pumped for pumpkins (and pro bono)

October 7, 2004

pumped for pumpkins (and pro bono)

Filed under: pre-06-2006 — David Giacalone @ 8:38 pm

autumn sun–
the lawyer carries home
a pumpkin

Barry George

pumpkin red one-breath pundit

Following up on last month’s column in Washington Lawyer, urging that law firm

partners do pro bono work, D.C. Bar President John C. Keeney, Jr., asserts that the

profession needs “Mentoring for Professional Balance.” He notes in the October

2004 edition (available soon here) that many of us went to law school to “make a

difference on important public matters.” Nonetheless:lawyers continually put off doing

pro bono and public service throughout their careers

— “the same bad career advice is repeated by the same people to new partners” — to keep your nose to the grindstone.

— “Mentoring thus becomes the one-size-fits-all advice to ‘do what I did’ rather than carefully crafted advice to pursue particular dreams and goals — and thus make time for your family, too.” Terminology has changed, with firms and agencies calling themselves “families” in the 1970s, a “team” by the 1990s, and now the very impersonal “platform for individual talents” in the new millennium.

“I think that we can do better! Firms and agencies should enable, not merely encourage, volunteer. work.”

Similarly, the NYS Bar established a Special Committee on Balanced Lives in the Law this week “which will examine how attorneys in various work settings confront the ever-evolving dynamics of meeting professional, societal and personal demands.” (Press Release, Oct. 6, 2004)

pumpkin2 Public service suggestion from haikuEsq: share some non-fat, low-calorie pumpkin haiku for Halloween this year. You can find a great pumpkin crop at the Shiki Haiku Pumpkin page, (Nov.1997), including a pair from two friends of this weblog: