This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.

The answer is no. Only a few ever do.

But anyone can be rich, in my experience, if they play their cards right, and never stop playing. Unlike card games, the game of life is not something you stop playing. And the longer you play, the better are the chances that you are going to win a few hands.

Everyone can’t be rich simply because money does not work that way. There are a finite number of goods/ resources out there no matter how much money is printed. So if everyone had lots of money, there would be inflation, and the price of things will just go up. It’s of no use to anyone.

Richness is relative. You earning more makes sense for you only when not everyone earns as much.

The game of being rich is always relative to others – it is about doing better than the rest. 

You have to be the winner. Or at least be ahead of the pack if not the outright winner to make a lot more money than others and get rich. 

It is better to remember this clearly because almost everyone longs to earn more and have a better life, but only a few ever put in the effort, investment or even have the drive to continuously strive for it.

What sets you apart from the rest? Do you have a strategy as to why you will be better than most of the other lawyers?

There are only so many clients, assignments or jobs that can pay you very well. 

However, trust me, by virtue of being a lawyer you are already ahead of a lot of the population. You just need a strategy now regarding how you are going to be better than most of the similarly situated lawyers. 

Remember that your competitors are not merely your batchmates and juniors who will graduate after you. Once you are in the marketplace of legal services, you will be competing with your seniors as well. If you want a job that pays a lakh, there are seniors who want that job too. If you are pitching for a client, they might be doing it too.

And it’s a sorry excuse to say that it is unfair. School and college is over, so welcome to the real world. Here, everyone is your competitor. Anyone could eat your lunch. I hope you have a strategy to win.

If you do not, no worries. If you keep reading my mails in the upcoming days, I think you will be able to come up with a very coherent strategy.

If you already have a strategy, the mails I will send to you in the coming days will help you to reflect on it, refine it and prepare yourself in a powerful way, and set you up for the success that you dream of.

We start from different levels of advantage in life. However, everyone has different kinds of odds stacked against them. Some have better health, others have more money to start with, some others have good upbringing or good role models to emulate early on in life. Some people have more experience than you, thanks to age or exposure, and that is their headstart over you. 

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The resources and privileges we start with certainly matter, but I have never seen odds in my life that are unbeatable if you play your cards right and we are allowed to go on for long enough. The best thing about life is that you get to keep playing as long as you are alive. There is no reason why you can’t win unless you have to stop playing.

Also, the blessing is that it’s fine to lose many times, you just need to win once. In a big game.

However, most people do not play on. They give up. Some blame their luck. Some blame their bad decisions. People put on various labels on themselves and assume that there is no redemption possible. 

In my life, I have faced a lot of odds. I have seen extreme poverty as a child. I have seen my parents fighting to put food on our plate and struggling to give us a good education. I have seen times when my family could not pay the electricity bill and we had to live without electricity for months. There was a time when I was a toddler, and my mother had to skip meals to make sure I and my sister had something to eat.

And still, they managed to make sure that we got a good education. They ensured that we got to read good books as we grew up. 

My mother tried but never managed to find or hold down a job for close to a decade, until our family had its back against the wall in the early 90s, with crazy inflation wrecking the household budget and my father’s single income proving insufficient to put food on the table throughout the month. In times of extreme economic distress, she finally bagged a job as a teacher is a government school that ensured that we were properly fed, clothed and educated. 

My parents managed to put me and my sister through good law schools although they were very sceptical about us studying law.

However, while my parents managed to give us a platform to stand on, and gave us the confidence that we are intelligent and meant to be successful in the world, the rest was up to us.

My parents had their limitations in what they could imagine for us to do, or what they thought about how to have a great career or how to live a great life. Much about growth, later in my life, was possible only by unlearning what I learned from my parents. 

And in the process of building India’s leading legal education company that caters to top lawyers, legal training requirements of major brands and top universities, doing several crores of revenue per year, I have come to realise one thing.

No matter where you start if you have patience, perseverance, and dedication, you can beat almost any odds. You just have to keep at it, doing the work that counts, ignoring distractions, avoiding pitfalls, getting up each time you fall, bouncing back when you fall hard and keeping your eyes on the road ahead. We have to stay invested in what we really care about so that the results of our work can compound over time. You have to keep the dream alive come hell or heaven, you have to keep working and you have to keep making progress, no matter how small, even one inch at a time. 

I believe you can beat any odds because I have let nothing stand in my way – poverty, lack of resources, ill health, surgeries, a failed marriage, uncooperative family members, betrayal by partners, fake allegations, court cases –  nothing at all ever stopped our forward march. Sure, we were down at times, but never out. Why would you let anything stop you from achieving what is due to you in this world? 

Good fortune tends to come as often as misfortune will, but is that any reason to not live your life well? Is that any reason to not burn bright? Is it any reason for never giving up?

Anyway, this is not a memoir. This is about how to earn a handsome living as a young lawyer – in a job, or by starting your own practice.

I can assure you that it is not a very difficult target at all in this day and time. Each of you should aim to earn at least 1 lakh if not more. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to your family.

If you like what you read here, respond to me by replying, and let me know what you liked and what else would you like me to write more about.

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