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Being an Entrepreneur Lawyer

I think that we law students need similar skills, whether we want to pawn our licenses or use them productively for ourselves. I'm not sure what I've experienced over the past year has given me as much of what I'll need to do that in the coming decades as I had hoped, but there's still time. While I'm not sure what I want to do yet, I know that I don't want to tell my children I work for anyone but myself. It's about pride, and it's about clarity: picking my own clients and picking my own projects is the only way I can imagine living my life happily. To make that happen, I'll need some skills. Law School seems to be helping with some, but it could take some pages from other places for others. Thinking like an entrepreneur would do an average lawyer a lot of good. I know I'll need more than clarity of goals to help me build my practice.

Things Done Right

These are the useful things I think I've been developing here so far:

Close Reading of Text

Cognitive Dissonance

Communication in the Face of Intellectual Assault ("Spin," "Arguing Well" or "Dealing with the Socratic Method")

Things That Could Use Help

These are the areas in which this place needs a lot of help, but could find it nearby:

Collaboration vs. Competition

The fixation on grades at this school is a nominally pro-student phenomenon. The firms want grades, so our students should have them to provide. This seems flimsy, and the subject has been taught at length The justification commonly given on why we are not graded less strictly (or why we are graded at all) is that firms prefer grades. Why is this not true in Uris hall? How is it that Business School is the most touchy-feely, collaborative, judgment-free place on this campus? It seems that in the pursuit of lucre, working together works. Why is this less true for lawyers? What solo practitioner ever achieved anything without the ability to convince other people to work with her? What project ever gets done in a big firm by only one hired brain?

Face-to-face

Electronic

Technological Integration

Social Relationship Construction ("Networking")

What I mean by all of this:

-- By DRussellKraft - 17 Apr 2010