This summer, I turned 70 years old, and I’m delighted to be still practicing law. I didn’t start law school until I was 34 and had three school-age daughters in tow when I started my 1-L year at Harvard. I was a few weeks short of my 36th birthday when I received my law degree.
Then and now, lawyers of every age and vintage tell me that the most difficult thing they do is networking. Even the boldest extroverts must overcome their reticence when it comes to socializing at a bar conference. But you probably learned everything you need to know about networking before you started school.
I am the fifth of nine children of a mother who, not once but twice, pulled up stakes and emigrated halfway across the world. Born in Tipperary, Mother emigrated to Australia with her parents and younger brother when she was six. Sixteen years later, a few days before Christmas in 1944, while serving as a hostess at a Red Cross dance for soldiers on R&R from the front lines, she met a handsome and courteous GI from Mobile, Alabama. They spent nine days in each other’s company, and nine months as sweethearts who wrote to each other daily, before they married. They shared a few months together as a married couple in Australia before Daddy was demobilized back to Alabama. Mother waited a full year from the day Daddy left her side while she bore my eldest brother, Paul, and he reached three months of age to allow her and my brother to be “shipped” to the States. Four days after they passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, Mother and Paul arrived by train in Mobile. She knew precisely one person, her husband, whom she had not seen for a year.
My parents gave parties. Perhaps it wasn’t a thousand or even hundreds (as it felt to me then), but there were often people at my childhood home whom I didn’t know. But my mother was always insistent. “You don’t have to like the party. You don’t have to stay at the party. But you must introduce yourself to everyone you meet and tell them, ‘You are welcome here.’” Unspoken was that, as soon as your greetings were over, you could take your jug of water, an apple, and your latest library book to the top of the nearest oak and spend the rest of the day as you wished.
As we grew older, Mother preached, “Pretend you are the host. Make everyone as comfortable as you know how.” What we soon realized was that sometimes we liked the people we met. Occasionally, we could even help them. When a guest inquired, “Where’s the bathroom?” we showed them. A schoolmate’s mom might say, “I don’t know where to buy fabric here.” And I could direct her to the finest fabric store in a hundred miles.
Networking for lawyers is exactly the same. Be the host. Tell everyone how glad you are that they came. Welcome them as if they’re visiting your home. Listen for ways to help them. One might be looking for an expert witness when, across the room, you see someone who was a superb expert in your own case a few years back. Introduce them. You will help them both, and they’ll remember that you did.
Finally, ask them for help. If you need work, tell them so and ask them for referrals. Because you have made them welcome, they will be inclined to offer a helping hand. That’s networking by my mother. It’s genius. And it works.
I’m so glad you read this little note. You are most welcome in my world. I’d be so pleased to know you. I’m a constitutional and commercial litigator. Please send referrals.
