Baseball has provided Matthew Mitchell with many of the tools he uses in his professional life. During his childhood and teen years, he was an outfielder.
Executing strategies, knowing your responsibilities, working in concert with your teammates, conflict resolution, building your reputation and responding when things don’t go your way are lessons he learned from playing sports, he said.
“I liked being outside,” he said. “I liked being on a team. I’m competitive. I love sports.”
Mitchell is a partner with the law firm Friday, Eldredge & Clark. However, he didn’t initially go to school to become a lawyer. He followed in his father’s footsteps and earned a degree in accounting.
He got a job working for an accounting firm. He enjoyed working with numbers and processing transactions during tax season. However, he soon realized he wanted to work on the legal side of some of these clients and their transactions.
Mitchell went to law school, and now he focuses on real estate corporate transactions. In a given year he might work with 30-50 clients, businesses or other organizations.
One thing that most people don’t realize is how involved lawyers get in some of these transactions, he said. There’s a perception that lawyers just draw up documents. He said he spends a lot of time counseling and advising his clients, and it’s rewarding when he earns a client’s trust.
Managing time is also a key skill for a lawyer. Often, lawyers have to work around a client’s schedule, and it requires the ability to juggle several schedules at once, he added.
What would he say to a younger version of himself?
“After reflection, work hard and have patience,” he said. “Sometimes things take a while to play out.”