Law360 Canada (August 19, 2026, 11:02 AM EDT) --

Norm Bowley

Dropouts can teach lawyers a good deal about personal and professional success.

Surprised? I was too, until I took a long, hard look at many of my high-net-worth clients, many of whom had not finished high school, let alone any professional certification. Making serious money in construction, sales and even technology could happen quite readily without a diploma on the wall.

And this got me thinking. And researching. My current list of highly successful dropouts now numbers 636, including six of the world’s wealthiest persons. A few had no education whatsoever, while others like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs dropped out of university before completion. They all succeeded in the absence of credentialing.

All of which led me to three conclusions, all of which matter greatly to us as lawyers. First, these people knew keenly what their giftings were, that is, their innate abilities shaped by experience and perfected by training. They knew what they could do better than anyone else and pursued that with all their hearts and strength.

Second, they understood, either consciously or not, who needed what they had to offer. People will pay, and pay very well, if you can satisfy deep needs. If my oil well is burning, for example, I won’t haggle price. I just need you to be there right now to put it out.

This correlation between unique giftings and unique needs is called the Alignment Doctrine. The more precise the correlation, the greater the benefit for both parties. The more diffuse the correlation, the more likely you are to have just a job, not joy.

The third conclusion arrived for me quite late in my 37 years of practice, and it’s this: if Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Poitier, Thomas Edison, Ryan Gosling, Walt Disney, Rick Mercer, Steven Spielberg, Walter Cronkite and Soichiro Honda could “make it big” without diplomas, what might happen if I focused on my own unique giftings and my clients’ needs and leveraged my three degrees and law society diploma?

What we have, as lawyers, is a set of giftings that not everyone else has. We know how to learn, to analyze, to argue, to solve, to persuade. But so can a lot of other people. What we have in addition is an exclusive right to apply these giftings in a certain arena.

Too many of us just “have a job,” grinding out the monthly billings to keep the machine going. What we can and should have is joy, but only as we understand clearly the thing we each can do much better than those around us and focus these giftings on precisely those clients whose needs acutely send them looking for someone just like us.

Put in the obverse, it’s this: if you know and apply your unique giftings in the absence of a diploma, you can still make a home run. But if you have a diploma and don’t apply your giftings, you’ll be lucky to get to first base and won’t enjoy it much.

For lawyers, as with all professionals, understanding our own unique giftings and the unique needs of ideal clients is the key to professional success and satisfaction.

In Norm Bowley’s third career, he speaks, writes and consults on matters of professional success and happiness. norm@purposeful.ca.

The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.

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