Stay of Execution

Looking for Divorce Lawyers

I want to talk to some divorce lawyers for a piece I want to write.  Preferably happy ones, who like what they do.  But they could be unhappy ones, too.  I have a bunch of questions I want to ask.  I realize that beyond the vaguest sense (they go to an office, they read stuff, they make phone calls, they go to court sometimes), I know very little about what divorce lawyers actually *DO* every day, and how it feels to be a divorce lawyer.  In my imagination, it is a sad sad vocation, the kind of thing that would make you cynical. 

(My experience of bankruptcy, which you'd think would be sad sad and would make someone cynical, was full of hope and possibility, resilience and dignity.  Just goes to show how things aren't always what you might expect.  That's why I'm so interested in talking to them.)    

If you know a good divorce lawyer who might be willing to talk to me (in person, by phone, in an email, etc.), would you please email me with his or her contact information, and whether it's okay for me to tell them that you sent me? 

Legal Satisfaction Quiz

Via The Greatest American Lawyer, I surfed over to see what Ellen Ostrow, a "Life Coach for Women Lawyers," had to offer on her website. 

The true-false questions offered here seem like a good first-pass at job satisfaction.  I thought about how life was when I was practicing law, and took the test.  I had 23-24 "True" answers and 6-7 "False" answers, which I think is a pretty good result.  I wonder how the rest of my readers (lawyers and nonlawyers) would rate their jobs.  If you're so moved, feel free to share your results in the comments below, and whether you're a lawyer or not....

Legal Lies

I was on a conference call yesterday with a business, talking a little bit about the "law student market."  I said that I thought law students were an important market, but that I had some very strong opinions about the boundaries around that market.  I found myself up on a soapbox in the conversation, saying something like this:

We in the legal profession don't treat our young very well.  We lie to them systematically. 

** We tell them "you can do anything you want with a legal degree.  It opens so many doors." 

** We suggest that they go to the very best school that they can.  Even though we know that they won't learn how to practice law there.  (We don't mention that.)

** We don't talk to them, seriously, about what it means to one's life and one's choices to take on a hundred thousand dollars of non-dischargeable student loan debt.  Does a law degree really "open so many doors" to someone if they will never again be free to earn less than $50,000 a year, if servicing their debt burden means that they'll have to choose between buying a house and having a kid?

** We act as though grades have some correlation to the knowledge a student has about a course.

** We act as though grades are a great predictor of the likelihood that a student will be a productive worker and a good lawyer.

** We act as though law reviews mean something to us as a profession, besides as a marker that a student is a decent writer and can follow the rules and buys into the system. 

** We act as though it makes sense to pay law professors very high salaries to teach students, not how to practice law, but about the system of legal thought, and to publish peer-reviewed articles in law journals that clients and practicing lawyers hardly ever read, or even know about.

** We act as though it makes sense to ask young people to incur hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to get a degree that will force them into a type of practice that, statistics show, will very likely make them unhappy.   

** We act as though it is not outrageous that after these young people have incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, to pay the salaries of law professors who are not counselling them about the actual practice of law, for the profession to require that they endure two months of misery studying for a test that measures neither what they learned in law school, nor what will really matter when they practice law.

** We act as though it's not outrageous that only one company seems to be offering law students guidance and services in passing the bar exam, which will be required for them to make use of their law degrees and to service their debt.

** We act as though it's not outrageous that that company charges these young people $3000 to play them video lectures and give them worksheets.

** We permit big law firms to recruit on campus and tell young lawyers that the work they do will be satisfying, complex, and intellectually stimulating, when much of it will be tedious, stressful, and mind-numbing.

** We permit young associates to believe that they are somehow worth $125,000 a year, without knowing any law, even though there are smart, experienced, well-trained Indians who can do the same work, better, for far less.

** We do not talk nearly enough about what the billable hour really means.

** We let these young people, with their enormous debt burdens, move into adulthood without real skills in their profession, and with their only hope of servicing their debt the hope that they can command salaries that are way out of sync with what the true value of the services they are able to provide. 

** We act as though it is sensible for the "greatest legal thinkers" to have nothing to do with practicing lawyers. 

** We don't tell students that lawyers do other things besides practice law.  We act like it's not outrageous for a lawyer to conclude that another lawyer might possibly be less capable or professional if he finds time to write. 

** We let the myth of "professionalism" make us afraid to be honest with one another, or with clients, about the limits of what we know, about the fact that we make mistakes, our minds wander, we wonder about paths not taken, we learn on the job, and all of the other ways we're human.

Sorry, getting a little carried away here.  But I think anyone who wants to sell anything to the "law school market" should recognize that our young people look up to the lawyers who have come before them, and we owe it to them to tell the truth whenever possible. 

Writing Mean Letters

I didn't mean to be controversial when I said that one of the most fun and satisfying parts of being a laywer is writing mean letters, and getting paid to do so.  Maybe the issue was with the language: how "nasty" is a "nasty" letter?  I guess that depends. 

I'm pretty nice as a human being, but I can write a letter that's ice cold, self-righteous, and accusatory.  And I enjoy doing it.  I can't be the only one.  I know a lot of lawyers enjoy this part of their job, because lawyers will show one another letters they are particularly proud of.  The difference is in the tone and the style, I guess.  Some letters are truly nasty, unprofessional, and mean, and make the author of the letter come off like a real jerk.  I try not to write those.  I try to write chilly letters that inflict a certain sense of dread and call the recipient to action, without coming across as hostile. 

Most of the important letters a lawyer has to write need to convey urgency and recommend a particular course of action.  When the recipient is someone who is making trouble for your client, there are a range of ways that you can convey urgency and recommend the solution that's best for your client.  A good letter is a shot across the bow; it sets out your position and makes clear what has been unacceptable about your adversary's position or behavior.  It also is an introduction or a calling card.  "I am tough, and I am smart, and I mean business," the good nasty letter says.  "I'm civil, and gracious, and professional, but I won't take any nonsense from you, and I'm already aware of what a deficient position you are in, and I am extremely unimpressed with what you have done so far, so you'd better comply with my recommended course of action, because things are surely going to get worse for you if you don't change your ways."  When someone has really blundered, or has ignored you repeatedly, you get to turn up the heat on the letter, in tone and language.  You set out all of the ways why the recipient is wrong, why his or her behavior is puzzling and unforgiveable and extremely unwise.  You set out why your client is right, how your client has again and again bent over backwards to do the right thing, in the face of this absurd behavior by the recipient of the letter, and how finally, you must reluctantly take action.  You, the letter shows, have done your homework, and you always will.  You and your client never make mistakes.  You and your client are not to be toyed with.  The recipient of the letter should make things right as quickly as possible.   You will try to be helpful, if you can, but that really depends on them, doesn't it? 

Am I really the only person who thinks these are fun to compose?  Is it really unprofessional to write such letters?  Nonsense.  I think it's entirely possible for such letters to be civil and professional, even though they are ice cold and, if effective, put a sinking feeling of dread in the recipient's stomach.  That's what I meant by bullying: a letter that intends, and succeeds, in making the recipient feel that they've blundered, that their blunder was/is unacceptable, that their inadequacies have been exposed, and that they'll be in trouble if they don't make things right.   If that isn't bullying -- intentionally creating a feeling of dread in somebody else -- I don't know what is.  It is the stock and trade of lawyers, everywhere.  I try to do it with finesse, the iron fist in the velvet glove and all that.  And there are surely lawyers who do it clumsily, or relish the dread they create in a way that's ugly and inhumane, or bring a personalized kind of anger to the situation that doesn't belong.  I'm not saying that's okay.  But what lawyer, at some point in his or her career, doesn't need to write out a letter that pointedly illustrates exactly how wrong someone else's course of action is, and that intends to persuade that third party to change their actions or face unpleasant consequences? 

There's a place for these in every lawyer's toolbox.  You need to get the tone right, and you need to deploy them appropriately -- not every, or perhaps even very many, potentially adversarial situation calls for such a letter.  But when the time is right, it can be one of the most fun letters to write.  Maybe because my natural voice tends to be pretty warm and personable, and because I am always looking to make friends and build bridges, I like writing as the ice queen, all understated moral outrage, superiority, and thinly veiled contempt.               

Wheels Are Turning

I just got off a long and fascinating conversation with Matt Homann and Dennis Kennedy about what we're going to do next with LexThink.  The three of us have an interesting dynamic -- different skills and styles that complement one another in what feels like a good way.  It has been fun to build the little framework that we've already done; now we're starting to talk about building something much bigger.  My mind is buzzing a bit. 

What would you build (or tell me to build) if it could be anything? 

All Request Day: Bankruptcy

SLA wants to know why I am interested in bankruptcy law, and WAB wonders why I don't like the new bankruptcy legislation.

I've written before about why I like bankruptcy.  Those reasons are still true -- the tension between justice and mercy that's inherent in the idea of paying some of your debts and then walking away with a fresh start, and the particular characteristics of a bankruptcy practice.  Thinking about it recently, I can boil it down to something even simpler.  I like people who are changing their lives.  I think that is brave, and interesting, and fundamentally worth doing.  I like people who have had their dreams fall apart and are trying to start over.  I want to help them do it.   

People who file for bankruptcy are facing something that hasn't worked.  Sometimes they're admitting colossal failure after pretending to hold it together for years.  Filing for bankruptcy is saying, "I can't do this anymore.  I need help.  I've got to fix this."  That's admirable to me.  I like to believe that this country is a place where people can bounce back, where people who admit their mistakes and face them have the hope to become something better.  If we're going to be a country of capitalism, which I believe in fundamentally, we've got to have a system for dealing with failure and for picking up the pieces of bad risks and ruined dreams.  That's what bankruptcy is. 

LexThink Update

Next week I head off to Chicago for LexThink!  It's been taking a chunk of my time these days, and I am really amazed and impressed with what we're building.  We have assembled about 50 fantastic minds from around the country -- lawyers, consultants, technology innovators, writers, businesspeople -- for a day of brainstorming and cross-pollenation.  The lawyers range from big firm lawyers to solos to the practice management experts in their state's bar association (Utah, Oklahoma, and DC).  Everyone's smart and innovative and creative.  I'm compiling a list of the blogs these folks write and it's blowing my mind.   Getting this gang in one room to talk about building successful and fulfilling personal services firms is going to be really, really neat. 

And the coolest thing about doing it is that I'm building it with Matt Homann and Dennis Kennedy, who I've never met.  We're now up to conference calls twice a week, and emails and files being exchanged daily, but still, I'll have to squint at faces and guess who they are when I finally get to Chicago.   Before we started talking about this project, I only knew these guys from their blogs.  And yet, I knew I could trust them and would like to collaborate with them from their writing.  Now I feel like I know them quite a bit better (and I do trust them, and have enjoyed collaborating with them).  But still, I've never looked into their eyes.  That's pretty amazing. 

I wish I could link to the LexThink blog -- that's been taking a bunch of my energy, too -- but for now it's password protected, for attendees only.  I expect we'll open it up, or at least parts of it, after the Chicago event is over.  We're already talking about LexThink! Los Angeles, so stay tuned. 

Lexthink! Chicago

I've been working with Dennis Kennedy and Matt Homann on this cool conference we'll be putting on in Chicago in April.  Working with those guys has been great fun -- each is brimming with ideas, as anyone who reads their blogs can imagine.   And although I feel I know them, from our conference calls and collaborative email exchanges and from their blogs, I've not yet met either one of them. 

Today I spent a little time putting together the attendee blog.  (For now, no link, as it's going to be for attendees only.)  The attendees are fantastic people -- their biographies tell stories of adventure, hard work, creativity, talent, and calculated risk.  It is going to be such an interesting gathering; the blog just crackles with the potential in these biographies, and the electricity that will be released when we all come together and start exchanging ideas and inspiration.  My excitement level has just jumped about four notches. 

Hip Lawyers

When I was in Miami, I stayed with a friend who's a new public defender.  She loves her job.  Since starting work in August, she's done six jury trials on her own (she won four, one mistrial, one settling out before verdict).   She's off now at a "training camp" conference with public defenders all around the state, practicing arguments and cross examination and getting videotaped and critiqued.  She's learning a ton.  She believes in what she's doing.  She's enthusiastic about her job, her co-workers, her life.

We went to a party where there were perhaps twenty public defenders -- beginners, like my friend, and others with two, three, four, and more years of experience.  Without exception, they had the same contentment with their jobs.   They griped, rolled their eyes, complained about a judge or a case, but you could see them talking together with enthusiasm and real interest about the things they were doing at work.  They were young, hip, good looking.  They were juggling cases, but they were getting enough sleep, they were having fun in the city.  Housemate remarked -- these are the lawyers they make TV shows about.  It was really cool to be around. 

If you took 15 or 20 associates in their first through fourth years at BIGLAW, I am certain you wouldn't find even three with the energy, passion, sense of purpose, competence, and satisfaction that I saw in all of these PDs.  They'd probably be wearing more expensive clothes, though. 

Non Compete

Twice a year, Google starts directing a whole bunch of people to this site in response to queries about "law school grades" or "bad grades law school" or "should I drop out of law school."  I have posts here and here about law school grades.  If you have advice or encouraging words for frantic law students wondering what to make of their grades, it's worth dropping by, because the posts continue to attract fresh comments. 

I started out writing a post about my rivals for the top slot in law school; how different all of our approaches were.  It turned into a reflective narrative about competition, because although there were four of us in the running, I felt the whole time as though there was only one other person who was a serious competitor.  I think that says a lot more about the psychology of rivalry than about anything the merits of the other two guys with great grades.  Anyway, after I wrote all that I realized it wasn't really what I wanted to say.   

I'm really competitive by nature and as I get older I've been trying not to let it control me.   I know that I need to give it appropriate outlets (I race my sailboat to win, I aim to beat my chess opponent) or else it manifests in areas of my life where it doesn't belong and I find myself comparing my life choices and my outcomes and my process to other people as though we were competitors.  I think I'm getting much better at this.  It's one reason I didn't go work at BIGLAW -- I didn't think I'd be strong enough to resist comparing myself to dozens or hundreds of other smart, ambitious associates, and I knew doing so, daily, would lead me to a life that didn't make me happy. 

My mom wrote me an email yesterday in which she said she admired the way I seem to be genuinely whole and happy regardless of my professional status.  I think she's right, and I'm proud of that, too.  Leaving my law firm has been part of this growth process for me.  I think while I was working there I had a pretty rich outer life, but I don't think I knew quite how much of my own identity was wrapped up in my job title.  That's part of what's been going on on this blog, that frustrates some of my readers.  I have professional goals and ambitions -- more clear now than they've ever been, although I'm choosing not to write about them -- but they are only a piece of who I am.  And they're nobody else's goals.  I feel like I've been unhooking from a whole lot of things over the last six months, habits of thought I didn't even know I had.  Unhooking from other people's expectations and from my own competitive response to those.  And unhooking from my sense of the world, and this life, as some kind of contest, in which I'm either ahead or behind.  There is so much richness in life, so many facets, so many things to be interested in.  Writing about them is my way of celebrating a world full of possibility. 

If you got bad grades last semester, I wish you good luck turning them around next semester.  It is very possible.  I did it.  But what I wish you the most luck in is charting a path that really fits you.  I think that's possible, too.  It seems harder than getting good grades, though.  I'll keep you posted.