I’m still an attorney. I paid my Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers’ Registration fee this morning although I am not practicing law and have never handled a case in Massachusetts. It is one of those things I don’t want to allow to lapse because I may yet find a way to integrate it into my work.
I graduated law school in 1993, but as I began working with technology and web development, I found those challenges–especially the thrill of creating new things in a start up environment–more accessible than the practice of law. I wanted to be a direct participant in what was evolving in the mid 1990s and I found my path in the technology, not the law.
But in 2003, after relocating to Boston and working in a job that had some potential for a legal advisory role, I began to consider whether I could “go back” and revive my law education for some good. I signed up for a BarBri course and studied at night and on weekends. I enjoyed the learning process and how much I remembered–and had enjoyed classes like Evidence, Crim Pro, and Contracts. I took the MPRE one morning on the way to work, then took off a couple days in the summer to go sit for the Mass Bar-and passed. I was admitted in December 2003.
While I was working at my tech job, I did what I could to chart a course into the law. I expanded my role to include drafting HIPAA privacy language and anything else “legal” in our contracts. I shepherded our patent application process along through the patent law firm QuitNet had engaged, Iandiorio and Teska. I attended a two-day workshop on “Hanging your Shingle” and even drew up a business plan for starting my own law practice. I even emailed my law school hero Gerry Spence and political inspiration Gary Hart for ideas.
I had plenty of ideas, but the bottom line I was forced to admit was that I had no marketable experience. I was not willing to strike out on my own and figure out how to cover our $3000/month mortgage payment. So, in my job search, I looked for a legal angle, but I felt that it was a really, really tough sell to be hired with no practice experience. The law degree and the admission to practice is a license only; and every angle I pursued led to the path of “better have 2 years savings accumulated first.”
So here we are again, but this time I don’t have the luxury of working the law on the side and I certainly don’t have 2 years of expenses saved up. Also, more importantly, being a lawyer is not my dream. It’s a potential asset in my toolkit, but it’s not my passion–or else I would have already done it by now.
Maybe I should leave it off my resume/profile/etc entirely because it confuses my “brand.” Pamela Slim had a great guest blog post in the New York Times a year ago about how people like me rebel against the advice to narrow things down. But while the law degree and bar admission are superfluous to the way I might market my skills to land a job as a technology director, I think they are a big part of who I am and they support the brand attributes that people see in me…I’ll even copy Dan Schawbel‘s attributes here as they fit me pretty well too: “Prolific, Ambitious, Energetic, Resourceful, & Creative.”
But where the “rubber hits the road” is how I stop talking about myself and start talking about what I can do for a potential employer or client. Nothing about the “law material” supports that because I am not saying I can be their lawyer. I don’t know of anything the bar admission gives me automatically–in some states it would mean I could sell real estate or serve as a notary, but not here. So it remains one of those extra bonus value things I bring, but it does not get me in the right door.
Dan Schwabel’s Personal Branding blog is running a contest for the best 3-sentence intro–like an “elevator pitch.” And Pamela Slim at Escape from Cubicle Nation had this post quite a while back about what one word describes your brand?
Creative. Of course. That’s the whole point here, from day 1 on this blog. Not “creative” like I listen to cool music and like to wear black, but “creative” in that I want to make something new. Technical problem-solving for me is just the most accessible manifestation of my irrepressible impulse to dream what can be and grapple with systems, people, technology, and obstacles to make it better. We live to create…and it is manifested in constant change, constant growth, and the pursuit of the annihilation of boredom.
My intro, my brand definition: My name is Dave Atkins, and I am a technology leader, internet engineer and social media evangelist who loves to create process-oriented solutions that help people take advantage of technology and media. I help my team dream big and solve the problems that threaten vision. There are few people like me who can operate at both strategic business and tech implementation levels to get the job done–and re-done as necessary.
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