I came across this nice story on being a happy and successful lawyer from David Maister’s blog: Passion, People, and Principles.
Stephen C. Ellis is the managing partner at the law firm of Tucker, Ellis & West.
What follows is the commencement address he gave at Case Western reserve School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio on May 19, 2008.
The title of his remarks is “On Being a Happy(and Successful) Lawyer”
Do enjoy it.
On a side note, I’ve been having a blast since setting up my WordPress blog last month. I was fortunate also that I decided to have wordpress.com host it as opposed to setting it up on other hosting sites (e.g. bravenet, doteasy, godaddy) because of the tag surfer feature. This allows us on the wordpress.com blogosphere to know who else is blogging. And using tag searches, you can find other like-minded bloggers posting about the same things you’re thinking about. Awesome. There are a whole lot of extremely knowledgeable people sharing wonderful experiences. The downside with using wordpress.com is that it doesn’t allow much customization – quite vanilla. Hosting on wordpress.com is all about the sharing and blogging, not about the other (commercial) stuff.
Blogging has been “therapeutic” but a great way for me to learn as well. I’ve been a bit on a tear with what originally was meant to be a part time deal but has turned out to be a daily item for me. Let’s see how it works out. My blogroll has grown exponentially and I can’t help but expand my RSS feeds because there’s just too many good stuff out there.
Finally, B- and I went to a food conference today at the HK Convention Center and it was amazing. The crush of bodies was like rush hour traffic. Food lover’s heaven. We’ll probably go back again. In any event, she needs to go for research.
And before signing off – last weekend, B- and I went to the Macau Venetian for the 2 days 1 night package. Great stuff. As a said in my FB – it’s a lot of fun and a lot of dangerous. We’ll be back there I’m sure.
Hey, YC! Good to see you triscribe.
Great link on how to be a happy and successful lawyer; the thoughts should be sent to every lawyer.
Yeah, I can’t forget about triscribing (ooh, I gerund it haha :))
The speech was excellent and applies so universally. Every lawyer should get this upon graduation.
BTW, I was curious about the AABNY (?) conference on alternative careers for lawyers… I wonder if both F C and AJS were there to be living examples of that! I could possibly make a cameo… I’ll be in town October.
cheers!
FC wasn’t one of the speakers at the AABANY panel on “What to do with your J.D.” but he had put in his two cents. Tough to keep the lawyers’ spirit in a profession that’s just plenty tough as it is.
It’ll be good to see you in October!