Since you're not going to make partner, be opportunistic, not linear

Today I talked with a not-so-newbie law associate who recently had two epiphanies:

• She is probably not going to make partner since those slots are dwindling in number as the push for profit-per-partner increases [and follows the corporate America Jack Welch model of rightsizing].

• The intellectual stimulation promised in law school ain't going to happen as she cuts and pastes the documents needed for M&A.

So, what now, she asked me. Here are my recommendations for thriving in the changing profession of law:

• Grow up.  Your current job is a well-paying platform to build what's next, downsize student loans, learn how to go to work, and observe the most cunning players.  Just do it, without inner conflict.  It's that ambivalence that is exhausting you, not the 70 hours you put in at The Firm.

• Think opportunistically, not in linear fashion.  The careful step-by-step planning that got you the grades to get admitted to good schools and land in the top of the class and hired at The Firm is totally old economy.  New economy is to try, often multiple things simultaneously, fail, fail and eventually find your passion.  You do that on the side.  What it that "that?"  That's what you figure out as you scan the horizon opportunistically.  While still in law school, Anonymous Lawyer worked on his blog.  Thanks to that he skipped the whole cut and paste and went directly to Hollywood writing. Michelle and Barack are also not doing too shabby.

• Get a sense of humor.  New economy is all about learning not to take everything, including ourselves, so seriously.  The bible for that loss of high earnestness is "The Cluetrain Manifesto" by Doc Searls et al.  It came out in 2000 but most of us are still clueless that not seeing the world as totally incongruent and thus leading to ironic insights is the ticket to earning a living in a way that's joyful and pays well.

• Sleep less.  That's what global food safety czar Bill Marler of Marler Clark had told me about two years ago.  He is right.  No one ever died from reduced sleep and if you're mixing up a new career witch's brew you don't even feel the lack of.  Clark's blogs, penned during the night, got him the platform to evangelize about supply chain issues. [Here is some testimony he delivered in Washington D.C. Download testimonycongress2008.doc]. 

• Be patient and keep at it.  Had I given up on social media when only about 40 people a week were reading my blogs - here's the other one- I'd still be cutting and pasting old boring speeches for the C-level to deliver as new boring speeches. Meanwhile, while I was struggling to learn this new genre, everyone, from my college roommate '67 to even my spiritual adviser, told me to get a job, yeah, as a speechwriter. Out of nowhere lead paint litigation came to me and begged to be live-blogged.  The rest is posts regularly picked up by the ABA LAW JOURNAL, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, U.S. Chamber of Commerce tort reform site, Pointoflaw.com, Overlawyered.com, and the Chinese, in Mandarin.

If you don't do all the above, you will be an embittered JD.  If you do, you could morph into a new economy player in a free-agent world. I turn down more communications assignments than I accept, fire newbie clients who get abusive once the retainer is arranged, and see the game as a well-structured joke, for which I now know the punch line.

Since you do well at booking it, here are two e-books I published on the current professional realities.  You can download them free.

Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.pdf Download savingsoulsonparkavenuekstreet.doc

Comments

[Jane Genova]

I never realized some were so protective of their right to regular and enough zzzzzzzzs.

Sleepless-During-Transition

[Carebearular]

I think the whole post is was written in jest. Sleep less? "Just do it, without inner conflict"? It's NOT the 70 hours a week at The Firm that's exhausting you? And yet, "the new economy is all about learning not to take everything, including ourselves, so seriously." Hmm... how exactly would you "just do" 70 hours of work a week and sleep less on a consistent basis to do so, without taking that work seriously? This is a hodgepodge of unrealistic, meaningless advice, and I have to think it is irony.

[Disappear Here]

Thanks Tony Robbins; I'll try to incorporate that gem of wisdom into my everyday life. Can you give me other simple, meaningless phrases that answer the complicated questions I have about my life?

[Jane Genova]

Dear Disappear Here:

The joke is the game and the goal is to figure out the punch line. What that punch line is depends on what we want from a career.

[Disappear Here]

"[Y]ou could morph into a new economy player in a free-agent world."

Above is a joke, right? It sounds like an advertisement for Direct Buy. A glassy-eyed blond mouthing words that only sound like communication. If this is the future, welcome to Dystopia.

[Marsha]

Jane gets it - and Penelope Trunk pretty much agrees with her. Now, can we face up to the fact that the 'making partner' mentality is an analog to the 'lotto' mentality? We are held in slavery by our belief we are special and will make the cut. I'll consider it a happy day when, like Peter Finch in the film Network, all the attorneys open their windows and scream out, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Trust me, the partners sunning themselves in the Hamptons this weekend aren't thinking of you.

[Jane Genova]

You are right on the money, Jon. And now that my What's Next platform is solid, I intend to go to bed regularly at 2 PM. Skipping sleep was a must-do, at least for me, to make that transition from being an old-economy corporate writer to joining The Revolution.

I pulled all-nighters and during Katrina serial all-nighters. It seems worth it. Maybe Tim Russert thought that way too. Watch for my obit.

[Jon Pincince]

And with that I'm turning off the RI budget debate and going to bed!

[Jon Pincince]

Sleep less? That is bad advice. Countless studies have proven that regular sleep of fewer than 7-8 hours per night has negative health and happiness effects on the large majority of people.

"No one ever died from reduced sleep . . . "

Maybe not, but I suspect many people who do not get adequate sleep die sooner than they otherwise would.