Inspiration & Encouragement

In today’s tech world, we celebrate the wunderkind – like the founders of Facebook or Google – who achieved so much at an early age. Law isn’t all that different when it comes to early achievement – which accolades like law review and judicial clerkship and second year jobs at biglaw often based entirely on…

For many lawyers, starting or owning a law firm remains at best, a consolation prize – sloppy seconds to employment as a lawyer – and at worst, an undesirable career path that ranks far lower than positions in legal ops or legal tech that don’t even require a J.D. At law schools, starting a law…

Like many of my lawyer colleagues with college-aged students, I’ve been tracking the college admissions scandal with interest, particularly the involvement of Gordon Caplan , co-chair at Wilkie, Farr & Gallagher who paid $75,000 to bribe the proctor of an ACT exam to boost his daughter’s chances of admission to a top school.  Quite honestly, the…

What stories would you share with the world if your time on earth was limited?  Tragically, that wasn’t a hypothetical question for former biglaw attorney, wife and mom Julie Yip-Williams who was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer back in the summer of 2013 and passed away in March 2018. Upon learning of her diagnosis,…

So last year, you read MyShingle and grew excited or less terrified about starting a law practice. Maybe you read one of our top ten posts for the year and decided to stop playing it safe and to start your law firm. Or maybe you decided that it was your time to change the world. Or…

There’s a great scene in the movie Southside With You (at 1:46) about Barack and Michelle Obama’s courtship where Barack Obama addresses a group of community members at a local meeting. They’ve been told “no” about something or other, and Obama suggests that rather than take the word at face value, they flip it around…