Change of Pace

Hey readers, I’m dispatching this post from a computer at the Washington College of Law Library of American University in Washington D.C.  I’m posting from here just to show that I can but also to make this point.  For solo and small firm lawyers, the law library can serve as an antidote to the isolation and loneliness that many of us experience toiling alone in a home office or behind closed doors in an anonymous suite.  Even if you don’t talk to anyone while you’re here (and perhaps you’re better off not, as I’ve been hit up for legal services by some pretty odd ducks), you’re surrounded by people with purpose – students scrambling to get a paper in on time or strutting about in business attire for the first time, en route to a job interview or moot court.  Up in the cafeteria, I might run into law faculty lunching with spouses and small children and daydream about whether academia might be a preferable career option (assuming of course, that a practicing attorney who was never on law review could ever be hired to begin with!)  Taking a break, I browse the stacks and the law reviews, seeing what new ideas are taking hold or wondering why some of the articles were ever written at all.  Sometimes it’s a wonder that I ever get any work done here what with all the distractions but at some point, the urgency kicks in and my malaise slips away.  Being in the midst of all of these young people eager to start or law professors embedded in scholarship and remembering the excitement and promise that I felt back when I was a law student myself (16 years ago, now) rejunivates me enough to get back to my day job (just can’t be blogging all the time).  That’s where I’m headed now.