Back to Work (That’s a Pun)

Posted on June 7th, 2010 by Tim Eavenson | 1 Comment »
Filed under: Housekeeping |

Photo by Venn Diagram (Flickr)

Hey, everybody! Long time! Good to see you again – you’re looking good. What do you think of the new digs?

Sorry to take up so much space on housekeeping matters. Now that I’ve got things pretty much how I want them design-wise, I wanted to dedicate one quick post to fill you in on my decisions about content. Then it’s back to business! I know all 3 of my regular readers are super-excited.

As I said earlier, I’ve been taking the past few months to figure out what I can and can’t do with the blog while working as a judicial clerk. This deliberation was partly because of the ethical issues involved in me pumping out posts on issues that may end up before my judge,¹ but that’s not the only thing that held me up. To be honest, the ethical stuff wasn’t that hard to work out: I’m going to eliminate any advice from my posts, obviously, but I can still write about cases and events (you know, “facts”), and I’ve always been careful not to get too personal or biased.

Once I really started thinking about it, though, I had another problem: there’s other stuff that I wanted to write about – things unrelated to substantive labor and employment law, having to do moreso with being a lawyer. I thought about starting a second blog, but that seemed stupid. God knows I hardly keep this one going; two blogs with no content is like two wallets with no money.

Plus, all the marketing and social media advice and blogs-about-blogs that I’d read said not to deviate from your site’s laser-focus, or you could destroy your online brand and lose credibility with your core demo.²

I went back and forth on this for too long, and then realized the following:

1. Right now, this isn’t actually my business. I’m not practicing, or trying to win clients, or market myself or anything; and
2. I didn’t start the blawg as a marketing tool! I actually wanted to add to the discourse, not just float a running advertisement for Tim, Employment Lawyer on the internet.

After these epiphanies, I decided that most of the people who read this site are lawyers, and I was probably over-thinking the whole damned thing and should just write whatever I felt like writing.

So that’s what I’m going to do. While the site will always be focused on employment law, when I need to fill in the gaps, I’m just going to write. About being a lawyer, especially a young lawyer.³ Or about being a dad lawyer. Or a lawyer with a blog and a Twitter account and a LinkedIn profile.

I am also planning on writing some (carefully-worded, fully approved) posts on being a judicial clerk; this job is giving me a front row seat to see how lawyers deal with judges and each other, and I don’t want to waste that vantage point.

So, there you go. Back to work – mine and everybody else’s.

Big boy posts start tomorrow.

~~ Footnotes ~~

1. While most employment litigation is federal, not all is. And some big employment issues, like noncompetes and wage-and-hour class actions, land in the Chancery Division, which is where I work. |↩|
2. Seriously, I worried about this. Re-reading it, I’m not sure I even know what I just wrote. |↩|
3. I passed the bar 2 years ago, and my entire perspective has changed. It takes some work to realize how wrong you are about what you think you know. |↩|

Where I’ve Been

Posted on February 25th, 2010 by Tim Eavenson | 1 Comment »
Filed under: Housekeeping |

“Delay is preferable to error.” – Thomas Jefferson

Well, it’s been a while.  Sorry to disappear for so long without leaving word of my forwarding address.

As many of you know, I have been on the hunt for a full-time legal job for some time.  I haven’t posted much on CE during these months; every time I sat down to write, I felt like I was betraying my job search (and, in turn, those who relied on my income).  I always assumed that when I found my next job, I would give it a few weeks to settle in, and then dive back into CE with a newfound enthusiasm.

Well, in January, I found my next step.  I am currently clerking for a judge in the Chancery Division of the Cook County Circuit Court.  It’s a phenomenal experience. (Emergency TROs to enforce noncompetes, administrative review of public-sector employment issues, analysis of every type of contract known to man… stop me when you’re jealous.)

A downside, though, is that I’m just not sure what this unexpected position means for the blog.  Suddenly, I have to worry about things that never were an issue before. Like impartiality. While CE has been purely informational (at best), much of it is tailored to specific types of clients, and occasionally meanders into legal advice.

I cannot practice while I’m clerking, for obvious reasons¹ , and I need to make sure that my work out here in the wild west of professional responsibility that is legal blogging doesn’t affect my ability to appropriately do my job.

I don’t think that CE is dead, or that my blogging days are over.  I love this blog, and my twitter account, and all the people I have e-met because of them.² I just don’t know exactly what direction CE can or will take in the near term, and am therefore taking the preferable route to error and holding off for now.

While I figure it out, please enjoy these other labor and employment blogs that were always much better than mine, anyway:

Gruntled Employees

Ohio Employer’s Law Blog

Work Matters

Connecticut Employment Law Blog

Delaware Employment Law Blog

HR Lawyer’s Blog

~~ Footnotes ~~

1. I’ve (also obviously) taken down the “Hire Tim” info, and will be re-vamping the “about” section and all that. |↩|
2. In fact, I would need two hands to count the people I’ve never met face-to-face who have helped me time and again during my job search. |↩|