Judge for Yourself: Clarity, Choice, and Action in Your Legal Career
By Miriam Bamberger Grogan, CPCC, and Heather Bradley, CPCC
Published by the American Bar Association in cooperation with MCCA®
Book Review written by Francisco Ramos, Esq.
Are you satisfied with your career? Satisfied with being a lawyer, with your job, with the direction your life has taken? Are you really? If you love your job and everything about it, if you love where you have been and where you are headed, then this book is not for you. But if you find yourself desiring a change, seeking more than the life and career you have made for yourself, then this is your book.
Judge for Yourself: Clarity, Choice, and Action in Your Legal Career is a book that takes an abstract goal—how to both be a lawyer and be happy—and gives concrete advice on how to achieve that goal. In a mere 100 pages, the authors show lawyers how to take stock of themselves, decide what their goals are, and how to achieve them.
But how does the book do it? The book provides "a simple three-step process to provide structure and direction" to your career. The authors introduce the reader to three characters: (1) Jim, a successful law firm partner facing retirement; (2) Bruce, an in-house counsel who is trying to balance work and family; and (3) Lynda, a junior attorney at a large law firm who is looking for significance in what she does. By reading their stories—their situations, their goals, their frustrations—and by reading how they discover that change is possible and how to achieve that change, you learn that change is possible in your life, too. And, you learn through them how to achieve what they’ve found—joy and fulfillment.
The three-step process is spelled out in the title—clarity, choice, and action. First, you need clarity. The book asks, "What do you want to be different?" The book provides worksheets to help you answer this question. Complete the worksheets fully and truthfully, and you will discover what your values and goals are and the changes you need to make to align what you are doing with the values and goals that define you.
Second, you need to evaluate your choices. What options are available to you? As the book asks, "What are you already doing that you would like to do more?" And, "What are you already doing that you would like to do less?" These questions and many more will help you decide what choices to make.
Finally, you need to take action. Once you know where you want to go, you need to take the steps to get from here to there. The book helps you put together a step-by-step action plan to make your goals a reality.
The strength in this book is not the answers it gives you. Rather, it is the questions it poses. It asks you question after question to help you make a change. As the book notes, there are no right answers and there are no wrong ones. But if you are honest with yourself, your answers will crystallize what you need to do differently. They did for me.
They helped me evaluate what I liked about my career and what I didn’t. It reminded me why I went to law school and of the values I cherish. It showed me the choices I had and what I needed to do to get where I wanted to be.
Coincidentally, I share something in common with Lynda, the fictional young lawyer in the book. She had always wanted to write but never could find the time. She felt frustrated and stuck because her dream was falling further out of reach. The questions in the book helped Lynda embrace that desire and find a way to fulfill it. Likewise, those same questions helped me implement a plan to write more—to write more articles such as this one and to work on the novel that I put down and pick up again, but mostly put down.
One of my professors in law school told us that getting the right answer starts with asking the right questions. This book asks all the right questions. By answering them, you will be well on your way to making the changes that will make your job more enjoyable and more fulfilling. Any book that can do that is one worth buying.
To order a copy of this book, visit www.TheFlourishingCompany.com.
Francisco Ramos, Esq. is a partner at the Miami office of Clarke Silvergate Campbell Williams & Montgomery.
From the July/August 2006 issue of Diversity & The Bar®