What a Swimming Pool Taught Me About the Law

As I approach the age of superannuation, many of my friends are starting their countdown to retirement. My legal practice means I don't have to, but it offers no immunity from the arrival of 'slow killers' like blood pressure. My children worry about my growing lack of mobility, so my son persuaded me to try yoga. I gave it a shot, but scheduling got in the way. The next item on their 'get-dad-healthy' list was swimming.

That simple suggestion, however, dredged up a lifelong fear. For nearly 60 years, two traumatic near-drowning experiences from childhood had fueled a persistent question: could my five-foot-ten frame, carrying the weight of nearly a quintal, possibly float? Thinking about it now forces me to revisit a forgotten high school lesson. The law of buoyancy, also known as Archimedes' principle, states that any object submerged in a fluid is acted upon by an upward force equal to the weight of the fluid that it displaces. I had completely forgotten this, as my learning was never connected with its application in the real sense, leaving a simple scientific fact buried under decades of fear.

The Don Bosco Aquatic Centre was the destination for this long-overdue training. Within three days, I didn't just learn to float; I mastered the law of buoyancy in a way no textbook could ever teach. I finally understood that I possessed an inbuilt flotation device, a body designed by its creator with the wisdom to conquer both land and the oceans that cover two-thirds of the globe. A wave of shame washed over me as I realized this was a life skill I should have learned decades ago. For all that time, I had been walking away from that innate wisdom, a captive of a fear that science and faith could have easily conquered.

My initial success in this life skill training quickly became an immediate example in my professional life. At the office, my colleagues were struggling to prepare a client for her cross-examination. They had tried the usual methods, like preparing lists of possible questions, but she was paralyzed by fear—fear of the unknown, of "out of syllabus" questions, and of the intimidating courtroom itself.

Recalling my own breakthrough, I decided to guide her using the very principle I had just learned in the pool. "The secret to floating isn't strength; it's relaxation and proper body positioning," I explained. "A tense, panicked person sinks. A relaxed person who trusts the water will support them floats." I told her to think of the witness box like a swimming pool and her testimony like floating. Her relaxation was trusting the truth, knowing it would always support her. Her proper position was her core story—the simple, unchangeable facts she could always return to. Unexpected questions were just small waves; she didn't need to fight them, merely hold her position and keep breathing calmly by pausing before she answered. By reframing the ordeal, we shifted her focus from memorizing facts to maintaining a mindset of trust and composure, transforming a terrifying battle into a manageable exercise in staying afloat.

This interaction with my client made me reflect on my own early days in the profession. I started my career much like I started my swimming lessons. In the pool, I was first asked to walk through the shallow end, then practice simple breathing techniques, and only then proceed to floating. A quick learner can master swimming in a few weeks, but mastering the legal profession is not the same. I now realize this long road to mastery exists because our profession lacks a clear protocol for teaching its most crucial lesson: the law of professional buoyancy.

The absence of these lessons makes a lawyer's life far more difficult than it needs to be. We are thrown into the deep end without being taught the nature of our medium. The procedures of the court of law are our water. The first step to professional buoyancy is learning to trust this water—to understand that the rules and procedures are not there to drown you, but to provide a framework in which to navigate. Another crucial technique is to study the tides, which in our world means learning the judge. It is a time-honored and accepted technique to sit in a courtroom and simply watch. Understanding the temperament, the priorities, and the rhythm of the judge is to understand the currents in the water, telling you when to push forward and when to hold steady. This, perhaps, is the true art of our profession: not just knowing the law, but mastering the buoyancy needed to practice it.