Category Archives: lawyer

I tried to talk myself out of it. To say that the hours and the stress weren’t worth it. But the fact is, I deeply, deeply miss being a lit­i­ga­tor. I deeply desire the charge of being in court, of problem-solving with col­leagues, of being intel­lec­tu­ally chal­lenged by my work, and in an admis­sion that won’t be a sur­prise to any lawyer read­ing this site, of being Offi­cially Smart When I Am Proven Right.

These last few months “off” have been great. I have done a ton of writ­ing, and not nearly enough read­ing.  (Is there ever enough?) I have had a lot of time to think about what I want in a work­place, how to best man­age my work­load so I give good results to clients with­out los­ing my mind, and what I want in col­leagues. And I have also spent a lot of time being afraid– what if I end up some­place with crazy per­son­al­i­ties and bad man­age­ment? It hap­pens. What if I imme­di­ately start stress­ing out and fall back in to bad men­tal habits? What if… what if?

When I was work­ing, I would leave my brief­case, totes, and other bag­gage du jour by the door, so I wouldn’t for­get it– I’m not always a morn­ing per­son, and if I am feel­ing har­ried I turn into For­get­ful­BLC. My dad bought me this brief­case when I was first start­ing work as a law clerk. We picked it out together, at a lug­gage store in Northamp­ton that’s still stand­ing. I haven’t always used it– some­times the case demanded a pen, a legal pad, and my wal­let, and some­times a trial bag, and this two-gusset leather num­ber doesn’t fit seven red­wells, on those chal­leng­ing seven-redwell days. I’ve got an array of black bags and cases for those dif­fer­ent kinds of days, but this brief­case is My Brief­case in a way the after-acquired ones aren’t.

I was email­ing with my Dad and list­ing all my con­cerns about accept­ing this offer, and list­ing the on-the-other-hands. The peo­ple seem at ease with one another; their body lan­guage says so. They meet your eye with keen and inter­ested looks. And they made me a more-than-fair offer despite what I think was an aston­ish­ingly frank dis­cus­sion of what I didn’t want in a work­place. The work will be chal­leng­ing, more com­plex than I’ve been doing recently.  And they seem the right size of small and large.  Dad and I dis­cussed some of the things I’ve dis­liked about past work places, and why they were a prob­lem for me. By the third email or so, I’d talked myself into going back to lit­i­ga­tion, and out of let­ting my fears allow me to con­tinue to be a lit­tle bored, a bit lonely, and in any event, under­paid. He echoed the same things that the BH has been say­ing, and which after the fact and unso­licited, my best friend A. has said. In essence, that I should take the job, that I’d done the men­tal work to avoid past pit­falls, and that I could do it, despite my fears.

I am still going to free­lance, but at this point, it won’t be beyond the part-time pace I’ve been doing. It’s fun, it’s cre­ative, and it’s a poten­tial out­let to pre­vent me from get­ting so caught up in work that I think about noth­ing else. But I’ve also real­ized that with­out being busy and with­out hav­ing struc­ture, I’m a bit at loose ends. I need enough “stuff” going on to allow me to flesh out a sched­ule and coun­ter­bal­ance things. I need the pres­sure, in order to pro­duce. And really, to feel like who I am, who I can be when I’m fir­ing on all pis­tons, I need and love that bag, swing­ing off my shoul­der, as I ready for another legal bat­tle, suit as armor and high-heeled lances at the ready.

Happy Love Thurs­day, all. I hope you get to do some­thing you love today, even if it scares you a lit­tle bit. You can see more Love Thurs­day links here, at Shut­ter Sis­ters.