Forbes ranked billionaire lawyer John Morgan 92nd on this year’s Forbes 250 Self-Made list after he spent decades turning Morgan & Morgan into the country’s largest personal injury law firm through nonstop advertising, relentless work and an unusual ability to get people to trust him. Indeed, from the outside, Morgan, now 70, looks like the definition of self-made success. But in his new book, he argues that the self-made version of his story is incomplete. Hard work mattered. Talent mattered. But without luck, he says, his life wouldn’t have unfolded the way it did.

That idea sits at the center of Morgan’s new book, “Life Is Luck: Lessons From a Paperboy and How to Improve Your Luck,” published by Maison Vero. Morgan argues that becoming a paperboy as a kid was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to him, even if it didn’t feel that way at the time. The job forced him to wake up early, work in bad weather, collect money from strangers and deal with responsibility at a young age. Throughout the book, he returns to the idea that hard experiences become a foundation for success, noting that a surprising number of billionaires and business leaders once had paper routes themselves.

Underneath all of that, though, the book is really a reflection from a man who still seems slightly stunned by where life took him, from a paperboy in Kentucky to one of America’s richest lawyers. From a childhood without much stability to a man whose close-knit family is........

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