Three Reasons Why Other Solos Have the Potential To Be Your Great Friends

shutterstock_250331272In the past, when I’ve worked at jobs, most of my friendships – to the extent that I formed them at all – never left the workplace. So this article, Lifehack  article, Ten Reasons Why Your Coworkers Have the Potential To Be Your Greatest Friends caught my eye, if only to enable me to belatedly learn what I’d been doing wrong. As it turns out, the article, like so many of the top-X reasons genre is list-rocious – the reasons offered either don’t make sense (they are forgiving when you leave dirty dishes in the sink? huh?), beg the question (seems like reason #9 – wanting to hang out with you after work presupposes that you’re friends already) or would fit equally well on any other top ten list. In any event, rather than bemoan the 45 seconds of time that I spent reading a worthless post and that I’ll never get back, I’ve borrowed the concept and applied it to solos. So with that, I present, Three Reasons Why Other Solos Have the Potential To Be Your Great Friends:

  1. You’ve Lived Each Others’ Worsts

What’s best about kvetching to another solo is that we’ve all been there at each others’ worst. So we know how you feel when you’ve gone up before a judge or against a big law attorney who tried to make you feel small. Or how it feels to always be hustling and how hard it can be when the phone doesn’t ring, and how simultaneously terrifying and liberating it is to realize that you can lose it all at any moment but know that we could pick up the pieces and do it over if you had to. But what’s even better about a solo is that we don’t just offer a shoulder to cry on; many of us can offer constructive advice and solutions, because we’ve been there.

Moreover, like the best of friends, most solos won’t judge. We know that missing a deadline or getting fired by a client or having a bad year needn’t define you as lawyers or as people so long as you own up to the mistake, learn from it and move on.  

  1. You’re Quirky

Who wants a Stepford Friend?  Even the most seemingly staid and dull solo has an oddball side – after all, solo practice is at least partly self-selecting. In solo land, you’ll find lawyers with interesting hobbies and unique points of view and all kinds of crazy war stories – and life stories. What better way to spark a friendship?

  1. You Inspire Each Other

Great friendship ought to raise us up us not drag us down. Hanging around with naysayers or complainers (which has generally been my lot with working relationships) is no fun and pretty soon, you start to wonder if the fact that you’ve attracted these followers is a reflection that something’s wrong with you.  But with solos, you don’t need to worry – because most solos inspire – with passion for what we do, with creativity, and sheer doggedness. Spending time with other solos always inspires and challenges me to be a better solo and a better person – which is also the kind of quality that makes for a lifelong friendship.

Which is something I know to be true from personal experience – because some of my best friends are solos – and I’ll bet yours are too.

Leave a Comment