I was a judicial law clerk and an Army lawyer, then spent 26 years as a civil service lawyer with the Department of Treasury, National Archives, Small Business Administration, and United States Agency for International Development. I moonlighted as a writer, IT consultant, and website designer for lawyers from 1996 until 2003, when I got tired of working full-time and then coming home to work more. When I retired in 2019, I resumed writing about IT and started a new consulting practice. Didn’t want to sit around and become a vegetable, right?
Sometimes, I think it’s a wonder that I became a lawyer at all. I grew up in the West Virginia coal fields. As the New York Times said of my home, “McDowell County, the poorest in West Virginia, has been emblematic of entrenched American poverty for more than a half-century.”[i] An academic study concluded that of 3,142 counties in the United States, McDowell County ranked last in life expectancy.
Coal mining is not a lucrative line of work, and the cyclical nature of the business meant that whenever my father was laid off, we survived on welfare and food stamps. We did not have an indoor bathtub or toilet until I was 14 years old. I don’t remember seeing a dentist until I left the coal fields and got a job.
McDowell County is not the most promising launching pad for a professional career, but I was blessed to have an extraordinary high school teacher, Freida Riley. One of her students, Homer Hickam, became a NASA engineer and wrote about her in his memoir Rocket Boys. It was later made into the 1999 movie October Sky, with Laura Dern playing this inspirational teacher. The National Museum of Education’s Freida J. Riley Teacher Award annually recognizes “an American teacher who overcomes adversity or makes an enormous sacrifice in order to positively impact students.”
She certainly impacted me in a positive way. I may never have attended college, let alone become a lawyer, without her influence.
On passing the bar and completing a judicial clerkship I made a good decision: Entering the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. The experience I gained as an Army lawyer working in so many different areas, including litigation, contracting, fiscal law, labor relations, government ethics, and personnel matters, helped me succeed as a civil service lawyer with multiple federal agencies.
When my peers selected me for the Career Achievement Award for my work as a counsel to the federal Inspectors General. Inspectors General are independent watchdogs charged with fighting waste, fraud, and abuse of government funds. Their website explains their mission.
I was an IG lawyer for 20 years at multiple agencies, but I never saw myself as working for only one particular agency. As I saw it, my client was the federal government. I always looked for things I could do that would benefit multiple agencies and the government as a whole. This attitude did not always win me favor with my supervisors, but most of them at least tolerated my spending large amounts of time on interagency efforts.
I thought IG work was the best job any lawyer could have. I looked forward to going to work every day because I felt that I was fighting for the right things, and I thought I had a chance to make a difference.
I developed a reputation as a community resource on substantive legal issues relevant to inspectors general, but most likely, my most important contributions involved IT. This included improving knowledge management for government lawyers using intranets and internet mailing lists (“listservs”). I was particularly proud of writing the article “Adventures in Cyberspace: An Inspector General’s Guide to the Internet” for The Journal of Public Inquiry (Summer 1995). So far as I know, this was the first article that attempted to explain practical uses of the internet in a way government managers with no technical background could understand.
I would have started writing articles and teaching CLE classes earlier. Because I lacked confidence in my writing and speaking ability, I did not write any professional articles or teach any CLE classes until I was 43 years old. After I gained experience, I realized that in order to write an article or teach a class, you don’t need to be a world-class expert nor a great writer, nor a great teacher. You only need two things:
The IT revolution has created a new world for lawyers. Artificial Intelligence will bring giant new changes that we are only beginning to understand. The internet changed the way we communicate. AI will change how we do our work.
My first post-law-student, post-newbie-lawyer membership was in 1997. I wanted to expand my professional network. This turned out much better than I might have expected. I got to know and work with some extraordinary lawyers, including Richard Granat, winner of the ABA Legal Rebel Award for his work in improving access to justice; Greg Siskind, a top immigration lawyer also known for his leadership in lawyer marketing and innovative use of technology; and Dennis Kennedy, longtime author of the ABA Journal IT column, now a podcaster and law school professor.
I originally signed up for six subgroups, but over the years dropped all but the divisions that had helped me most: Law Practice Management and Government and Public Lawyers.
Networking was the biggest benefit, but exposure to ABA publications was also important. Incidentally, let me put in a plug for Jennifer Rose’s book Second Acts for Solo and Small Firm Lawyers (ABA 2019), an exploration of post-retirement options likely to be of interest to many Experience readers.
Absent the ABA, I never would have learned about the visionary Burgess Allison, the IT columnist for ABA Law Practice magazine and author of the best-selling book The Lawyer’s Guide to the Internet (ABA 1995). I will always envy his talent for translating technical issues into engaging prose.
Publication of my first book, The Complete Internet Handbook for Lawyers (ABA 1999), and related articles for ABA magazines The Judges’ Journal, The Public Lawyer, Pass It On, and Experience.
Since 1989, I have been interested in IT, including computer networking over primitive internet precursors like CompuServe, AOL, and Bulletin Board Systems. This meant that when the World Wide Web began to enter general use in 1993, I had a head start in understanding the Internet and the ways it could benefit lawyers. I felt a responsibility to help other lawyers learn how to use this strange new resource. I found I also enjoyed teaching.
ABA Publishing wanted to sell the book for $120, but I insisted they charge no more than $40. I wanted to get the information to as many lawyers as possible. I believe the ABA’s marketing experience helped this happen.
Being invited to work on the ABA’s eLawyering Task Force was another career highlight. The goal was to use technology, especially the internet, to help lawyers tap into “the latent legal market,” people who could afford to pay something for legal services.
The Two-Fer concept of helping the middle class while creating new profit centers for lawyers had great appeal, but I liked it more than most. I believed that if the project were successful, there would eventually be trickle-down benefits to the decidedly non-middle-class people I grew up with. I was all in on eLawyering. Absent visionary ABA President Bill Paul, I would never have had a chance to make a contribution.
Several teachers showed me that an educator can change lives for the better. Big Creek High School teacher Frieda Riley taught me the importance of clear thinking and accurate analysis. Concord College teacher J.B. Shrewsbury taught me to write. University of Kentucky Law School teacher Bobby Gene Lawson taught me how to analyze legal issues. I’ll never teach as well as them, but few things are more satisfying than seeing confusion and ignorance morph into comprehension and confidence.
