New Blawgs

What's interesting about "blogging" is how easy it's making it for everyone to tap into diverse perspectives on a common subject. For example, for a prospective law student, it's easy to find blogs written by law students or lawyers to see first-hand whether they are generally content with their choice of profession. I never had that perspective before I went to law school, since I didn't come from a family of lawyers.

My perspective, for example, is of a lawyer perfectly at ease (ok, in love) with my job as a civil litigator. Another, less gleeful, perspective is offered by the satirical Anonymous Lawyer. I'll let Stay of Execution and RWL speak for themselves rather than try to characterize them, but their authors too offer unique insights into how they view their profession. And then there's one of my all-time favorite commentators on the profession, who doesn't hesitate to take a critical perspective: f/k/a. There are of course many others, such as those listed to the left of this page.

All this came to mind because of my recent discovery of 2 brand new blogs with equally unique perspectives. The first is Yeoman Lawyer, who I'd describe as a disgruntled farmer/litigator from the Midwest who's wondering whether he needs to make a career change. The second is Biens Moebles, an anonymous associate somewhere in blogland who's written some well-thought out posts about the profession, based in part on an obviously significant amount of reading he's done on the subject, in addition to his personal experiences.

My personal approach to life in general is to accumulate as many perspectives as I can, and make decisions only after I've considered those perspectives. It's just not right, in my personal view, to consider only one side of an issue before drawing a particular conclusion. And, to stick up for the optimistic half of this specific debate, I think that the voices of pessimists in our profession are usually louder than those of the optimists. This is a function of human nature and no one's fault in particular, but I am glad to do my part in representing those many lawyers out there who truly love the law. Am I in a minority? Maybe, maybe not. What's more important: simply whether or not I'm in a minority, or understanding the underlying reasons why I feel the way I do?