The Amorphous Blob Shaped Lawyer

Hello Friends in the Computer,

It’s been a little over four months since I was laid off. We immediately jumped into the holidays and what I affectionately refer to as “Dead Mom Season”, so I was basically treading water and not able to really process the shock or fully think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I still don’t know what I want to do, but now I have a plan on how to figure that out.

Life is nothing but full of ironies, and my job at Reynen Court was probably the first time I didn’t immediately start looking for a new job within the first six months. So while I had noted interesting job openings if they passed through my social media feeds, I was completely out of practice and sync with job hunting.

(I should note that I am very lucky in that I was immediately able to pick up freelance work in a very similar vein to what I was already doing at RC and I like it, but there’s maybe three companies that do this and I’ve now worked for two of them. And who knows what the future holds [or what I want it to hold.])

I am also blessed and cursed in that I know a little bit about a lot of different things and am at “advanced beginner to proficient” in several types of skills and abilities. I’ve also now worked in the academic, non-profit, and Big Law worlds. Does that make a me a Jill of all trades? A utility player? A dilettante? My current preferred term, based on some horrendous interview experiences in the Big Law and A2J world where each seemed to think I was too much of the other is “Too crazy for boys town, and too much of a boy for crazy town.”

I guess that makes me a “Innovator” but I refuse to accept that as a self-declared title. Almost as cringe as “Thought Leader.”

And then there’s ChatGPT-4 The Quattro and other similar AI tools. Oh, you thought we were gonna get through a post without talking about that? No, I’m sick of it too (and somehow it makes me feel less enthusiastic about legal tech but maybe that’s just boredom?) But related to figuring out what to do with the rest of my life, I had the following thought a few days ago:

So if everything is going to change as radically as a lot of really smart people that I respect say it will, especially in professions that can be classified as “knowledge work” (which both law and libraries can be), what can I do now to be prepared for that?

What Color is My Parachute, What Shape Is My Career?

I love a good self assessment and personal inventory. (Not an alcoholic, just a German Catholic constantly laboring under the guilt that I am a giant disappointment and could be doing better.) Fortunately in law there’s a couple frameworks being developed as a way of thinking of what skills are needed to be a successful legal professional. For some reason, I’ve never taken a stab at creating my own geometric framework, but I do have lots of lists of skills as part of developing a legal tech MOOC.

The first I heard of was the T-Shaped Lawyer 

Then there was the Delta Shaped Lawyer

And I recently learned about the O Shaped Lawyer

I like them all, but none quite exactly match someone like me who seems to constantly exist in the liminal spaces of my professional worlds. I am currently no shape but an amorphous blob and I think I would like to change that.

But how? Especially if you are afraid of commitment and have lots of obligations beyond your career like I do.

I learned a lot about LinkedIn Learning a few years ago when doing research for an Up-Skilling Lawyers project I was working on. That project never got off the ground, but I’ve kept it bookmarked in my brain in case I ever got to work on an education program again. It recently occurred to me that it would be a perfect way for me to try different topics and see which ones I really liked before committing to an executive MBA, PMP training or similar program. Check it out. I think I’m going to start with privacy, project management, and data analytics and see which one (if any) strike my fancy. It was a $250 investment which is a lot of money, but relative to a grad class or even conference, it not. I’m giving myself until June 1 and I will take stock of where I am.

If you have any ideas on other ways to upskill or what you think the most important skills in the future will be, let me know.

Be well,

Sarah

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