Posts by Rachel Prosser
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Hi Ben,
It's a while since I did my legal training (My last lecture was the day after the Companies Act 1993 was passed - which made exam notes a pain as we'd been talking about the Bill all year).
I've had a far from typical career trajectory as I always worked in-house, and in a public law setting. The big-firm life never appealed to me.
I avoided litigation - I just don't like fighting. I did do some, and realised that the effective framework for many letters were along the lines "With the very greatest of respect I think you are wrong . I suggest I am right". To which the response would be. "Thank you for your letter. With the greatest of respect you appear to be wrong and I am right".
I'd get frustrated when lawyers, on seeing a new piece of law, would point out how it could be misinterpreted not to work (rather than going along with the spirit).
Nor was it necessarily boring, I did a lot of strategic advice type stuff and liked that, loved the community decision making meetings (for the human drama as much as anything)
But I remember getting stuff on project teams, looking at it and thinking "hmm, would be good to get a lawyer to look at it" before realising "oh crap, that's me".
And I remembered Sir Humphrey's metaphor:
The Civil Service has the engine of a lawnmower and the brakes of a Rolls Royce.
I decided I'd done my time as part of the brakes.
Part of that was living in an OIA / FOA public environment, where you couldn't easily take risks without someone castigating you for doing it wrong, or using the cheap political trick of taking an example 3 standard deviations from the norm and presenting it as an average.
Which isn't to say that people can't enjoy law - many do. Many of us also leave - it's very common for women in their 30s to be doing something else (men too by the look of things here).
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I find it interesting that lawyers talk unabashedly about being inculcated with a value system at university, like it was the best thing that ever happened to them
Personally, it took me a while to realise that was what was happening. I remember doing the Negotiation and Mediation course with Jane Chart in my final year of law school, where we started by reading about the fact we'd been indoctrinated.
It was a defining moment of my legal (and other) education.
I stopped lawyering because I'd had enough of living in the legal mindset, and doing a job which more or less required me to operate on a default setting where I had to look for faults, and be pessimistic not pragmatic. I wanted to be able to put relationships over process sometimes. I wanted to be optimistic, and take risks, and get away from the blame focus.
A key outcome of legal training is being able to assign the blame in any situation (after the event). I'd had enough of blame. And I stopped wanting to be the person with the right answer who would ahve to tell the client how they should have done something better, even though I hadn't ever managed the operation on the ground .
A couple of years after I left, I read Martin Seligman's "flexible optimism" which identified that pessimism was an adaptive response which worked in the legal profession, but didn't make for a happy life. I remember thinking "Yes!! I agree! That's why I left!"
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oops - Houseman! In my defence I was only 8. In my prosecution, I could have googled.
I remember reading a profile on him - I think he was Romanian, and spoke 4 languages at the age of 3.
Yes I could google - but where's the joy in googling everything all the time? Why not share the odd imperfect memory?
. I'm reminded of Russell's cough on another thread...
you've lost me?
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Interesting post Russell, but there was only so much reading of it that I could manage with a Telecom ad bouncing about constantly to my left.
Great to see Public Address's value being recognised by advertisers, but... can I put in a request for them not to be irritating! Or to stop moving after the first bounce?
Am not sure if it is gracious to knock advertisers (ethical issue for bloggers not commentators I suppose). Therefore I will be mild and say that a frustrating ad merely reminds me of frustrating service (ahh, the 90 minute calls to the call centre in the Phillippines, the monthly bill errors which kept on happening, I miss you not)
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You have a copy? I wish they put that sort of thing on re-runs.
I haven't seen the show in years, and in fact remember only one episode in any detail (they sat exams and booked a hotel room).But the opening narrative is still burned on my mind.
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Jolisa - Thanks for the link on Malcom Gladwell.
Giovanni - sounds interesting - I think that we need new metaphors to refresh our viewpoint every so often. It's like the quadrant approach to leadership, or personality, or time management. The value lies not so much in the earth-shattering new paradigm, but at the chance to take a fresh look at things. Or to be reminded that others are not like us.
Have you considered a metaphor-gathering bleg via Freakonomics (or Public Address?)
Kill all the lawyers ..... Present company excluded, of course!
Thanks Zippy - mind you I am not allowed to call myself a lawyer in New Zealand any more (the label costs $1000+ per annum). Oddly, I can use the term in England, where I'm not allowed to call myself a solicitor or barrister. Here it seems I can say "enrolled Barrister and Solicitor", which sounds more impressive. Tricky when it comes to web-marketing.
I tend to think that being a lawyer is a state of mind, achieved via the inculcation of a value system in law school. I watched The Paper Chase at about age 8, and have been able to quote John Huston ever since:
"You will teach yourself the law, I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of MUSH, and leave, thinking like a Lawyer"
It is perhaps this mindset that needs to be 'killed" ? Or at the very least reined in in favour of a more optimistic mind-set.
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Yes :-)
Have linked to it on by blog already, so in some sense, I already have! Although I do try not to plagiarise.
It's tricky sometimes, when an idea or concept or metaphor becomes so much part of your belief system - e.g. the Stephen Covey "watering the bamboo" metaphor from 7 habits. I have to remember to give him credit.
Also, all of Malcolm Gladwell's stuff - he's just announced his new book Outliers, and I, for one, am very excited.
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Great post David.
Not to channel Oscar Wilde, but I wish had written that. Will have to suffice with linking to it copiously instead.
This isn't the culmination of their life's ambition, at least it shouldn't be.This isn't the culmination of their life's ambition, at least it shouldn't be.
Not so much the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning. As Winston said. Probably both Winstons.
It gets worse from here on in - now they get to taste the impotence of power, coupled with the expectation of action, and the accusations of responsibility.
MPs, even the PM, have much less power than people think they do. What they do have is varying degrees of influence. They usually can work only indirectly to produce whatever outcome they seek.
I always found it interesting the criticism that people went into politics to get power and for their ego.
For one, they will get more sustained personal criticism as an MP than in any other walk of life. And second, they tend to be seen as responsible, without actually having power to do what they want to do.
I've always found "Yes Minister" a useful text for the work I've done in central and local government. There's an episode where Sir Humphrey explains how Jim Hacker, as Prime Minister is automatically responsible for the actions of every Town Hall in England. The gem from that episode was something like this:
Responsibility without power - the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.
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"Apart from", not "apart form"!
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I think Murray Mexted's purpose (apart form keeping an eye on the cheerleaders and alerting us to their costume changes) is to be the everyman, consistently misinterpreting what is going on so Tony Johnston can come in and correct things.
He makes us feel better for not understanding what's going on.