M. Shane Henry Featured on Small Firm Forum Podcast

Henry + Dow founding partner M. Shane Henry was recently a guest on Rob Malone’s premier podcast Small Firm Forum, where he interviews real lawyers on their real world insights on growing and managing a thriving law practice. 

“My story is a story of failure,” says Henry. “Through failure, we learn a lot…I’m thankful for those times.” 

Throughout the course of their conversation, they discussed how Henry got started in his career as a trial lawyer, and how he had to essentially hit rock bottom before things started to turn around. 

“The life of a trial lawyer in the courtroom, to really get real and vulnerable, there are a lot of losses. We have to take our clients’ stories, their cases, and their facts and present them in a way that you hopefully win. In order to do that, you lose a lot too,” said Henry.

Fresh out of law school, Henry realized that other trial lawyers knew things he didn’t know. Calling it a “black magic,” he saw that they had abilities to persuade judges and juries, and present in a way that no one had taught him before. As a result of what he saw and experienced, Henry was inspired (and forced) to change his strategies.

Henry expressed how his success as a trial lawyer from that point on was mostly attributed to reading, researching, studying books, and attending CLE’s, where he soaked in all the information he could.

And now, “I’m a trial lawyer…I enjoy trying cases.” And even though it took many moments of trial and error, Henry has experienced massive success with his firm and ongoing trial work, much of that due to his moments of failure.

Shane shares the single most critical strategy for success based on his experience, when faithfully executed every day, is to “read, learn, and always be trying to improve. Try to improve just 1% every day. That’s the one thing, that’s the key.”

Shane Henry took his weaknesses and multiple failures, and turned them into his strengths.