Posted in ADD and attorneys, BigLaw, associate life, billable hours, career tools, lawyer dysfunction, lawyers & depression, lawyers and Attention Deficit, tagged deadlines, Driven to Distraction on September 28, 2009 | 1 Comment »
If you’re unhappy in law because you
hate the lack of creativity in it,
despise having to show each tiny piss-ante step of reasoning when it’s freaking OBVIOUS how you got there,
get bored and pissed with all the pointless bickering back and forth about commas and such–except when you’re really exorcised about something you wrote,
rail at all [...]
Posted in associate life, career tools, filling the well, law firms, lawyers & depression, soul's needs, tagged CareerBuilder Superbowl ad, cool jobs, dream jobs for lawyers, top 10 jobs for lawyers on February 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Admit it–if you’re thinking about leaving the law, you have felt EXACTLY like CareerBuilder’s brilliantly subversive commercial from the SuperBowl: “If you make loads of money, but hate going to work every day, your coworkers don’t respect you, you always wish you were somewhere else, you cry constantly, you daydream of punching small animals, and [...]
Posted in BigLaw, associate life, law firms, lawyers & depression, money, soul's needs, tagged pessimism and lawyers, creativity, Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness, Positive Psychology on July 15, 2008 | 5 Comments »
When I was thinking about leaving law, I focused a lot on all the things I would lose:
Money
Status
Long hours
Working weekends regularly
Achingly boring work
Colleagues who were anything but collegial
A known career [...]
Posted in BigLaw, associate life, billable hours, law firms, lawyer layoffs, money, tagged associate merit pay, Sonnenschein Nath Rosenthal, TR Shine, working rich on June 17, 2008 | 2 Comments »
So Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal axed 37 attorneys not long ago. Plus another 90 or so support staff. If you are one of those people and reading this, my condolences to you. Getting laid off sucks, no matter how bad the job.
[Aside: Don't miss this funkalicious article in the WaPo written by a guy who [...]
Posted in BigLaw, associate life, lawyer dysfunction, lawyers & depression, money, soul's needs, tagged Amelia Rawls, Ivy League, mean people suck, soft skills, Yale Law School on May 1, 2008 | 6 Comments »
My new hero for the day is Amelia Rawls. She is a 1L at Yale (don’t roll your eyes yet), and wrote a piece that appeared in today’s Washington Post about whether Ivy grads are, well, nice people or not. Now, she isn’t making a completely broadbrush statement that everyone who attends an Ivy isn’t [...]
Posted in BigLaw, associate life, filling the well, soul's needs, tagged alternative legal career, Cake or Death, choral singing, Eddie Izzard on March 19, 2008 | 3 Comments »
It used to be normal, even expected, for adults to have hobbies. You know, something you pursue just because you like it, not because it could land you a job, a client, or whatever eventually. But in our mad-rush existence, hobbies are one of the first things to go. And that’s more than a shame, [...]
Posted in BigLaw, Friday Files, associate life, billable hours, law firms, tagged Carolyn Hax, law school, Tell Me About It on February 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Here’s another one of my guilty addictions: Carolyn Hax’s Tell Me About It columns and online chat. I’ve been reading her since her very first column appeared in the Washington Post. Strictly coincidentally, her column started about a year before I left law. I remember reading the column in the firm library on Fridays. Good [...]
Posted in associate life, career tools, law firms, lawyer dysfunction, lawyers & depression, tagged alternative legal career, legal career coach, legal career counselor on February 19, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Some of the best money I ever spent was on a career coach who helped me actually get out of law. I’d been wanting to find that miraculous alternative legal career, but I kept getting in my own way. Having someone who could help me sort out what was fact (I’m highly creative) from fiction [...]
Posted in associate life, career tools, tagged alternative legal careers, Anne Lamott, Julia Cameron, Lewis and Clark, shitty first drafts, writing on February 12, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Writing and changing to an alternative legal career have a lot in common. Your mindset going in is all-important.
I started a piece yesterday, a fiction project that may be a short story or a novel. Can’t tell yet. I’d had an idea bugging me for nearly two weeks, and finally confronted the blank screen, intending [...]
