Suppose Bill Gates had stuck to the plan: Graduate Harvard. By time he did, the opportunity to create Microsoft might have passed.
Today, in a volatile or Black Swan economy, anyone who takes a plan too seriously is viewed as out-of-touch. Think one-time media tycoon Rupert Murdoch who won't veer from the path of print. Think John and Elizabeth Edwards who were hell-bent on getting to the White House.
Those plans either don't work or blow up. That's because, as financial-markets expert Nassim Taleb told us, unexpected developments can cause unexpected profound impacts. Those Black Swans, a term Taleb made mainstream, are occurring with greater frequently in an interconnected world driven by technology. So, "Menschen tracht und Gott Lacht" or mankind plans, the gods laugh.
Sure, law students, associates and partners should consider strategies and tactics to progress on their career path. Simultaneously, they should be totally open to other kinds of opportunities. To be that kind of open might entail researching trends and then trying to connect the dots.
Big legal player Robert Shapiro is on TV today, not on "Larry King," but in a commercial for the DIY web service LegalZoom, which he co-owns. The ad features a toffee entrepreneur who incorporated for $135. The LegalZoom model is powerful enough that already it's attracting imitators.
Here's a negative example. The Rhode Island lead paint litigation defense team might have figured they had victory in the bag. They didn't put on their case. Then the jury instructions seemed to box in the jurors to convict three of the four. That Black Swan pushed them, many legal experts observe, to pull out all stops. They didn't miss a trick in filing motions. Finally the RI Supreme Court acquitted them Download Statev.LeadIndustriesAssoc.,Inc. A bit delayed, but that victory made them rock stars
The traditional plan to be hired by a top law firm and hold on there, perhaps even long enough and well enough to make partner, has become too narrow. And not just because of the marketplace. The players also change. Jones Day partner Mark Herrmann, specializing in medical devices, left that life for handling insurance in-house at Aon.
Democrats up and down the ballot have been trying to reverse the Republican rhetorical dominance that made “liberal” an unsavory label, and many have found help in a slender document percolating through their party’s hierarchy.
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