Today’s my Grandpa’s birthday. He would’ve been 86 today.

I always feel a little torn on the days of milestones for the people I’ve lost. Do I celebrate the day? Do I mourn? I think the obvious answer is both – and though I error on the side of celebration for the light those people brought into the world, I mourn the hole they left behind as well.

A hole that only time can fill. A hole where empathy and joy and kindness once occupied. A space that will remain vacant so long as I live.
Continue Reading The world really is darker without some people. Happy birthday, pops.

Last night was my family’s traditional “year in review: Christmas reflection” night. After unwinding from an intense dance-off to “old town road” with our seven-year-old nephew, we composed ourselves around a 200 sq. ft kitchen. Dad finally posed the question for us to converse about and take turns answering, “What are a few of the ways the pandemic changed you this year?”

The sirens in my mind went off. Here we are, a middle-class, healthy, white family in our matching flannel pajamas, full off salmon and asparagus. The room got silent for a few minutes. I figured we were all trying to find the words that adequately acknowledged how privileged we felt in that moment of reflection. There was something ironic about this scene to me: reflecting on a disease that millions have lost loved ones to or been isolated from, while we were celebrating our reunion as a family. Reflecting on a year where the impoverished were hit hardest, jobs left hundreds and thousands unemployed, and basic human necessities were stripped from an unfathomable amount of people while we hunkered down with a 5-month old baby, a reunited mom with her seven-year-old-son, and grandparents who were able to take it all in.Continue Reading Can 2021 be about humanizing the human experience?

I went on a walk with a friend last night and discussed the ways 2020 changed us

We made the hot chocolate our upstairs neighbors gifted us before they flew back home to New York. We watched them pack up their lives and bring trash bags full of half-used cooking supplies down to our apartment. If I could sum up 2020 in a nutshell, it’s leftover hot chocolate moments, the things people leave behind when there isn’t enough space to take it all.

Like the doors we closed with old loves and the layers we shed when we continued on with life. The traditional ways of thinking we got stretched out of. The ways we learned to navigate letting go of silence and comfort in return for understanding and correction.Continue Reading The things we leave behind

My partner and I have been playing tennis after work at the local Pacific Beach courts two blocks from our home here in San Diego. It’s a hobby we picked up when visiting friends in Milwaukee a few months ago, and have stuck with it ever since. We’re actually getting quite decent.

If you know anything about tennis or have spent any amount of time playing, you know how dang frustrating it gets. You under-hit and get the net – you overhit and find yourself down a ball (either interrupting the players next to you or chasing the ball somewhere on the other side of the fence). Both scenarios suck, but at least with under-hitting, you’re guaranteed the luxury of not having to run far nor interfere with another’s game.Continue Reading Swing hard and miss, but don’t swing soft

One of the hardest elements to building out a department in a company will always be the seemingly easiest ask: What are the goals? What are the problems, and how are you going to fix them? 

In community, I’m constantly reminded to assess the goals of all projects and to measure the why before I measure the scalability or scope of something. Tactics get placed on the back burner if the intention isn’t explicitly clear. Why talk about the execution of a project if you don’t know the point of the project? Seems like a waste of time, right?

As I’m closing in on six months at this role of building out a community department, I have some clear reflection points I’d like to touch on. I knew this role would take a while to get into the grove of, but I had no idea what an uphill battle it would be, nor did I prepare for how isolating it would feel in the beginning months. I haven’t talked much on that, because well if you haven’t heard, we’re in a pandemic… and just about everyone and their dog feels more isolated than normal currently.Continue Reading Whatever you do, do it with intention.

Finding the thought leaders.

Those are the goals of this community leader program. Going through the list of practice areas, identifying legal topics currently being covered in LexBlog’s network, identify the thought leaders in each, and marching onward to get more lawyers blogging and more firms syndicating. There are thousands of legal bloggers, both

community leader program

what will be covered in this blog post: 

  • goals of the community leader program
  • why you?
  • what’s the benefit?
  • how will it work?

looking for the helpers

Community leaders and role models are in every industry. They are the ones who stand out, the ‘go-to’ experts, the leaders who you can rely

Remember 2-a-day practice days when you were in high school sports? Generally a workout or practice in the morning before classes start, and again after the day was over. After 4 weeks of 2-a-day practices and workouts the result is clear: mistakes lessen, teamwork increases, grit gets built, and avoidable mishaps get more easily avoidable.

I swear every time I read a new article about community building in the new virtual world we’re living it, I get different information and read contrasting tactics/ arguments from community managers trying to figure it out. Remember when COVID first hit back in February, and the information coming out changed on the daily? “You

Rebuilding companies as communities

I found an article written over 10 years ago that re-surfaced itself as the top hit when I typed into google search, “companies that utilize community leaders to grow.” This article, written by the Harvard Business Review author Henry Mintzberg, introduces the idea of rebuilding companies as communities rather than hierarchies . Though he starts out by touching on the benefits of individualism for developmental and promotional advancements, he dismantles old systems of top-down leadership and shines the spotlight on “communityship” – a “modest form of leadership that might be called engaged and distributed management.”

Before we begin unpacking this article, it’s important to provide some contextual incentives behind my decision to deep dive into this topic:

Growing our community at LexBlog and what a community leader program might look like for us

When Kevin hired my back in June, he made it abundantly clear this path was unchartered territory – each time I would ask him what community would look like in the legal blogging community, he would turn the tables back on me and ask what I envisioned it to look like. Since community seems to be a buzz word yet everyone seems to approach it differently these days, I’ve spent the majority of my months in this new role straight up researching. Studying what other companies are doing, studying how community management and engagement even became a commodity, and trying to unpack what goals it would achieve for our clients + members of LexBlog. What value it would add for our clients + members?

As a starting point, laying our foundation, Henry says this about community,

We are social animals who cannot function effectively without a social system that is larger than ourselves. This is what is meant by ‘community’—the social glue that binds us together for the greater good.

Continue Reading Show me a leader, and I’ll show you a bunch of followers.