[Dean's World] Ron Coleman: Never the same way back

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Posted by Ron Coleman:
Never the same way back
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1149520571.shtml


   I turned out the lights for the last time last night. It was a dark
   and stormy night... I sound like Snoopy, writing that -- I'm about as
   hairy with my new beard, too -- but the cliche moment was just so
   perfect, and no less sad for all that, that (Snoopy-like) I couldn't
   resist.

   I started my own law firm three years ago. I was not one of these
   dreamers who always wanted to be his own boss, though perhaps I did
   have the problem of always behaving as if I were my own boss even when
   I was not. I have lots of ambition, no lack of ego, but being "the
   guy" in a law firm was not one of the accomplishments I craved. I
   actually enjoyed the prestige of being in an established institution.
   But having worked as an associate and eventually as a partner in no
   fewer than six firms not my own, I was eventually left to my own
   devices to build my own practice in my areas of expertise, mainly
   commercial litigation, Internet law and trademarks, copyright and
   unfair competition.

   I succeeded at that. I got some very good clients, and I got some very
   good results from them, and I got paid. But I failed, and badly, at
   running a business. I was not cost-conscious enough; I delegated too
   much and paid too much to delegates; I invested in a couple of
   practice areas that were not justified by the volume of business; I
   was such a poor admnistrator that I racked up untold thousands in late
   fees, penalties and the like.

   Everyone around me suffered from my mistakes, except my clients, and
   the handful of fellow oddballs who managed to collect fairly regular
   (at least till the beginning) paychecks. Just about everyone made
   money (even if not as much as they would have liked) except me.

   I had built the firm from the begining with the expectation that,
   given my credentials and experience, it would eventually be acquired.
   I negotiated with prospective suitors for years. It took longer than I
   thought it would, though during that time my position got stronger and
   stronger as my practice gained in focus, track record and size.

   I found a [1]new professional home a couple of months ago, and the
   first day of the affiliation was June 1st. Unfortunately, I wasn't
   able to take any of the able bodies who had worked for me with me, for
   various reasons. None of them is worse off than they had been before I
   hired them (all were, in fact, unemployed or severely underemmployed
   when I did) but I miss them. Even then the strain of transition,
   including the coincidental fact that I was at the bottom of the
   boom-and-bust cash flow cycle that small firms suffer, plus the
   insecurity of those I left behind, added to the need to unwind from
   various financial commitments related to the old firm (or find ways to
   digest them), all while staying on top of client work, made a goodbye
   luncheon impossible.

   On our last day, May 31st, they ran out like bats out of hell. Well,
   they had no reason to stay.

   More or less alone, I unpacked my professional world in to a million
   cardboard boxes (themselves fairly expensive), and couriered them or
   -- in the wee hours of the morning, when you can actually park in
   Midtown Manhttan -- drove them and schlepped them -- up to my new
   office on the 30th floor of an East Side skyscraper so associated with
   its own vanity that it's known as the "Lipstick Building."
   [Lipstick_Building.1.jpg]

   It's a big step up from the "Class B" second-floor walkup where my
   main office was previously located. But now I'm here all alone, with
   new partners who seem to me to be perfectly good guys. I am looking
   forward to the new thing.

   So last night I drove my 12-year-old son home from his evening of
   helping me pack, unloaded boxes of legal pads, Post-Its and staples
   through the pouring rain, into the garage, and then turned around
   again for the office ten minutes from home. Alone I packed up last of
   the boxes, which I imagine I'll be living out of for weeks to come. I
   had a habit for the three years I was there, in a firm I never really
   intended to last, of leaving the flourescent light under the hutch
   behind my desk on all night long. "We never close" was my motto --
   indeed people expecting to leave late night messages were frequently
   surprised to find me sitting at my desk at nine, ten, eleven at night.
   I was, after all, left to my own devices, and as poorly as I may have
   done it, if I didn't pay the bills or cut the payroll checks or
   reconfigure the network, no one else was going to.

   And by about 10 PM I was done. I came to terms with the idea that you
   don't -- this is a universal custom -- you don't clean up every last
   paper clip; indeed, every business on earth today utilizes, however
   unwittingly, a number of the primordial paper clips created on the
   Sixth Day of Creation, bequeathed to it by previous office and
   furniture users and passed on ad infinitum. But everything else was
   packed up and piled in the back of my Maxima or distributed into one
   of about a dozen thin plastic garbage bags distributed across the now
   cavernous, empty office, where as many as six lawyers and two
   assistants on my payroll once labored, the floor dotted with loose
   strands of shredded paper and several archipelagos of hole-punch
   chads, and one by one and I went through the offices, double-checked
   the drawers and cabinets, turned off the lights, and prepared to walk
   out for the last time into the black, wet night.

   And when I got to the front of the suite I realized I'd left the light
   on my hutch on, all the way in the back. And back I went, past all the
   phantom work stations, and extinguished it. Now closed.

   I read later last night about a person who had attended a funeral and
   asked a rabbi why there is a custom to return from a cemetery by a
   different route whence you went there. The rabbi said, How could you
   ever go to a funeral and not be changed? How could you ever go back
   the same way?

References

   1. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/deanesmay/posts/www.bragarwexler.com