If you can always blame the system for your failures, then how can you ever improve?

Agree. Not just for lawyers but for everyone.

Most important lesson as a young lawyer: how to take blame when you mess up. Seriously. Don't deflect. Don't blame. Absorb and fix.

— Raffi Melkonian (@RMFifthCircuit) September 9, 2015

But isn't it striking that so many of educational, social, and institutional policies seem designed to completely remove the evidence of failure and the opportunity for improvement. If you can always blame the system for your failures, then how can you ever improve? It is like trying to have evolution without random variation or disparate survival.