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Another life-after-law story: From death row to study hall

And Tom Dunn seems to be happy with the switch. From "Once Convicts’ Last Hope, Now a Students’ Advocate" (New York Times):

Mr. Dunn’s classroom is less than three miles from his old law office, where he struggled to keep death row prisoners from the executioner’s needle. This summer, after serving hundreds of death row clients for 20 grinding, stressful years, he traded the courthouse for Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School.

The turmoil of middle school turns many teachers away, said the school’s principal, Danielle S. Battle. Students’ bodies and minds are changing, and disparities in learning abilities are playing out.

“A lot of people will say, ‘I’ll do anything but middle school,’ ” she said.

But this is precisely where Mr. Dunn chose to be, having seen too many people at the end of lives gone wrong, and wanting to keep these students from ending up like his former clients. He quotes Frederick Douglass: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

Watch mindful kids and hear their parents: These videos are great

Remember Susan Kaiser Greenland? She's the corporate lawyer who moved on to teach kids to be mindful. She just put up several videos of the kids here so we all can watch them.

Also here's the first clip of a three-part series on InnerKids, Susan's organization. Links to the other two parts of the series are also at that page. In addition to showing some of the InnerKids programs, the narrator looks at the benefits of mindfulness for the children (and their parents).

What a valuable gift to these kids. And a gift to them as they grow into adulthood. Maybe some will become mindful lawyers.

Blog Glob: "Is there Life after Law?"

Excerpt:

Non-practicing lawyers tend to fall into one of two categories.

Either they always wanted to be lawyers but found once they started that it wasn't what they'd hoped for, or they never wanted to be lawyers but drifted into law school because they couldn't think of anything else to do.

The Daily Record spoke to a dozen people who have law degrees but don't practice law. They work in fields such as finance, education and nonprofit leadership. A representative sample of their stories is featured below.

Click to read the rest of "Is there Life after Law?" (Daily Record - Baltimore, MD).

Life after law: From practicing law back to being a musician again

Jeff Strahan was a trial lawyer for 10 years. Prior to that, he was a musician. From his bio:

Frustrated with the state of the music industry and the popularity of “boy bands” in the late 80’s, Strahan put his music career on “part time” status and returned to college.  His goal was to find a career where he could make enough money to pay for his own recordings and promote his material independent from the major label “machine.”  He decided to become a lawyer, work hard to build his own studio, and then return to music when the time was right.  He was a successful trial lawyer in Texas for ten years and his plan to once again pursue a music career came to fruition in 2000.  His timing was actually perfect with the advent of “Independent” music labels and Internet/Satellite Radio.

He quit the practice and moved to Colorado.

Colorado provided the perfect area for musical inspiration and examination of his soul.  The end result was a new and refreshed Strahan who could now spend his time performing, writing, and recording music on his own terms.  He is devoted entirely to it and could not be happier.

Click to hear him sing his song "Superman."

Last line of this article? "For a lawyer, it's almost embarrassing to say that you want to do something else."

Here's another non-practicing lawyer showing others the way out of the profession. Read Casey Berman's take on life after law in "Hastings Grad Tells Lawyers How to 'Leave Law Behind'" (The Recorder). Excerpt:

He maintains that anyone can go into business for themselves, provided they know what they want and don't want out of life. ...

Jackson went from lawyer to billionaire as wine industry patriarch

From "Wine industry patriarch still in full stride - Under Jess Jackson, Kendall-Jackson has grown from a small vineyard to one making 3.8 million cases yearly" (Los Angeles Times):

When Jess Jackson coaxed his family into helping crush a load of grapes some 25 harvests ago, he had no clue he was about to create one of the nation's largest wine empires.

"I was attracted by the lifestyle. I wanted to get away from law and become a farmer," said Jackson, a former property rights attorney from San Francisco.

Most of you have likely heard of his winery Kendall-Jackson? (His first wife was Jane Kendall.) He has done well since leaving the practice of law.

By volume, the company is now California's eighth-largest wine producer, according to Jon Fredrikson, a Woodside, Calif., wine industry analyst. But more important, it is one of the most profitable, he said.

Kendall-Jackson's Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay is now the bestselling wine in U.S. food stores based on dollar volume ... .

Jackson has held many jobs in addition to lawyer. From "Chardonnay Crusader" (Food & Wine):

Before practicing law, he worked as a lumberjack, an ambulance driver, a policeman, a longshoreman, a teamster, a carpenter's apprentice and even a candymaker. "I made peanut brittle and those little mints with the green things in 'em," he says, laughing.

What motivates him?

"We are not looking for quarterly profits," Jackson said. "We want something to hand down to the next generation."

From practicing law, she turned to writing about cheese and sees a piece of cheese as "a whole universe"

Writer of the blog and book Pacific Northwest Cheese Project is a lawyer. In the past, I have not been drawn to reading about cheese but this article "A foodwriter who gets it right" (Christian Science Monitor) has changed my mind. Anyone as passionate about cheese as Tami Parr deserves a look.

I wanted to learn more about Parr but her About page will not load this morning. Can you read it?

From an interview (Voracious) of her:

How did you get started writing the blog?

I was working as an attorney, disliked my job, and blogs were just starting to happen in a serious way. And I was reading the Julie/Julia Project [when it first appeared on Salon]. I 'm like, if I don't have a creative outlet of some kind I'm going to kill myself. [Laughs.]

If you read back, the blog is dorky at first. It was fairly random, but the little spark was that no one was writing about local cheese. I decided that the blog was going to be stupid unless I got more journalistic about it. I started doing interviews with cheesemakers, and, voila! I became an authority on NW cheese. I was starting just as there was an explosion of cheesemakers here.

That's a good story, don't you think?

September issue of ABA Journal online: Lead article is about midcareer malaise

Excerpt from "Midcareer Malaise: How to find a new path for your 40s":

Seventeen years into his career as a plaintiffs lawyer, Jeb Wait grew weary. He was tired of battling with the opposition, of court deadlines and of dealing with dishonest professionals.

For Wait it was something akin to a midlife crisis, and he decided to redirect his career into consulting for mass tort pharmaceutical litigation. The Houston lawyer, who also has a medical degree, says he is much happier after the shift.

“Midcareer,” he explains, “is when you wonder if what you’ve been doing was really what you wanted to do, while also wonder ing if you have enough time left to do something else that you really want to do.”

Call them the Jan Bradys of the legal profession—those lawyers in the middle. Typically, they’re 10 to 15 years out of law school and, if they’re practicing at law firms, are senior associates or junior partners.

A lingering identity crisis can present itself when these attorneys hit the proverbial fork in the road. This is the point at which they are either going to make partner or make a change, the point at which they have a command of their subject matter but need to bring in more cli ents, the point at which—like Wait—they’ve become bored or weary and need to shake things up.

These midcareer crises are occurring earlier because the practice of law, particularly at large law firms, has changed. ...

Read the rest of this edition's articles here.

Thinking of leaving the law? Pave the path by writing a story about your exit

That's exactly what lawyer Terry Brooks did to make his career switch easier. In his book Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life, Brooks talks about his hesitancy to leave. He had been practicing law for a decade and one-half, and had three books published so far in his writing career.

I was an attorney in a small law firm and had been so for almost the same amount of timeI had been writing Shannara books. I had become an attorney so that I would not starve to death trying to become a writer. But it had grown increasingly difficult to allocate my time between the two professions. ...

I was still unsure about giving up my law practice. I know. I know. Was I waiting for a voice from a burning bush or something? But you have to remember how structured my life was back then. I was terrified of taking a wrong step. Practicing law provided a certain balance to my life that I was afraid I would miss badly if I gave it up. ...

So what did he do? He wrote another book, about a character with whom he shared much in common.

The man was a lawyer, and he was fed up with his life and wanted to change it. He wanted to change it at any cost. He was that desperate.

That man was me.

In the story, the lawyer buys a magic kingdom (did I mention that Brooks is a fantasy writer?). He also grapples with some dilemmas.

[E]ven though I cloaked this book in trappings of humor and populated it with peculiar and sometimes comical characters, the questions I asked were serious. What happens when you change your life completely? What are the consequences of abandoning everything you know? What is the impact on you and those around you when things do not work out as you expect?

And did Brooks quit the practice of law? When he was on a book tour for Magic Kingdom for Sale--Sold!, he realized the book was a "blueprint for [his] life." He returned home and quit.

I moved to Seattle. I began my new life. It wasn't always easy; there were many complications. But overall, it felt right. In time, I discovered it was right.

In time-honored fashion, life had imitated art. To my surprise, my book did not lead me into the wilderness after all.

Instead, it led me home.

Any of you feeling the need to read that book? Or buy a magic kingdom?

Andrea Bocelli: His life after law is to sing

As an adult, Bocelli was supported in his singing career by Luciano Pavarotti. As a child, Bocelli sang and sang and sang. But in between, there was the practice of law. From "Music and light" (The Australian):

"I got an opera record [when a youngster] as a present and I started learning it and then sang along for hours on end. There was a step by the fireplace in my father's kitchen that was my first stage."

Nevertheless, he was persuaded by his family to study law at the University of Pisa. "I studied with passion; many of my relatives were lawyers, so I went to university and studied diligently. It's an interesting job, but when you have a vocation for something, you end up following that." He lasted in the legal profession less than a year after graduation.

After the law, he went on to a career as a singer, traveling the world and enjoying much success. Listen to Bocelli:

• "Time to Say Goodbye" with Sarah Brightman
• "The Prayer" with Celine Dion
• Singing Elmo to sleep
• "Besame Mucho"
• "Can't Help Falling in Love"
• Medley with Pavarotti
• "Because We Believe" with Carola

Yes, "when you have a vocation for something," you should follow it. Are you following yours?