What’s Your Passion?

When I’m not busy helping you people get better jobs, one of the (many) other things I do is write bios for professionals and businesses. Because of my relationship with the Personal Family Law Program (I am their recommended biographer!), a lot of the individuals I write bios for are lawyers.

Lawyers get a bad rap.

Almost every single lawyer I have talked to is passionate about what they do. Maybe it is because of the nature of the PFL program, but the lawyer I spoke to today was not a PFL member.

Now let me just tell you– I love doing bios. I get to pry. They pay me to pry and then to write a story about them. (Joy!) Among the questions I ask is why they chose to become a lawyer and then I ask why they chose the particular specialty. And I usually get a really interesting, personal answer.

For some of the lawyers I write about, there was a  family experience, where a relative was wronged. The lawyer I talked to today, who is based in Portland, Oregon and was fending off his two restless kids while he grabbed 20 minutes on the phone with me, specialized in personal injury. He told me he had applied to law school when he was finishing college and then worked for a short while in a very large law corporate law firm in Boston. He decided, based on that experience, to pull his application and do something else.

Cut to several years later, after travel, a couple other careers, starting a family, and putting down roots in a community. He realized that he didn’t have to work for a big, impersonal firm which represented corporate entities nobody at the firm particularly cared about. He could be his own kind of lawyer.

Now he and his partner have a practice which represents individuals who have been seriously injured through someone else’s fault. They severely limit the number of clients they take on so they can focus on the cases they have and provide the very best care to those clients. Sometimes they even fight big law firms like the one he worked at out of college.

I asked him if any of his recent cases had impacted him strongly and he told me about a husband and wife in their 70s. The husband had taken care of the wife, who was wheelchair bound and had other health issues, until they were in a car accident. As a result of the injuries the husband sustained, he was no longer able to take care of his wife at home and he had to put her in a home. He was heartbroken. He was totally in love with this woman and it killed him that he couldn’t be with her. The lawyer told me that as a result of the settlement his firm got for the husband and wife, they were able to hire in-home care and the husband and wife could be together again.

That’s a pretty powerful story and an extreme example of making a true difference. Not everyone is in a profession that has that opportunity, but we do all have the opportunity to use what we do in a way that brings us satisfaction.

I love writing a great bio (and not just because I’m a nosy person). I love helping clients figure out how to get more out of their careers and crafting resumes and cover letters that will land them better jobs. I even love writing blog posts that will provide my readers with something to think about.

Now let me ask you… Are you the kind of lawyer or writer you want to be? Is there somewhere else you could apply your skills- another company, type of company, or field- that would give you the kind of personal fulfillment you long for in your career?

Photo by Mike Willis.

Add comment March 14th, 2009