What if my one mistake sinks the whole case?

You know the rules better than anyone in the room. You could recite the filing deadlines in your sleep. And still, at 11pm, you check the exhibit list a third time. Not because you found an error. Because you're afraid you'll miss one. Here is the honest problem: you have made yourself responsible for the whole case, not your part of it. The lawyer's argument, the client's choices, the judge's mood — none of that is yours. But somewhere along the way, you started guarding all of it, as if your attention alone keeps the whole thing from falling apart. That is not competence. That is exhaustion wearing competence as a mask. And it will not stop until you draw the line yourself — between the check that is yours to make, and the outcome that never was.