The Life After Law School Podcast

No new audio for the moment, as I'm working through technical issues before releasing Part II of my interview with Thomas "cmdln" Gideon.

I am dropping into the feed the recent report from the U.S. Goverment Accountability Office (GAO) released on October 26, 2009, discussing the cost and access to law schools.  This is just the report itself and I will likely look at it more closely in a future episode.  The report is GA0-09-941 and you can find more information on the GAO and this report at their website http://www.gao.gov/ .

I'm going to work on the technical issues in the meantime.

Happy Halloween and we'll see you next time!

-Kevin

Back in December 2008, I was honored to interview Kimberly Alderman who is a freelance attorney working from wherever her keyboard is.  When I recorded this interview she was in Alaska and since then she has traveled to the American Southwest, up and down the Northeast corridor and back to the Southwest.  All the while, she kept up with her practice because it's not tied to any one place.  How's that for work-life balance?!?

She was also able to have a transcript made of the interview (How cool is that?!?) and she asked if I would like to place a copy in the feed here.  Of course I said yes!

The transcript is a PDF file and you can find its home on her blog, Lawyer On! The Contract Attorney's Blog at http://contractattorneys.wordpress.com/ .

You can also find her on her website, http://lawyerbird.com/ or you can follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nomadtoes .

Coming straight from the mind of J.C. Hutchinssssss...  For more information, check out http://jchutchins.net/site/personal-effects/

Personal Effects: Dark Art is fiction like you've never experienced -- and it deserves an equally innovative book trailer video. This ain't your father's book trailer. It's an ambitious mashup: part trailer, part author blurb. It was assembled on a shoestring budget, though I insist you'd never know.

Co-producer/editor Michael Bekemeyer and I spent months crafting this video for you. It's the first in a series; expect more "vlurb" installments in the weeks ahead, each featuring testimonials from icons in the horror storytelling industry. We're rewriting the rules of book promotion. We want you along for the ride.

Click play. Kick it into full-screen mode. Crank it up, and enjoy. And ... if you're feeling generous ... evangelize.

 

Please spread the word about this groundbreaking video promotion by embding the video on your blog. Email this page to friends. Tweet it. Facebook it. If you think this video is worthy of sharing, please do what you can to spread the word.

More videos are coming. Personal Effects: Dark Art. In bookstores everywhere this June.

Be afraid of The Dark.

--J.C.

UPDATE: Now available in the ubiquitous YouTube player. (Lower overall quality, but easier to share!)

While a murder mystery in a fantasy setting may not be everyone's cup of tea, I like it.  Not only do I like and aim to support author P.G. Holyfield in his endeavor, but this video promo is just beautiful!!

This promo might run a little long (almost 4 minutes) but it is just so gorgeous that I had to place it in the feed.

Damn you, Holyfield!!

Please let me know if you have any issues viewing this and if you want some more information on the novel and its author, check out the site at http://www.pgholyfield.com/maah/

I just wanted to wish you happiness and joy this holiday season.

Thank you for listening and I'll be back with you shortly!

-Kevin

I thought I had everything set to record the new episode and life throws you a curve ball, but this could be a very good one.

I just have to rework what I had ready when this little curve is over, but I think you'll like it.

My apologies for the long silence.

-Kevin

I'm sorry to say, but word has come down that there will not be a Copynight meeting in DC this month due to the holiday weekend.  So head home for the holidays earlier and enjoy some extra cranberry sauce.

Tip of the Hat to The Command Line for the first notice. (Sorry Joe)

-Kevin

I am quite honored to say that the Life After Law School Podcast is now listed with the Podcast Pickle.  The Pickle is an excellent directory for all types of podcasts.  Go and check them out




-Kevin

Yaah!!

The Life After Law School Podcast is now listed in iTunes!  It's searchable, subscribe-able and everything.

Go ahead and check it out in iTunes.  You can preview episodes, download them to your iPod and leave reviews.



Now I need to get back to recording!

-Kevin

Yes!!  Now you can add your voice to the mix!

Through the mysteries of the interwebs and the grace of K7, you can now call in your questions, comments and general verbage directly to the podcast.  Just remember that comments can (and probably will) be played on the podcast.

The number: (206) 203-0102

So give it a try!

-Kevin

At its heart, this podcast is a search for ways to survive as a young lawyer long enough to overcome the financial hurdles and lack of practical legal skills to earn a career.  Newly minted law grads face a radically different world at the beginning of their careers from the one that hiring committees walked into.  Legal education has remained in the early 20th century while market forces have rocketed the business of law to heights undreamed of, leaving the legal profession behind.

This podcast is part search, part chronicle and mainly a different point of view of the legal industry than the one normally presented.  The present view of the law is dominated by the culture of BigLaw firms which influences bar leadership, legal press, public impressions and the expectations of law students.  BigLaw does have its place in the legal landscape and fills its niches very well, its just casting too long a shadow over the rest of the law for other stories to be told.

I want to look at these other stories and other paths or definitions of success in the law.  We'll look at the forces that have shaped the legal industry's past and present to try and predict where it will go in the future.  These questions are geared to young lawyers who are trying to start their career, but the topics will be of interest to law students who will soon enter the workforce and prelaw students who are thinking of going to law school.  The three different stages of people all have the same ultimate goal: to become a successful lawyer.  Each one has a different point of view of the business of law with different questions that I think will surprise and inform the others.

This is a search for a different model of success, for many models to fit different people in whatever way they seem fit.  Lend me an ear.

A podcast is simply a different way of delivering content to an audience.  The main difference is that it is the audience chooses what and when they will consume.  Through the magic of Adam Curry and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds content authors can set up feeds that will deliver that content to the audience when and where they choose.

Unlike traditional broadcast media which decides what programs to run and when to run them, you as the audience member can choose what programs you wish to watch or listen to and you receive them in your podcatcher as soon as they are placed in the feed.

There is some debate as to where the name "podcasting" comes from.  It is commonly thought that it comes from Apple's iPod which helped popularize podcasts, but others consider it to be a shortened version of Programming On-Demand casting.  Like all legends, there is probably a little truth to both stories.

Podcasts are consumed through RSS aggregators, also known as podcatchers.  The single largest and most used podcatcher is iTunes which has helped with the popularity of podcasts with Apple's iPod media players.  Or was that the other way around?

Podcatchers:

iTunes
Juice
Doppler
Songbird
Podcast Ready
Zune Marketplace
PodNova
Google Reader

For more information, check out the following resources:
Podcasting Article at Wikipedia
Podcasting for Dummies, 2nd Edition by Tee Morris, Chuck Tomasi and Evo Terra

Avatar Image from Face Your Manga

It's finally getting a little quiet around here with the leaves turning color and the air cooling to a crisp.  It also means that the cicadas that live in the tree right outside my window are finally falling silent.  That's one set of the bugs that have been plaguing me here as I continue to get everything ready.

I've also worked out a number of technical bugs that have held me back.  I've plugged the pipeline allowing me to convert recordings to MP3, which was such an incredibly easy fix that I'm embarrassed that it held me up.  I've also figured out answers to my image and music issues.  The last technical glitch is ambient noise which is partially dealt with by the passing of the cicadas, but I'm also working on a collapsible rig to assist with that.

Another big bug in everyone's bonnet is the extremely accelerated rate of change present today.  Most of that has to do with the current economic downturn and the resulting media play the economy is getting with the presidential election.  Law firms and lawyers are also going through a number of changes due to market forces.  The first large change was the amount of chatter generated by Professor Bill Henderson's blog post on the rise of the bi-modal distribution in salaries.  I would like to take more time in the near future to discuss his findings, but for now I'll just say that the amount of discussion this generated has been eye-opening.  But Professor Henderson did not stop there and his posts kept coming and coming.  Before we could digest the ideas presented by Professor Henderson, the economy hit us very hard.  Firms have broken up, delayed incoming classes of new attorneys, fired dozens of lawyers and then Wall Street blew up.  Market forces are in play and they are going to change the way law operates as a business in the same way that market forces drove up associate pay and partner profits.  There will be much to discuss.

But the biggest bug has been myself.  In late August I started a contract gig that quickly fell into a hard burn of 80+ hour weeks and that just sucked the life out of me.  That job is over now, another victim of the credit crunch.  While it might happen for a week or so in the future, I do not want to go this long again without placing something in the feed.

You'll hear from me soon.

-Kevin

Avatar image - Face Your Manga

I must offer my apologies as I am running waaay behind my schedule right now.  Real Life does have that annoying habit of getting in the way of good ideas.

It was a perfect right-left combo.  The right cross is my still existing technical issues and the left hook is that I was cut from my job.  On the technical side, I'm still lacking artwork and music and while I have answers in the works, they will take some time to work through.  I have recorded pieces and episodes, but they basically sound like slop in a tin can.  My current studio is my dining room and I have very little defense to the ambient noise all around.  That is another work in progress as I have a plan but lack the materials.  And the time...

I was cut two weeks ago from my previous gig, which did last a good long time.  I was given an hour's notice on a Friday afternoon and while that doesn't sound like much, the staff attorneys handled it rather well.  I did spend the weekend in the gloom and doom, but early in the next week I was able to secure a new gig.  It's a short term electronic document discovery job with heavy, heavy hours.  It's the heavy overtime that's currently keeping me from working on my recording issues.  But I am searching for further solutions, researching topics and working on the episodes themselves.

My largest concern right now is that time and events are passing before me and the issues I want to tackle are changing rapidly.  In order to move on with the overall conversation, I need to bring into this feed what is going on in the world around us.  So while I work on the technical issues with the audio podcast, I will blog what's happening in this feed.  While I find that to be a rather insignificant use of the power of LibSyn, it will be a better use than I am currently making of it.  Once the podcast is up and running, it will take precedence in the feed but the blog will supplement it.

So instead of tickling your eardrums, I will entrance your eyeballs.  Thank you for your patience.

-Kevin

Hi there,

While I'm working behind the curtain on some of the technical issues, I'd like to post some contact information for your questions, comments and suggestions.

Website:  http://lifeafterlawschool.libsyn.com
Email: lifeafterlawschool@gmail.com
Skype: kncrosby
Twitter: Baelen

I'll be adding other ways to contact in the near future, as well as a regular contact info section in the sidebar.  Right now, the technical issues I'm working are including music, including graphics, adding in HTML modules in Libsyn and reducing the ambient noise in my "studio".  It doesn't help that the new family who just moved into the apartment right on the other side of the wall from my rig just *loooooves* Rock Band.

That's all for now and thanks for keeping your eyes (and ears) open here!

-Kevin

Hello,

I'd like to thank you for stopping by and seeing the beginning of this new podcast.  I have just activated the account here at Libsyn and would like to thank them very much for their awesome product.

Scripts are being recorded, interviews are being sought and I'm searching for artwork and music to set the mood.  Keep coming back and keep an eye on the changes.

-Kevin