Law Practice
May 15, 2026
The Puka Theory: Why the lawyers who get ahead stop waiting to be asked
The lawyers who advance fastest aren't waiting for assignments--they're scanning every situation for unmet needs and filling them before anyone asks, and the legal profession's AI disruption makes that habit more consequential now than it has ever been.
I was a first-year associate who had just spent four days organizing medical records when I borrowed a dolly, loaded up my color-coded binders and wheeled them to the door of the war room I had no business being in.
And then I just stayed.
It was a major medical device trial, a Fortune 500 client, the kind of case that consumes every person it touches. The trial team had been carefully assembled--partners and senior associates who h...
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