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I’ve been pretty actively busy in recent months so my posts have slowed to a near trickle. Please enjoy the old posts and information, and do still feel free to contact me directly, but FYI I am no longer updating the blog. Priorities and all that jazz. You know how it goes.
Lawyer On… Kimberly
A new article on NLJ features one of my favorite online lawyer-friends Lisa Solomon. Check out Downturn May Have an Upside for Contract Attorneys.
A few weeks ago I decided I need to get out from the home office and do some in-person lawyering. This was partly motivated by having been in DC for a three-week trial (which re-inflamed my courtroom itch) and partly because I found myself feel like a cooped up housewife descending into madness. I had plenty of work to do, but felt like the days kind of blended together, and that there was too much cleaning up dog fur and not enough adult conversation.
So I rang a couple of lawyers in town that looked nice adjudging from their lawyer bios online, got to chatting with the right person, and ended up getting a pretty sweet lawyer gig about 7 minutes from the house. It’s flexible, I can continue freelancing, and I’m just aga over the managing attorney. The attorney in the next office over and I share a pre-law career in archaeology, and the other attorneys are pretty nice and dynamic also.
Suffice it to say, I’m still here, although I may be a little slower with the posts. I am still publishing Wax Poetic, my legal writing monthly newsletter, and taking freelance gigs as they come up and appeal to me. In fact, I just wrote my first magazine article for an up and coming national publication. I’ll, of course, update when that gets published.
My new situation is a tribute to the cold call, which I was inspired to try by a recent post by Carolyn Elefant on Nolo.
Hope all is well out in webland, friends!
Lawyer On! Kimberly
Met up with a few friends this weekend, new and old. As everyone introduced themselves and mingled, I noticed a very strange phenomena. The conversations went something like this:
[Stu and Bob are introduced, and I back off to people watch and eavesdrop.]
Bob: Stu? Nice to meet you.
[The men grunt, slap fists, whatever men do. Or maybe it was a handshake.]
Bob: So, what do you do?
Stu: Nothing. I do nothing. [Shakes his head, looks vacantly in the distance, takes a sip of beer.]
Bob: Oh, ok.
Stu: What do you do?
Bob: Oh, uh. I do whatever. It’s whatever. [Turns away, disengages.]
Kimberly [interjecting]: What is wrong with you two? You’re both lawyers. Jesu Mio…
But this is the way of the world. Here were five people, each of them lawyers, perfectly intelligent and nice looking individuals, and none of them in a traditional lawyer job. A few people were doing contract/temp work, I call myself a writer, and one is working non-legal while setting up a solo practice. But when The Announcing of Positions segment of the program came along people started getting all shifty.
I had at Stu later.
Kimberly: What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you say you do “nothing”?
Stu: It’s nothing, Kimberly. Literally, nothing.
Kimberly: You feel the job doesn’t require your full potential.
Stu: [Snorts] No, obviously not.
Kimberly: It’s not “nothing,” Stu.
Stu disengages, so I start talking with my hands while driving.
Kimberly: I have a friend who hasn’t worked a 9-5 in ten years. Maybe fifteen. It’s pyramid scheme after pyramid scheme and he always has a new delusion about how he’s going to make it work. And he’s bringing people down with him. He’ll lose the little he has this month, or next, or in six — however long he can float. I would f’in thrilled to see him work even a pointless 9-5. That’s not “nothing.” You’re paying your rent, you’re living a good life, you’re applying to the jobs you want — you might need more but its not “nothing.”
Of course after my persuasive display, Stu caved and admitted it wasn’t “nothing.” (He’s good to tolerate me, really). But the whole thing got me thinking about the Stigma that we were talking about in the last post.
Here we had five perfectly capable, qualified attorneys, none of them working traditional lawyer jobs, and a few of them doing some serious eye-averting that made it obvious they had been Stigmatized. This is crap. Big Law stigmatizes solo and contract attorneys. Solo attorneys stigmatize big lawyers (I know I do). And back and forth it goes. Can’t people just be successful and happy, and take care of their families, without having to feel like eye-averting is in order when asked about their profession?
I am going to take my own advice, as a gesture of my sincerity. I am not going to stigmatize big lawyers. It’s going to be hard. When I see an old friend and they say they work for Shootem, Upton & Howe, I feel pity and a smug condescension. That’s not healthy. It’s not healthy for my relationship with that person, and it certainly encourages a system whereby all these people are Stigmatizing each other, and lawyers that I really like and who should feel proud about themselves have to get all disengaged and say they do “nothing” or “whatever.”
My personal motto has long been, “Own Who You Are.” Seriously. I’ve made myself tee-shirts via Cafepress so I can remind myself of it. So that’s what I’m going to suggest — own who you are.
If that means you’re in a crappy temp job, or contracting through staffing firm, or running a faltering solo practice, say it with pride. But leave out the faltering part. Every day you are learning, and growing, and moving closer toward your goals. Use your laserbeams. If you act all dejected, how are you going to make the things you want happen?
So the next time I meet up with lawyers, I want to hear you all introduce yourself loud and proud. I’m holding you to it.
Lawyer On… Kimberly
Today I’m a guest blogger over on Susan Cartier Liebel’s Build A Solo Practice. Woo hoo! I premised my post upon, in part, my quest for authenticity on my solo firm website. I had this stiff, lawyer-y site that I felt really didn’t reflect me or my practice. So I threw it out the window, and became a real person. I also rewrote my mission statement, and now I feel really good about it.
In the process, I also tossed my hard-earned search engine ranking on the term “freelance lawyer.” You know why? I was #2 for that and #3 for “freelance attorney” (stupid 2006 article that I couldn’t budge), but I got NO quality traffic from the ranking. I did get plenty of junk though (people wanting to join my freelance attorney firm, non-lawyers wanting a cheap lawyer, lawyers in other jurisdictions wanting me to participate in prohibited arrangements, etc.) I do drive a lot of traffic to the site myself, though, so I might as well have it say what I want.
I’ve got this fabulous blog here and if keeping up with this in an authentic way doesn’t get me in the rankings, well forget it! I guess I’m saying I’m revolting. SEO has too long controlled our site content!
Anyway, check out the new site design and let me know what you think.
And definitely head over to Build a Solo Practice for my guest post “You Say You Want a (Solo) Revolution.“
Lawyer on… Kimberly
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