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Your Voice

325 ABA Journal Your Voice articles.

The Career Evolution: Making strategic moves within the law

The legal job market is robust. And within all those professional journeys there are two types of searchers: those lawyers seeking a job change and those seeking a career change. If you’re in the market, it’s important not to conflate these two paths.

Oct 10, 2024 10:25 AM CDT

Friend’s compassion—even in death—inspired my own ‘David’s Will’

Sometimes in life we are fortunate to meet someone who dedicates everything to a higher calling. For me, this person was David Breaux. While he had few financial resources, David was, by every measure that counts, a rich man.

Oct 2, 2024 2:11 PM CDT

Lawyers must lead in efforts to preserve accessible, equitable and transparent rule-of-law system

As a nation, we have made the decision to be governed by the rule of law. This means that as a society, we have agreed to abide by a set of transparent, fairly enacted and fairly applied laws and rules that will govern our conduct in our private and public affairs.

Aug 21, 2024 1:39 PM CDT

Hidden Talent Pool in Plain Sight: Corporate America wants you—for nonlegal roles

Management consulting firms and Big Four accounting firms have a secret weapon. It’s not particularly well-camouflaged. It’s there for anyone who bothers to look. Both of these thought leaders hire lawyers for a wide variety of nonlegal jobs. And they’ve been doing so for decades—everything from business development to crisis management to marketing.

Jul 25, 2024 9:14 AM CDT

A Law Clerk’s Transition: From umpire’s apprentice to fighter in the ring

As law clerks, we learn to write with a dispassionate tone and an air of neutrality. We write to explain. As lawyers, the same rules apply, but the goal changes: We write to persuade.

Jul 17, 2024 12:00 PM CDT

‘United We Stand’: Lawyers must play crucial role in bringing our nation together

Unity is strength. The wisdom of that truth has been known since ancient times as reflected in Greek fables, such as Aesop's tales about The Four Oxen and the Lion and The Bundle of Sticks, and Chinese stories, such as The Five Chinese Brothers.

Jul 2, 2024 2:04 PM CDT

A Few Good Friends: Loneliness can be a JAG’s toughest battle

It is not just the Police who find themselves “so lonely;” we too should find “no surprise, no mystery” in loneliness’s pervasiveness. Military lawyers, in particular, feel its unavoidable sting accentuated by the military attorney lifestyle. Together, let’s look at how to work past the inevitable to succeed where possible.

Jun 20, 2024 12:31 PM CDT

Retirement: The final frontier

I recently retired after practicing family law for 25 years. I enjoyed the practice of law, but as you can imagine, my job had its share of stress and anxiety.

Jun 13, 2024 8:30 AM CDT

Games Lawyers Play: Word counts and spacing rules in briefs appear open to interpretation

As teenagers, some of us played a game with our writing assignments. The goal was to make an essay or report appear longer than it actually was. Why? Because our teachers specified a minimum number of words or pages, and we struggled to reach that number.

Jun 5, 2024 9:01 AM CDT

Narcissistic Lawyers and Artificial Intelligence: A band of dysfunctional brothers?

“Your honor, no artificial intelligence was used to generate content in this document. However, we would also like to disclose that there is someone in the courtroom who exhibits highly narcissistic traits and, therefore, is likely to lie, project, confabulate and inflate the truth.” With the rise of narcissism and societal celebration and reward of narcissistic traits, is this where we are headed? Should we consider such disclosure requirements?

May 29, 2024 11:40 AM CDT

What’s the key to community lawyering? Less lawyering and more community

On a two-week visit to Thailand with our program director to visit several True Costs Initiative grantee partners, including the Community Resource Centre Foundation, I learned that real community lawyering looks nothing like “traditional” lawyering, and it is precisely that characteristic that makes it such a potent tool for protecting environmental and human rights.

May 22, 2024 3:13 PM CDT

A BigLaw suicide survivor’s prescription for the legal profession’s mental health crisis

I was young, single, healthy, confident and “bulletproof” when I entered law school immediately after college in 1978. I did not have any personal experience with anyone suffering mental health challenges. Mental health education and services were the furthest things from my mind.

May 16, 2024 3:28 PM CDT

A letter to young women lawyers about ‘SADNESS’ in the law

My dear sister (in law), welcome to our profession of stress, anxiety, depression, negativity, endangerment, sickness and suicide (also known as "SADNESS"). In addition to the SADNESS, many of us carry secrets, scars and an insatiable longing for change. They all dishearten, discourage and divide us in devastating ways. Yet you can prepare for and overcome them.

May 8, 2024 2:15 PM CDT

5 ways motherhood has leveled up your lawyer skills

From one mom to another, you may feel like you’re losing, but let’s discuss all that you have gained from motherhood. Here are five ways that being a mother has enhanced your skills as a lawyer.

May 1, 2024 8:58 AM CDT

Tikkun Olam: When public service is a sacred obligation

"Tikkun olam"—the “repair of the world.” This is not just an aspiration. For Jews, it is a sacred obligation. At least it was in my family. My parents, one of whom was a refugee from Nazi Germany, took this obligation very seriously. They were what might today be called “activists.”

Apr 4, 2024 1:33 PM CDT

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