Law Affair is the relationship almost every lawyer has with his or her profession. It’s been often said that the law is a jealous mistress. This is because the legal profession requires so much of a lawyer’s time and energy, a lawyer tends to emerse one’s self in the law rather than life itself!
This particular blog is about my law affair, for good or worse. I will try to not make it personal in the sense of writing about my everyday life outside of the law, although I suspect that you will need context to understand how my law affair affects my life, my friends, my family, my colleagues, and my profession. I hope to show not a purely glorious view of being a lawyer, but rather a more realistic one.
To understand my law affair, I should import a few basic descriptions of my and my practice of law. I am a 43-year-old male attorney living in Houston and working throughout Texas in state and federal trial courts and courts of appeals. I have been a true solo practitioner, associate at small firms (6-8 lawyers), and managing attorney/owner of a small firm (3-4 lawyers). My career has had definite phases, but I’ve been a litigator in every phase. I am currently divorced with no kids, living in an apartment about 10 minutes from my office in southwest Houston. I use Dell computers in the office and Macs at home. My current practice is a primarily collections-based practice, and I have six staff members and no associates.
My law affair is full of courtroom activities, managing piles of incoming paper and demands of clients, and working long days to keep it all up. I also volunteer my time as a bar association leader and community volunteer. Although I hope to live out my later years at a slower pace than I currently have, I do not see myself ever retiring from the practice of law. Being a divorce lawyer is who I am, and it’s hard to turn that off; hence, my law affair.
