« The Scramble for Value. | Main | Are there any more out there like you, sir? »
May 11, 2009
Always being born in Chicago.
You change everything, all the time, to stay in the game. You keep going to the Well. If you're a lawyer, in good times or bad, you go there even more.
Relationships, Ideas, Light--and some Heat. As with D.C., New York, Paris and London, I never like leaving Chicago. For almost 100 years, and for four generations of my small and chiefly Midwestern WASP family, Chicago has been a magnet and training ground. One grandfather was born and raised--and another got his masters degree--in the City. My mother grew up in Evanston and Lake Forest. My brother was born here. Members of a fourth generation, now in their twenties, also live here. They can't imagine leaving.
I lived here twice as a child, had my first dog, played goofy but completely thrilling war games with neighborhood kids in the lakeside ravines of Highland Park, and first discovered the fun of ideas, and the king-hell kick of competing and "beating someone at something" (note: trouncing someone at something that is hard to do is totally PC, way fun, and human--so get used to it), at a public elementary school called Braeside.
Little Braeside school, like Duke University a decade later, changed my life. Braeside gave me books, my first notion of enduring friendships, a sense of different religions and cultures (I was for a time resentful that my family did not attend a temple like all my friends did), a lifelong love of athletics (the school produced fine and aggressive little ice skaters, gymnasts and baseball players) and the enduring mandate that, no matter what, I owed it to myself to keep growing, all the time, and every day.
Each day was a gift. A youthful and energetic president named Kennedy was part of the background music; he urged young people to do all manner of great things. It was good to excel at something you loved to do. It was noble to work hard--nothing to be embarrassed about. I was excited about my life, and where it would take me. But I was lucky in life; I had been given a lot--and so I had to do a lot more. That was the deal.
This week in downtown Chicago, at InsideCounsel magazine's well-executed SuperConference, I went back, as it were, to my Chicago Well--which I do at other venues two or three times year through randomly-selected conferences, or in two treasured and trusted groups I was invited to join years ago. Your Well doesn't have to be Chicago. Mine usually is not. (Paris is the ultimate Well; Florence and Vienna will do, too.) But you do have to get away from your normal environs to sharpen tools properly--or just get new ones. Once there, you reconnect with people you already know. You meet new people. You get a few new ideas, confirm the validity of a few ideas of your own and, most importantly, start dismantling some ideas that just don't work for you.
So perhaps more tomorrow or Saturday about the fine GC-centric program and gathering I attended this week--including a confirmation of my belief (for what it's worth to you) that the "late-2000" recession is the best thing to happen to lawyers and their clients in fifty years. The down-economy is a gift both to the legal profession and the frequently-abused clients we serve, accelerating the inevitable. "The troubles" will change the way we do everything. So my latest Well may have revealed--and clarified--Everything: the shapes of new business models, new modes of staffing of projects, customer service, legal products, and the way clients will think about their outside lawyers.
For now, anyway. You change everything, all the time, to stay in the game. You keep going to the Well. If you're a lawyer, in good times or bad, you go there even more.
Posted by JD Hull at May 11, 2009 11:59 PM
Comments
JD wants to start a discussion of "the way clients will think about their outside lawyers."
Did you see today's, Non Sequitur" "Call legal and tell them I need a Memo that justifies Embezz . . . I mean enchanced bonuses"
Shouldn't outside lawyers think of their clients in exactly the same way clients think of their own customers? Have you done business with ATT or Microsoft, as a customer, lately?
Posted by: Moe Levine at May 8, 2009 07:47 PM