Can you really say no to new opportunities?

In a recent post, Tammy Lenski suggests that “[t]here’s a lot of wisdom in saying no” to a offer of engagement that is new and different from anything you have done before and is a “stretch” for your skill level and experience. She cites a blog entry from Marketing Mix discussing the same issue.

After reading both Ms. Lenski’s bio and that of the authors of Marketing Mix, I wonder how much of this viewpoint is based on life-experience and professional training. Neither is an attorney. At the beginning of your legal career, (and I would posit just about any professional career), just about every assignment offered to you is a “stretch” for your skill level and experience. Freshly minted lawyers, no matter what silk stocking law school they attended, are ill-prepared for just about every assignment given to them save for fetching coffee. But large law firms routinely have young attorneys assume tasks far beyond their experience level.

Within weeks of my first “real” law firm job, I was sent off to try a case. Alone. Granted, it was Magistrate’s Court (claims under $15,000), but I was still responsible for protecting the client’s rights and seeing to it that he prevailed. I had friends from law school who entered District Attorney’s offices and were sent off to try criminal cases within their first week on the job. Some enterprising young lawyers even went into practice for themselves. Straight out of law school.

And it isn’t limited to your first years of practice. While you may eventually get to a level of comfort about certain subject matter, or in front of a jury or appellate panel, you really cannot become truly good at what you do unless you stretch yourself. One of my most fulfilling assignments in my 11 years of practicing law was working with a large insurer overseeing claims for over $120 million dollars of property damage relating to Hurricane Ivan. Before that assignment, I had no experience working with this particular client (who was quite unique in culture), nor with the insurance coverage issues involved. When it was offered to me, I simply said, “yes, I’ll do it.” I made a few mistakes along the way, but in the end, I learned a lot.

I fully appreciate the caveat that doing a poor job at something at which you are inexperienced can hurt your reputation, but undertaking jobs outside your comfort/skill/experience level is how you learn, grow, and gain experience. I can think of a dozen cliches and proverbs to illustrate this principle. My favorite is an Italian proverb, “Chi non risica non rosica” – loosely translated as “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Remembering September 11th

When at all possible, I try to avoid posting politically charged or motivated topics, and the particularly personal. Today, however, I want to talk a little about remembering the September 11th attacks. Those who know me know that, to this day, six years later, I can barely discuss it without getting somewhat emotional. Some know why, most don’t. I am hoping my remembrance will prove somewhat cathartic.

I grew up in suburban New Jersey, not far from Manhattan as the crow flies – about 25 miles. My father worked in a bedroom community called Rutherford, along Route 3, one of the major arteries into Manhattan. Some of my earliest memories are
of the times we would visit my father to watch him coach basketball or take trips into “the City,” as we all called it. As you travel east towards Manhattan on Route 3, there is a hill from which the entire island of Manhattan is spread out before you. On a clear day, particularly in the winter, all of the landmarks are vividly outlined against the blue sky – the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, and further off to the south, the Twin Towers and the Statue of Liberty. I couldn’t begin to tell you how often I witnessed that sight. If I close my eyes, I still can.

My father had a particular affinity for Lower Manhattan – the excitement of Wall Street, the history of Trinity Church, where Alexander Hamilton is buried and Fraunces Tavern, where the Sons of Liberty met. There were the tall ships docked at South Street Seaport. Battery Park and Castle Clinton. The ferry to the Statue of Liberty and later, a restored and glorious Ellis Island, where our ancestors arrived. A long walk or short cab ride away were the sights, sounds and smells of Little Italy and Chinatown. And of course, the stunning views from the observation deck of Tower 2 of the World Trade Center. When most people think of NYC, they think Times Square, Broadway, Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building. Those are for tourists. To us, the action was in Lower Manhattan.

That was why when my wife and I visited the City on September 9, 2001, we took the water taxi from Jersey City over to the World Trade Center. It was a stunning late summer day – clear and warm. We walked around the bottom of the WTC and even contemplated going up to the observation deck, but had to meet friends in SoHo. We had a wonderful time that day, having breakfast with friends in SoHo, walking around the galleries, meeting my sister, brother in law and cousins in Little Italy for a late lunch. It seems a lifetime ago.

48 hours later, everything would change. From the moment the first plan struck, I told my wife, “That was not an accident” and sat, nearly shell shocked, glued to the TV and the internet. My initial and immediate concern was that my father was scheduled to fly back to his home in Florida that morning. We eventually learned that he was alive and safe. But he had witnessed the horror first hand. Newark Airport is only 8 or so miles from Ground Zero. The view to the World Trade Center was unobstructed from the airport terminals.

Because of my connections with New York and particular the neighborhoods where the WTC stood, the events that days seem far more personal to me than I would suppose it would to the average person. But it was sometime later when we would learn just how personal.

I’m not sure exactly when, whether it was that day or later, but my sister called out of the blue, crying. Her only words were, “Father Mike is dead.”

Father Mike, or The Reverend Fr. Mychal F. Judge, OFM, as he had come to be known, was our parish priest in the 1980’s. He was a larger-than-life character. He was never seen without a smile on his face. He lit up a room and raised spirits wherever he went. He gave my sister her first communion and heard my first confession. He attended parties at our house and others, and watched CYO basketball games. He was rarely, if ever, seen dressed in anything other than the robes that identified him as a Franciscan friar. And he was gleefully unaware of modern culture.

Once, while conducting the Christmas mass, he gathered the children around the altar and asked each one what they had received that morning. When one child told him, “A Transformer”, Fr. Mike looked out among the adults in the crowd and without a hint of irony said, “It’s so nice to see that children still play with model trains.” Of course, the child meant the toy that recently spawned a multi-million dollar movie of the same name.

We lost track of Father Mike when we moved to a new town and he moved on to Lower Manhattan and later became the Catholic Chaplain for the New York Fire Department. But he never left our thoughts. There is even a small part of me (a remnant of Catholic guilt) that feels that I have let him down because I’ve left the Church.

When my sister told me he had died in the attack, I cried. I cried like a child for what seemed like hours. I still struggle to recall the events of that day or to think of Father Mike without welling up with tears.

I’m not sure there is a point to my ramblings this morning. I really didn’t plan to write this, but my father sent me an email with two words and a picture:

Father Mike

We must never forget those who lost their lives that day.

Another job they don’t tell you about on Career Day – Mediating in the Caribbean

The Barbados newspaper The Nation reports that

MORE BARBADIANS are being trained in mediation amid calls for the justice system to place greater emphasis on alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to settle disputes.

Well, damn! Sign me up, mon.

Millionaire U.S. Rep. wins lottery again

If the lottery is a tax on the stupid, then sign me up for moron classes from U.S. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner. Already a multi-millionaire and an heir to the Kimberly-Clark fortune, Rep. Sensenbrenner has won the lottery. For the third time.

The AP reports that

The Republican hit it big in 1997 with a $250,000 jackpot in the District of Columbia lottery. Then, last spring, he won $1,000 prize in the Wisconsin lottery, and he won another $1,000 in that lottery last week.

If I could only be that stupid.

Since the cat’s out of the bag – 40 Mediation Sites in 40 Minutes

It looks like the super cyber sleuths Vickie Pynchon and Stephanie West Allen have outed Geoff Sharp’s high-tech online presentation about mediation resources on the web, 40 Sites in 40 Minutes.

I’m featured on the list! It’s flattering that my fledging blog is receiving attention from one of the pioneers of mediation related blogging. I guess I should post less about the Pants Judge and more about mediation now.

Thanks, Geoff.

Is there a place for “spirituality” in mediation?

Over the weekend, while I was drinking beer, grilling burgers and watching football (both kinds!), Geoff Sharp started an interesting dialogue on the role of “spirituality” in mediation. In his first post, he commented upon a recent article discussing the roots of cooperation in game theory, ending with the question, “What does spirituality have to do with mediation or conflict resolution?”

This prompted some interesting comments which Geoff decided to republish in a post of their own.

If you haven’t already visited Geoff’s site, I encourage you to join the debate.

Click on the “Read On” link below to read my comment in its entirety.

ABA Journal Asks Prominent Lawyers “If you represented Bin Laden…”

In the September 2007 issue of the ABA Journal, some of America’s best-known defense lawyers and legal commentators talk about how they would represent the world’s most vilified defendant. Some of the responses were predictable (Greta Van Sustern saying she’d refuse to represent him) and others were not (Ron Kuby saying he’d excuse himself if Bin Laden agreed to cooperate with the Feds).

Even though I was not a criminal lawyer and recall very little about that part of my legal education, the article is an interesting “though experiment” on what might happen if we ever catch the western world’s Public Enemy #1.