By Erin Giglia

Actually, as luck would have it, we are in two books.  We are happy and excited to share that Montage Legal Group is mentioned in two excellent books – Life After Law by Liz Brown and Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte.

Life After Law: Finding Work You Love With the J.D. You Have 

By Liz Brown

Liz Brown is a former litigation partner at an international law firm.  She graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and has practiced law in San Francisco, London, and Boston, advising senior executives at Fortune 500 companies on legal strategies and managing multi-million dollar cases from inception to successful resolution.  She is the former Executive Director in Boston of Golden Seeds, one of the largest angel investor networks in the United States.  She now teaches business law at Bentley University and is a frequent speaker on alternative law careers.  Liz specializes in helping lawyers transition the skills and training gained in law school and in legal practice into success in alternative careers.

In her book, Life After Law, Liz discusses and profiles former attorneys using their legal skills and training to succeed in other industries, such as baking, counseling, and entrepreneurship.  Liz explores the idea that law school and legal practice provides lawyers with valuable skills – negotiation, organization, attention to important details, communication, and strategizing – which are helpful in professions outside the legal field.  Lawyers are among the most educated and brightest people, yet statistically have low job satisfaction.  Law can be a fulfilling career for some, but it is not for everyone.  Liz Brown argues that lawyers need not feel stuck in the legal profession if they do not enjoy it.   Skills gained in law school and in practice can easily transfer into other industries and fields.

Liz discusses special challenges that women lawyers face including discrimination, difficulties making partner, and motherhood.  Liz profiles Montage Legal Group and other virtual practice models in the Chapter entitled, “Challenges And Alternatives For Women Lawyers.”  We are so honored to be included.  Liz states,

“They soon realized they were changing the way contract attorneys thought of themselves as well. By providing law firms with high-quality attorneys, whose photos and profiles appear on the Montage Legal website, Laurie and Erin created an attractive alternative for lawyers who wanted to do challenging work outside the confines of traditional firms.”

To read more of Life After Law, check out Liz Brown’s blog, or order the book here.

 

Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time

By Brigid Schulte

Brigid Schulte is an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post and Washington Post magazine, and was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize. She is also a fellow at the New America Foundation. As a professional writer and mother of two children, Brigid decided to study America’s workaholic culture.  She asks, “Where did all of our free time go?  Can we get it back?”

According to the Leisure Studies Department at the University of Iowa, true leisure is “that place in which we realize our humanity.” If that’s true, argues Brigid Schulte, then we’re doing dangerously little realizing of our humanity. In Overwhelmed, Brigid asks: Are our brains, our partners, our culture, and our bosses making it impossible for us to experience anything but “contaminated time?”

Schulte first asked this question in a 2010 feature for The Washington Post Magazine: “How did researchers compile this statistic that said we were rolling in leisure―over four hours a day? Did any of us feel that we actually had downtime? Was there anything useful in their research―anything we could do?”

Overwhelmed examines the stresses that have reduced and denigrated our leisure time, and a look at how to put the pieces back together. Brigid speaks to neuroscientists, sociologists, and hundreds of working parents to understand the factors contributing to our collective sense of being overwhelmed, seeking insights, answers, and inspiration. She investigates progressive offices trying to invent a new kind of workplace; she travels across Europe to get a sense of how other countries accommodate working parents; she finds younger couples who claim to have figured out an ideal division of chores, childcare, and meaningful paid work. Overwhelmed is the story of what she found out.

In a chapter entitled “When Work Works,” Brigid studies people and businesses trying to fix broken industries.  She looked for new models born out of industries otherwise entrenched in face time requirements and a 24/7 mentality.  Brigid argues that the only way to implement positive change is from top to bottom.  If the leaders change their own work habits and model behaviors that value personal time, then the culture will shift.  She profiles changes in the law and “The New Normal,” law firms and practice models using technology to create virtual practice, which lends itself to flexibility.  Brigid lists Montage Legal Group as a business fostering these positive changes – flexible virtual practice.  As the workforce shifts and fills with Millinneals willing to forgo money for time, more change is inevitable.   To read more, buy Overwhelmed here.

Montage Legal Group is excited to be a part of these positive changes – a safe space for exceptional attorneys seeking the balance and flexibility rarely found in traditional legal practice, and a resource for law firms seeking an edge against the competition.