Today I went as a proxyholder to a shareholder meeting. It was uneventful. I chatted with the other attorney for a little while. When you meet a new attorney in this legal market you sort of circle one another like dogs, sniffing around and sizing one another up. He works with one of my former professors, who I admired quite a lot. I asked about his practice, what he had done before becoming an attorney; he asked about my name and what I spent my time doing at my firm. I liked him.
On the elevator I considered stopping a few floors down and dropping in to see another lawyer, a guy I went to high school with who hung out his own shingle right after law school. Decided to go back to the office instead. When I got to the office I ran into a former partner at this firm making himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen. He, in turn, asked me about my old boss, who he plays hockey with. He mentioned that my old boss is claiming credit for pointing me to this law firm instead of some other firm in town. Not true, but interesting. Ex Partner and I chatted about Old Boss a bit. This kind of loose connection, friendly and banal comparing of notes about people, happens all the time around here; multiple times every day.
Outer Life guy lives in a big pond and says that affects his worldview. So does the small pond life. We all know each other and will for years and years. I wish I'd been a little more cognizant of that during law school. I didn't burn bridges, well, not many, that I know of, but was careless about what I said, and to whom, and how it might reflect on me years later. In Maine you really can't do that. Not only will you be nearly guaranteed to cross paths with local attorneys again professionally, it's very likely that you'll end up at someone's dinner party sitting beside this person, or at a wedding or on a board of directors or whatever they will turn up. So you have to be cordial, gentle, friendly, even if you're compelled to take an aggressive or adversarial position professionally. The few lawyers who slash and burn are widely known in our community -- you could survey 25 or 30 folks in town and I bet you'd get the same five or six names coming up.
Mostly it feels pretty good. Today in the kitchen (again -- I spend a lot of time there) a partner here was teasing me about how when I interviewed here everyone thought I'd leave the practice of law within five years. He said others in town think so too. How the heck do they know? I don't have a clue what I'll be doing in five years. In law school I did think, for a time, that I'd rather be working in an operating company, being a client rather than a lawyer, but the more I practice law the more interesting I find our role. I haven't thought those things, or said anything to that effect, for four years or so. Maybe someday I'll want to do something different, but right now I really dig my job, and the part I get to play in the lives of my clients.
I guess the message is that in a small pond people's impressions of you persevere, even if you yourself are changing and getting more nuanced. So you have to convey these changes, your likes and dislikes, and propagate the new message out to your network so that people don't carry around an outdated idea of you.
Probably true for a blog too. I've said and will continue to say stupid stuff on here. It's not the complete picture, and my observations are simply snapshots in time. As I live and learn my ideas and understanding will evolve. I hope this virtual skin does not turn into some kind of ball and chain preventing that.
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