After approximately 10 years of teaching, a profession in which being a good colleague means showing up at an occasional department meeting, maybe cracking a few jokes and not offering any substantive comments that force the meeting to last any longer than absolutely necessary, I found myself in the legal world, where colleagueship has a completely different meaning.

All of a sudden, there was work to be done on deadline and I wasn’t the only one who would be doing it. Where I used to mark up students’ papers with abandon and be the final (and only) arbiter of quality and subpar work, I would now actually be working with other people who would mark up my work product (gasp!) and make suggestions for improvements to opinions, briefs and everything else I drafted.

Do I now know what it means to be a good colleague after a couple of years following this somewhat uncomfortable transition into the legal world? To see how much (or how little) I knew, I asked several attorneys I know — one government attorney, one at a large national firm, and one at a small firm — what they believe makes a good colleague.

Surprisingly, all of us (yes, even me) produced similar answers. So, with spring training right around the corner — Orioles pitchers and catchers report Feb. 18 — I have craftily compiled the main measures of attorney colleagueship into measurable statistics based upon familiar baseball stats. These can be used to evaluate all attorneys — new associates, senior counsel and even partners.

1. ERA (Earned Run Average) = meets Expectations, is Reliable and Accountable

In the feedback I got from almost every attorney I asked, these three traits appeared the most. Just like the baseball stat (which, yes, I know, is already a thing of the past) measures a pitcher’s reliability, this colleagueship statistic measures how well you do what you say you are going to do so that others can rely on you.

An implicit part of this aspect of colleagueship is actually understanding what you’re going to be able to accomplish over a specific time period and communicating that effectively to other colleagues. Unlike baseball, a high ERA as a colleague is a good thing. It means your colleagues can count on you, which means they will like to work with you.

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My five-year-old son and I are very much alike. We are both oldest children in (relatively) large families. We have the same name. We share the same interests (Go O’s!). We also look alike and have similar personalities. All of this means that it is sometimes extremely difficult for me to be his father. As my mother tells me, this is payback.

My son was born as I was finishing up my first year of law school. As we all heard numerous times during our first years of law school, going to law school teaches us how to think like lawyers. I agree whole-heartedly and frankly, I have trouble remembering how I engaged with any subject — politics, sports, cooking — before law school. This also means that I have thought like a lawyer for the entire time I’ve been a father.

Unfortunately, thinking like a lawyer doesn’t always help me to be a better father. For example, my son often tells me that a directive I have given him — clean up his toys, turn off the TV — is “not fair.” For a long time, I made the time-consuming mistake of explaining to him why what I had asked him to do (or stop doing) was, in fact, completely fair. My wife would roll her eyes knowingly or glide behind me and whisper that I should stop wasting my time. She was right, of course. I only aggravated my son and myself by trying to explain.

My next step was to agree with my son. When he told me that something wasn’t fair, I would immediately tell him that he was right and it wasn’t fair. This worked well… the first few times. Thereafter, my son began retorting “it’s fair to you!” Initially, I stifled my laughter and continued with my plan of telling him he was right and agreeing with him that my order was fair to me but not to him.

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I was at a networking event last week, carefully attempting to balance my plastic glass of wine while simultaneously eating enough of the hors d’oeuvres off my plastic plate to make it “dinner.” Just as I was stuffing a piece of bruschetta into my mouth, an older gentleman sauntered over and greeted me pleasantly. I returned the greeting and asked him how he was doing.

We got to talking, and he asked what I did… which, frankly, is why I come to these events. Since I work at a full-service law firm, I approach business development and networking events like this one with the mindset that everyone I meet can be a client or refer me to a client — if someone needs an attorney, my firm can handle it.

I told this gentleman that I was an attorney. He immediately made a face as though he just taken a bite out of a lemon.

“Ewwww,” he said as he grabbed a piece of yellow pepper off his plastic plate and took a bite. “You know what Shakespeare said,” he grinned while chewing on the pepper.

“Yes, ” I told him, “I do know, but I and my firm do a lot of important work for our clients.”

I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, although I was pretty sure that was a mistake.

He stopped chewing long enough to reply.

“Yes, but you lawyers ruin everything. I mean, how many people really need an attorney?” he asked, dragging it out so that it was clear what he thought.

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When I entered law school in August 2005, I was already 29, married and my wife was expecting our first child. I had been a teacher since I was 21 and continued to teach high school English until 2008 when I graduated. After an appellate clerkship, I began representing mostly plaintiffs at a firm in Montgomery County.

Over the last few years, I’ve represented plaintiffs in all kinds of cases, from motor vehicle accidents to medical malpractice to a worksite electrical explosion. I’ve also handled some general litigation — insurance coverage matters, business disputes — and even a corporate investigation.

I recently moved to the Bethesda office of Offit Kurman and, more specifically, to its landlord representation group. This means that I represent landlords in all aspects of their businesses, including litigation. I am not, however, a “young” lawyer. Moving forward, my practice will likely also continue to include representation of clients in business disputes, insurance coverage matters and some plaintiffs’ work.

At the end of the day, though, even after nearly three years of practice, I’ve still spent most of my working life as a high school English teacher. This continues to present hurdles for me.

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