, the defense should usually lose in terms of being convicted.

But that’s not the whole story.

If you are a criminal defense lawyer, and you convince the prosecutor to charge your client with a lesser offense, you won.

If you get a favorable plea offer from the prosecutor, you won.

If you get your client to cooperate and the prosecutor files a motion for sentence reduction based on that cooperation, you won.

If you go to sentencing and prevail on an issue regarding a possible sentencing enhancement and get it knocked out, you won.

If you successfully pursue a motion to suppress and get evidence excluded from trial, you won.

If you win an issue on appeal and get a re-trial or re-sentencing, you won.