I was away for a few days, hanging out with some women friends of mine, so I haven’t been able to keep up with my daily dose of blogosphere drama.  I came back to the office this morning, put my four cup coffee pot on to brew, and sat down to read my ‘stories’.  I check out Brian Tannebaum’s My Law License, which makes me giggle (even though he probably doesn’t mean it that way), and saw this post on a commenter to a prior post.

I remind you all, in case you’ve forgotten, that I haven’t been around in a while.  I don’t know who the slackoisie are or what their problem is or why people are so offended by them.  But, as I read Tannebaum’s post, I got it.  I finally really and truly got it.

When I decided to go to law school, the refrain I kept hearing was that when I graduated, I would be a lawyer.  I wouldn’t have a job, I would have a profession.   I could do anything, anytime, anywhere.  No matter what the ecomony, the circumstances or the situation, I could always practice law.  It was its own ticket.  All I needed was my law license and a place to hang a shingle.  (We didn’t have ‘virtual’ offices back then.  The only clouds were in the sky.  Hell, I wrote motions on a typerwriter.  I bought white out by the 3 pack.)

Folks, the economy is shit.  It’s hard to find work.  Criminal defense lawyers aren’t hiring.  Big firms aren’t hiring (side note – to this day when people mention the names of big law firms, I have to pretend like I’ve heard of them) – the MAN is hardly hiring.  But who cares.  Why does anyone need someone else’s permission to practice law?  It’s not 7-11 where you need to have a million bucks in order to start a franchise.  It’s not horribly expensive to rent office space (get a cheaper cable subscription and cancel netflix and you’d be able to afford it to) and if you do good work, eventually, the clients, and the money, will come.

It’s not easy.

There I said it.

It’s very, very, very hard.  But, I am assuming that getting into law school and doing well there was hard to.  I cannot believe that the legal profession graduates a bunch of panty-waists who are afraid of going out on a limb and taking risks.  We are LAWYERS.  We fight, we advocate, we shake things up, we change the world.  While I am not on the slackoisie bandwagon, I do agree that ya’all need to get off your asses and make shit happen.

I am not able to cherry pick clients, the bills pile up and I don’t always sleep soundly at night.  But I’ve been to that sweet spot before and I’ll get there again.  Dear young lawyer, please stop belittling the profession I worked so hard to enter.  If you want a job, get one.  If you want a life, practice law.

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