My Shingle

Finding Your Passion

Gotta Get Goals: Looks Like I’m It

April 12, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

I’ve been tagged by Susan Cartier Liebel to participate in Alex Shalman’s Gotta Get Goals challenge that’s wending its way around the blogosphere.  Like Chuck Newton, I tend to be more of a dreamer than a planner.  That’s not to say that my ideas never come to fruition, or that I meander aimlessly, but I’ve [...]

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No, I Don’t Hate Biglaw If It’s A Passion

February 9, 2007 by Carolyn Elefant

Quite often, when I compliment when of my daughters on something she’s done well, the other will chime in “But mommy, aren’t I good at that too?”  My response, of course, is that praising one of my girls doesn’t diminish how I feel about the other. More frequently these days, I find myself in this [...]

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Finding a Way to Do What You Love, Even If What You Love Is Watching TV

August 13, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

This isn’t a post that directly relates to solo practice, though the lessons that it offers will apply.  Instead, it’s about the serendipitous way that your passions can lead you to a job that truly fits – which is something that many of us have in fact found in solo practice. Consider this New York [...]

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Can Solo Practice Make You Open Your Mouth?

June 15, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Each week, the ABA e-report has been featuring some of the runner up entries in its Ross Essay Contest.  One of this week’s essays, Opening My Mouth by Elizabeth Streit caught my eye.  Streit doesn’t write about solo practice; she’s a government litigator.  But what she’s written about how government practice transformed her life as [...]

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Do What You Love

January 19, 2006 by Carolyn Elefant

Via Stay of Execution and Rob Hyndman comes this link to a great piece by Paul Graham on How to Do What You Love.   Because after all, that advice to “do what you love” is easy, it’s finding what you love and figuring out how to do it that’s a life work.

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A Forty Year Small Firm Career

December 25, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

This article, Lincoln Lawyer Balances Business, Passion (12/25/05 – Lincoln Journal Star) profiles Lincoln, Nebraska lawyer Herb Friedman’s forty years of small firm practice, which included arguing a case before the United States Supreme Court and pioneering television advertising in his state.  Now 70, Friedman has no plans to retire and reflects on his career [...]

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Can You Make Your Hobby Into A Law Practice?

May 8, 2005 by Carolyn Elefant

This article, Lawyer by Day, Fashion Designer by Night, Skirts the Issue, Portland Press Herald (5/8/05) reports on Maine attorney Margaret Minister O’Keefe, a law firm partner who represents local artists and designers by day and has created her own fashion label by night.  O’Keefe had always sewed but started up again when her first [...]

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