26 years ago a judge spoke to a small group in Dublin and what he said has not been forgotten

In 1990, when I was a rookie reporter, new Georgia Supreme Court Justice Robert Benham came to Dublin to speak to the bar association there.

I was sent to write a story about his speech. He gave some advice that stuck with me and I have applied to my own career, even though he was talking about the law profession.

He said that no matter what case attorneys might be working, and no matter how mundane and boring it might seem to be, they should always remember that to their client the case is the most important one in the entire court system.

I try to apply that advice to every story I write. It’s easy to get excited about a big story that’s going to be on the front page, but there’s a lot in the paper every day beyond the big news. Some of it can seem like very routine stuff, but it is all important to someone.

It’s a good lesson for anyone in any job, really. A restaurant can get every order right all day long, but if they get yours wrong you don’t care about their success rate. You also don’t care about how busy they are.

It also applies to pretty much everything we do, such as giving speeches to small groups. There probably weren’t 50 people at the meeting Justice Benham spoke at in Dublin. A lot of people would have just gotten up, droned on for a few minutes and enjoyed a free meal. But he put more thought and passion into that talk than many people I have seen speaking to crowds of hundreds.

He might have thought that his speech would have been quickly forgotten and therefore wasn’t that important, but it influenced a young reporter who has always remembered it and is now writing about it 26 years later.

This story was originally published December 28, 2016 at 2:43 PM with the headline "26 years ago a judge spoke to a small group in Dublin and what he said has not been forgotten."