Advice to law grads: do your best and the rest will follow.

• Author: Diner, Jesse H.
• Position: President's page

When I was a kid growing up in Hollywood, my sweet mom, Rosalie "Sis" Diner, would make me breakfast every morning and send me off to school with one mantra: "Do your best. I don't care if your best is a C or whatever else, just do your best every day."

As a 63-year-old lawyer admitted to The Florida Bar in 1973, I can tell you I still start each day remembering my dear mother's words.

That's also my advice to those of you graduating from law school this month, soon to join more than 88,000 Florida lawyers.

Mom's advice is not complicated, but doing your best and following the Golden Rule of treating others as you would like to be treated will serve you well as lawyers. It will help guide you in building a solid reputation of thoroughness, integrity, and kindness, as you experience the power of the legal profession to help and to heal.

I imagine you are anxious to finally put 20 total years of education, capped by the intellectual rigors of law school, to good use as you embark on your career and earn a paycheck.

Yes, these are challenging economic times with double-digit unemployment rates. But we have gone through down times before, and people have found meaningful work.

Do not despair, keep plugging, and stay positive.

That first or second job may be such a great fit that you never leave. That was my experience in 1973, as I helped build the practice at Atkinson, Diner, Stone, Mankuta, & Ploucha, now a 15-member firm in Ft. Lauderdale, after working one year in New York.

I offer my hearty congratulations and my promise that the Bar wants to do everything we can to help you get your footing.

Check out The Florida Bar Career Center on our Web site at www.floridabar.org. Job seekers are able to access inside opportunities available only through the Career Center and take advantage of advanced search tools to find the most relevant legal jobs in Florida, set up customized job alerts to stay up-to-date on new opportunities, and even post resumes anonymously to be discovered by employers...