The Creative Lawyer

Why thinking like a lawyer is bad for your career

Lawyers often think that their problems relate to the practice of law. However, in many cases, lawyers are just experiencing problems and questions similar to those experienced by people in other careers. Lawyers don't always realize this because many of them have not spent much time in other careers.

But there is one aspect of lawyerly life that does particularly shape how lawyers engage with (or chafe against) the world. This is the deeply ingrained habit of issue-spotting. Issue-spotting is good when you're analyzing legal issues, but damaging when you apply it to your career and life.  Read my trenchant analysis here, in the ABA Journal.  Controversial!

p.s.  I didn't mention it in my article, but other professions can fall prey to this kind of misdirected, soul-killing, faux-comprehensive method of detached thinking:  academia and journalism come to mind.  It may have something to do with extreme INTJ/INTP homogeneity. But that's speculation. 

A simulacrum of Michael Melcher travels to Seoul

Last night I participated (virtually) as an honored guest at an event at the American Embassy in Seoul. Korea is opening up 18 new law schools in the next 10 years -- basically adopting an American model on legal education -- and I spoke on career development issues.  It's my basic talk, all the factors that affect your success and happiness as a lawyer that have nothing to do with legal analysis.

As I sat in the NY conference room thoughtfully supplied by White & Case, I contemplated the mysteries of modern technology (who knew that you could do such things? and over the internet?) and the unexpected positive twists that relationships can offer you on your particular path through life.  The conference was arranged by Robert Ogburn, my Korean former roommate from my foreign service days (we shared an apartment in Rosslyn, Virginia), who is just finishing up his stint as a public affairs officer in Korea before preparing for his next posting in Iraq.  

It was just like old times, only instead of eating Vietnamese food in Rosslyn and contemplating going to Tracks, we were communicating via giant televisions, the better to help peppy young brilliant Korean law students build meaningful careers. Good times, good times.

Recession, yes. Armageddon, no. So let's keep moving

For a quick how-to, see my recent post on the ABA Journal about ways to focus on long-term growth while attending to short-term survival, "5 Tips to Plan Your Career to Beat the Recession."

The 80's are finally over, and Career Action Groups are back!

A large portion of the handful of people who read my blog met me in the context of career coaching, and many of them took workshops that I ran in New York from 2002 to 2006 known affectionately as Career Action Groups, until I got tired of marketing them and focused on other things.

But guess what?  Career Action Groups are back. And are the perfect thing to jog you or your recession-depressed friends into better energies. Led by my esteemed colleagues at Next Step Partners, they are going to run in:

New York City

Wilton, Connecticut

Philadelphia

San Francisco

Santa Clara

Berkeley

and for the first time in Seattle!

New York and Berkeley start the week of May 4; all the rest start the week of April 27.

All the details about the four-week workshops -- or shall I say four-week transformative career experiences -- are at the link.  Suffice to say here that if you sign up by April 15 you will get such a good deal I can't even bear to mention it online.  

Stop complaining and learn from your elders!

A great set of interviews in the New York Times about how people made ends meet during the Great Depression.