Practice Management

Help, I'm a rock.

By Dan Hull

Left brain, right brain, stale brain, jury work. In the first semester, and not gradually, you lose some of your command of the English language. The verbal agility and fired imagination that got you through your Reynolds Price course in college is gone. Next, you notice that your creativity is, somehow, inhibited. But you do start thinking in a linear and more Western-logic way. And you learn, as a law student, to think about something that is inextricably attached to something else without thinking about the thing to which it is attached. That's the idea, the prize. But something is lost. In a few years you start writing documents that begin "COMES NOW, oye oye, by and through XYZ law firm, Upstart, Inc., which avers, somewhat obsequiously, to his Honorable Court, the following, which..." when just "Upstart, Inc. states" would suffice. You think it's normal. You notice that, for years now, you have argued, rather than listened, in conversations. You are now a prisoner of your goals. Read Anne Reed's post "Stop Thinking Like A Lawyer!" at her challenging Deliberations.

Full post as published by What About Clients? on July 04, 2008 (boomark / email).