Spending time in our support queue over the past couple months has given me assurance that I could never work in online design or UI.

One of my favorite concepts is the idea of the aggregation of marginal gains, most recently popularized by James Clear in his book, Atomic Habits. He talks about the story of British cycling coach Dave Brailsford, who took the British Cycling team from one of the worst teams in Europe to the dominating team at the Olympic Games in just five years. How? He looked at everything directly and indirectly related to the performance of his athletes, and found a way to make a small, 1% improvement in each facet of performance. Taken individually, each of these improvements had a negligible impact, but taken together, the improvements delivered an outsized impact: the aggregation of marginal gains. You can apply this powerful concept to your law firm.

In the blogging world, I’ve seen people hone in on this 1% more intently than I’ve ever witnessed before. “Can you change the font size of this one sentence in a 15-paragraph post?” “Can you update the photo to match these specific dimensions at the bottom left of the page?” “Can you switch out ‘fast’ for ‘quick’ in the author bio?” Questions like these inundate the support queue of LexBlog constantly. What I have loved most about the blogging community, and the legal blogging community in particular, is how aware of detail people seemingly are.

Continue Reading Focus on the 1%

I love how certain instances can bring us back to a moment in time that perhaps our memories would otherwise forget to remember. This morning, I woke up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I arrived yesterday morning to pouring rain, walked about 5 miles in the city before tapping out with water-soaked jeans and a head of hair that looked like it had just gotten out of the shower, and ended the day with ramen. This morning, I awoke to a cloudy sky and a whoppin’ 45 degrees out. Coming from Seattle, I realized why I was quick to get out in the rain yesterday and walk around but even more quick to cozy up in my Airbnb and wait for the temperature to rise before venturing out today.

I saw a percolator and a french press in the kitchen when I stumbled my sleepy way in here. I instantly knew these were hosts I would be friends with in real life if I ever met them. They had coffee beans and a grinder next to them, the way any thoughtful coffee drinker would prefer it. These two hosts – they’re my kind of people. Having spent the weekend in South Dakota bouncing between dated coffee stands and hotel brews, I was ecstatic to see they stalked this kitchen with local beans and a variety of methods to brew them in small batches. Instead of having to choose between the beloved french press and a percolator (that I haven’t used in years) I decided to indulge my nostalgia and make both. Though an explanation is never necessary in regards to caffeine consumption, I’ll explain, for the sake of the story, why these brewing methods felt more like a sentimental decision for me today.

I love a good french press as much as any caffeine addict. I drink a full french press, and typically another after, every morning. I love it so much, in fact, I have two human bodies back to back drinking a french press tattooed on my leg to represent two things- our commonalities and our ability, as humans, to live connected while independent as we navigate relationships or decisions in general. I think it’s a healthy way to live; enjoying the finer things (like coffee) with one another while remaining back to back, not fixated on another, not fixated on only enjoying what we have in common, or on each other, but nurturing our individuality. I learned this concept, and began to appreciate this concept of independent similarities, by drinking from a percolator.

When I was 20 I traveled to Germany with one of my closest friends, Satya. I’ve written about Satya before – he’s kind, patient, thoughtful, and brilliant. He embodies the goodness any human would strive to attain.  I attribute any shred of kindness I’ve learned to him. OK – gushing over. Back to the percolator.

One morning Satya woke me up at 5am. It was a cloudy morning in Munich, but he insisted I wake up to watch the sunrise with him. I pleaded there would be no sunrise if there was no sun – he begged to differ. “Shale, just wake up. I think the clouds will burn off, there will be a sunrise. I’ll make us coffee if you just get out of bed.” I quickly assembled myself and walked out into the kitchen. Satya was standing over the stove boiling water with two mugs set out with cream next to them. I shook my head and laughed, assuring him he would be wrong about the sunrise. There was a small percolator on the stove top, with coffee starting to spurt out. The lid was flapping open and closed, the water piping hot. We took our mugs out to the patio and listened as the birds chirped and the church bell rang and the world slept quietly at 5am.

I learned that morning (and many more to come) that early wake up calls accompanied by dear friends and strong coffee will never not be worth getting out of bed for. The moments when the world feels still, and you feel like you’re the only one lucky enough to be sitting in those quiet moments as you listen closely to the sound of rest. This morning, as I waited for the percolator to finish boiling, I thought about Satya and the countless 5am awakenings we built into our traveling routine. I felt nostalgic as I looked off the back porch and saw dark grey clouds rolling in. I found the video of Satya pouring the coffee into each of our mugs and laughing at the camera as he held his up with a loud ‘Cheers Shale! We’re drinking coffee in Germany! Who would have thought!’

Certainly not me, certainly not at 5am, I’ll tell you that much. No sunrise ever came, but I’m sure glad he woke me up. It was in that moment I realized Satya and I could have nothing more in common than similar mugs and a shared coffee taste in our mouths to see the same sunrise and witness the same majesty of earth waking up before our eyes. There was a shared understanding that, though our commonalities were few and far between, we could lock in on this one – a mutual appreciation for what we were hearing, what we were drinking, and who we were spending those sacred moments with. It was the 5am mornings that disassembled the walls and disarmed the dividers – they were the bridges that built commonalities, the spaces that invited conversation, and the catalyst for stimulated curiosity that would carry us through the days of traveling.

I’ve thought about that lesson over the years and incorporated it into my understanding of society and how we navigate relationships. I’ve thought about how little two people can have in common and yet find similarities in joys and sorrows or moments of clarity or moments of confusion. It’s shaped how I interact with those I sometimes chalk up to be ‘too different’ for me to find common ground with. Those moments determined how I would choose to move through new environments and enter into new spaces, relationally and geographically.

A couple years later I found myself in a similar boat with a girlfriend I met in Jackson, Wyoming. Her name was Lucy, and she was from New Zealand. I loved Lucy most for two reasons: 1. her accent and 2. her love for strong coffee. We met at a cafe called Picnic my second week in town. I had no friends at the time, so she quickly became my first when we began bonding over our shared reasoning for ending up in Jackson. We were both foreigners in unfamiliar  territory, moving to this snowy little mountain town alone, in hopes of spending endless days putzin around in the Teton Mountains.

Lucy and I became roommates and didn’t let much time pass before we began enjoying our morning coffee together on the regular. We would get up around 7am, take our sleeping bags out to the porch, and watch as the streets got busier as the hour unfolded. Our routine entailed a chemex first (usually 7am-7:15) then the percolator second (7:15-7:30). We would consume at least 3 cups each within the half hour. On days we were struggling to fully wake up, we’d make more. We would talk with neighbors as they strolled out to their cars to go to work. We would talk about our dreams from the night before, plan out days on the trails, and exchange any noteworthy findings from the books we’d be reading at the time.

I remember one morning we were sharing our chemex and Lucy said, “You know, coffee really is inconvenient. It’s messy, and it takes a long time to prepare and brew it. Then there’s the clean up. I guess you have to really love coffee to drink it as often as we do. It’s a whole process.”

That word stuck with me – inconvenient. I thought about how the majority of my favorite relationships were built around coffee – the crafting of it, the drinking of it, and the adoration of it. I thought to myself, “If this is inconvenient, then maybe the lesson is good things are often masked as inconvenient. More simply, sometimes good things just are inconvenient. Getting out of bed early to watch the world get painted gold by the sunshine is inconvenient. Finding local and fair trade beans that are fresh and high quality is inconvenient. Grinding the beans and transferring them into the filter of choice is messy. A screaming kettle when the hot water is boiling is certainly anything but an enjoyable sound. Dumping the used grounds is a hassle, if not emptied clean the first go around. Early conversations can sometimes feel like a chore.

But what about this word stuck with me? Perhaps inconvenience, boiled down, is a cumulation of the things that take our time and could be avoided by doing the same tasks in a more simple way. They are not grab-and-go type ordeals. It’s not instant coffee or surface level friendships – though both of those options are most always readily available. Good coffee – quality coffee, like good people – quality conversations, are worth getting messy for. As I continue learning more about what it means to pursue a career in community management, I recognize the time it will take the build trust with clients and other community managers. I acknowledge that community, like coffee, is a whole heck of a process built one step after another, only after the previous step is complete. But, like any seasoned coffee drinker who’s tasted the luxury of fine coffee and watched the process bottom up, we are acutely aware that the process makes or breaks the product. 

Both processes can look messy, they can feel messy, and they consume the hours of our day that aren’t retrievable. But these are the quality hours I will joyfully spend my days on. My community has been built on the messy grounds, and that’s where I intend to keep building it.

Both are worth getting out of bed for. They’re worth showing up for. Even if the sunrise never comes.

When I was a Sophomore in college, I spent a semester abroad in Cape Town, South Africa. I was studying psychology and my school had a campus in Cape Town for psych students to participate in an internship-style learning experience for credits. I will never forget the words of my professor when we began working in our selected townships – towns literally formed from apartheid era consisting of 100% black and colored (yes – that is an accurate term in South Africa) people groups. We were warned about the tendency we might subconsciously have to act as the  “white savior complex” – essentially meaning “you will want to talk over and invalidate what is being said or communicated, but instead, validate pieces of information you find to match what you have already concluded going into this situation.”

He said this to me before I started my first day entering the township: “I know you are going to think you know what this community needs. You do not. You will need to step down, step aside, and let this community tell you what they need (*and it will not come from what they tell you is needed- you will know by what is not said, and by listening. It is not their responsibility to tell you, so you will have to listen more intently in other ways). This township has been dehumanized and brutalized by white people – you will be seen as a threat, as an ‘other’. You do not have their trust. You will need to earn that, and you will need to listen.”

To understand a community, he was emphasizing, meant I would need to pick up on what is not being said, which means I better hone in without interrupting. How much more I learned to integrate into and understand this community after three months of observing and immersing. They became my people – my students would take me on walks around the block to point out their homes or where they checked out books from a library. The little girls I tutored would draw me pictures about their family living situation or lack there of. The teachers I was learning from would give me snippets of context about the education system dynamic I was working in. I was able to serve these students far better at the end of my time than I did at the beginning. No amount of classroom lecture time in LA could have taught me that lesson.

LexBlog shared a post today by Cordell Parvin. I clicked the link, read the post, and decided I enjoyed Cordell’s writing enough (short and simple posts) to continue into the archives of his other blog posts. I came across one, What Might Be the Most Important Skill to Develop? which quickly caught my attention. The most important skill to develop? Just in general? The most important skill to learn in relationships? And work? And in the classroom? If there’s one skill that’s worth mastering it’s this? Alright, I’ll take two minutes of my day to unlock the secret if it’s the most important skill out there.

Here’s my key takeaway –

A good lawyer listens and hears what is said. A great lawyer listens and hears what is said and is able to discern what isn’t said.

In my opinion, I think a good lawyer hears, listens, then discerns – in that order. I think a good human hears, listens, discerns – in that order. Not to play on words, but I do think there’s a specific order we subconsciously follow when we’re conversing with another. Whether it’s right or not, humans tend to be reactors. We hear, and we react. Whether that reaction be a simple statement back, an action follow-up, or an impulsive response, humans innately feel the knee-jerk reaction to fill the silence and impose answers, often times missing the meat of the message the other is trying to convey.

I do it constantly when dialoguing with friends, co-workers, family members, the cashier at the store, the nurse at the doctors’ office – I find myself hearing words that spill out of their mouth and quickly trying to muster up a response before they even finish their thought. The quicker I respond, the less silence there is to fill, the less awkward the interaction. Maybe, perhaps, we fill silence in a professional setting because we want to show we’re anticipating needs before they’re even conveyed. Maybe we rush to answers to show our expertise on the topic – exceptionally advanced in a subject, we don’t even take a split second to think about the ‘right’ answer.

It’s no wonder therapists listen much more than they talk to understand their client. I went to therapy twice and both times left frustrated that my therapist wasn’t giving me answers or solving my problems in the first two sessions. How could she when she didn’t have all the information necessary? Of course she wasn’t concluding answers off of two hour-long sessions, but my instant-gratification-loving self started to wonder how long she was going to let me talk before interjecting with a magic solution. Why does being a therapist feel sacred and unattainable for most? Let’s go one step further – why does being a therapist sound so miserable and heavy for most? Because the whole job is centered on listening well enough, intently enough, to be able to understand each patient for who they are in order to get to the source of the wound.

According to Stephanie Kirby

When a therapist doesn’t pay attention to your words and nonverbal communications, they decide for themselves what problems you need to address….A therapist who doesn’t listen may make guesses, but they’ll probably be wrong most of the time.

It’s also no wonder nurses and doctors ask so many questions and listen to a patient’s list of issues before giving a diagnosis. Dr. Read Pierce- VP of Strategy and Culture Transformation at the Institute for Healthcare Excellence  wrote this in his post on listening in the healthcare industry,

It’s no surprise that people go into medicine to care for others, not simply fix others’ problems.

Pierce emphasized throughout this post that failing to listen is failing to care for a patient well – misdiagnosis, negative side effects, and multiple trips back to the office are all results that could stem from a lack of listening to the needs of the patient.  This helped me understand that listening correlates with care, while speaking over and “showing authority” could portray a desire to fix (and won’t always fix it the first time, if at all). Doctors, nurses, therapists- they all have one thing in common; to understand the needs of their patients by hearing, listening, and discerning. Funny how, whether we’re seeing someone to heal and fix our bodies or seeing someone to heal and fix our minds, both professions default to the active skill of listening for highest quality results.

So how do lawyers and bloggers stack up in the rankings of listening and discerning? Well, good thing you asked. I did my homework. When I typed in the same question to google that I did about doctors and therapists, I found alarming results. “Get Better at Listening” “Learning to Listen” “Are We Hearing What They’re Saying?” were among the top results. So what’s the disconnect?

For starters, David Ward breaks it down for us to digest. In an attempt to answer the question he believes lawyers should be asking themselves more often, “do you talk too much?” he writes,

It could be because we were taught to be thorough, to leave no stone unturned in our efforts to persuade. I’m sure some lawyers want to impress people with the depth of their knowledge, the breadth of their experience, or the thoroughness of their research. Some want to display their intelligence. Some want to hide their shortcomings behind a wall of words.

Good food for thought as the legal industry continues to revolutionize to a more human-centered approach. My question of the week will remain “What am I doing to make others feel heard and, better yet, listened to?” When building community, it’s key to keep listening at the forefront. What does this community need? What do the individuals of this community need? What are they telling us and what are they not telling us, that we need to discern? Are we hearing the expertise and the suggestions people are sharing with us? Are there leaders within the community pulling others up and amplifying their voices?

These questions will be what shape our community. What questions will shape your community?

I’ve been thinking about the concept of Community as well as the types of communities there are. For example, how the community of a college is by and large, yet there are hundreds of majors to choose from, each with its own community of likeminded people with shared interest in studying the same field. Or the legal industry, for example, all falls under the larger “law” umbrella, but is studied through thousands of smaller, more niche practice areas. Or take the concept of religious people as a community- each community is broken down by religious groups – then broken down into smaller sub-groups of said religion, and only then are people unified and understand each other’s playing field, once they’ve boiled down exactly which group they most closely align with.

I’ve been spending time in the last few weeks contemplating what community is in light of my experience with it. I had to reach into the archives of the memory bank to think back to pivotal moments that forced me to need community-  the moments it wasn’t presented before me or available, but rather something I lacked and longed for.

The first example that came to mind was moving to Los Angeles when I was 18 to go to college. I was alone for the first time, peeling off from the community I had fostered for the previous 17+ years of my life. I had no idea what it was going to look like to actually have to work to find my people. My people had always been there, introduced to me by family friends or my older siblings’ friends. In high school, sports gave me my community. My older brother (the year above me) had given me my community. Community was inherently part of who I was, without realizing what a privilege it was to have.

Los Angeles was a rude awakening. Easy, in a sense, knowing I was joining forces with other scared college newbies in the same boat, leaving home to pursue education. A tad unsettling, on the other hand, that each new person I met, I was meeting without any context. Los Angeles was a quick reminder that I would either be as built up or broken down as the people I would surround myself with. The next four years would be a reflection on how far I’d grown based on the people I’d choose, and the shared experiences we’d have along the same. How steady that lesson has proven to be true over the years.

After college, I had set out on a cross-country bike trip with 3 other women peddling alongside me. They quickly became my people- the girls I changed flat tires with, shared meals with, and leaned on during 100 mile, 100 degree days. They were the girls who experienced the same roads and headwinds and highlights as I did – the girls who got burned by the same sun, had the same tan lines, and cursed as the same rolling hills through the midwest as I did. *Side note — anyone who tells you the midwest is flat LIED to you. If you don’t believe me, try biking it.*

Our biking community was taken in by strangers, hosted by other cyclists who heard about us coming through, and sought out by hotels and restaurants along the way, wanting to support us where they could. We leaned on the support of the biking community, previous cross-country cyclists with expertise we didn’t have, warm showers hosts who knew what it was like being a nomad on the road, and bike shops along the way who supported our mission.

After we ended the ride in New York City, I had no plan. I had a degree, a bike, a few suitcases of clothes, and a now expansive grasp on where in the US I could move. I’d seen a majority of the country, from the west to the east and everything in-between, so I h

ad options to sift through re: where I thought could best serve my next stage of life. I had enjoyed being outside 8-9 hours a day as life on the road presented us with, and having been in LA the last four years, I felt it was time to shake things. Two weeks after the ride, I packed up my car and  moved to a little mountain town we rode through, Jackson Hole. Knowing no one, I had my first taste of building a community from scratch. What would it look like to live in this mountain town and belong to this mountain town- to foster relationships and understand the culture and contribute to the make up of it’s society? I knew it would be hard work, but I was up for the challenge.

I applied for dozens of jobs within the first week. I figured if I failed, I would move back to Seattle to be with my family and try again. I landed a job the second day in town. I worked at a small cafe in the heart of downtown, with the plan of integrating myself with the locals + getting to know the regulars who lived close by. What a strategy that was.

I quickly befriended many of the Jackson dwellers, some who were former mayors, some who were business owners, some who showed me the best hidden-gem trails. I got to know them on a personal level- intimate details about their families, where they had come from, what they enjoyed doing on the weekends. It started by asking each and every regular their name. I figured if they knew I cared enough to know their name, and if I cared enough to memorize their drink, I had some skin in the game. And I wanted them to know me too. They would stand on the opposite side of the coffee bar and we would chat for the minute and thirty seconds it took me to pull their shots and steam the milk for their drink.

I worked at this cafe for six months before the business owner asked me to open a third cafe with her and manage the store. At the same time this opportunity was presented, a prominent member of the Jackson Real Estate community approached me and asked me to join his company as a guest relations specialist. He was a regular, and I loved having his daily coffee ready when he walked through the doors each morning. I would let him pay later if the line was long, and he became someone I would regularly swap backpacking stories with, as he loved the mountains as much as I did.

I took the job at his company after hearing the other employees were all 25-30 years old, and quickly growing in their careers. They were building out a name for themselves in Jackson as the most elite and talented real estate agency around. I didn’t fill out an application for the job, nor did I interview. Mekki knew my character and abilities from watching my interactions day in and day out. It didn’t matter whether I was qualified for the job, what mattered was how he saw me treat people. I worked hard to build a life for myself in Jackson – I worked hard to call people by their name, and be known by my community. I wanted to belong here, and I was willing to put up a fight to feel like I did.

I ended up working with Mekki and the Outpost team for the next eight months, growing the company from 80 properties, to 120 properties – 30 of which were luxury homes. We added a rental service into the company, a cleaning service, and 24/7 customer service. It was a grind. There were tears along the way when we would get client calls at 11pm, or have to cancel a hiking trip last minute to coordinate a homeowner arrival. What kept us going? Without a doubt – each other. Nothing like shared tears to tighten a bond.

I recently listened to an episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, a Donald Miller interview with Jim Deters, CEO of Gravity Haus. I was intrigued to listen when Miller summarized his findings on Gravity Haus as, “a community consisting of those who care about the planet and their personal growth.” Could it really be that simple? I thought. Is that really all it takes to make up a community this successful – just likeminded individuals who care about the planet and personal growth? Sounds like a community I want to be apart of. Why? Because those are two of my most fundamental core beliefs – to take care of our planet, to take care of myself. Why else? Because it sounds open, it sounds inviting. I wouldn’t be intimidated to join something I knew wanted me there.

So it got me thinking… how do all communities become that simple? In college, your community is shaped by the people you attend classes with, the people you go to the gym with, the people you find yourself hanging out in groups with on Saturday night. At work, your community is the people you rub shoulders with in an office space. More relevant- it’s the people you’re checking in on in a Monday morning zoom call, the people you’re grinding away with to meet deadlines, the people who care about the same projects as you. In the legal community, is it those in the same niche as you? Those who are practicing the same area of law and thus sharing experiences you’re going through as well? What would it look like to teach recent law graduates and young lawyers that to join this community, you just need to have an interest in other people’s wellbeing and your own wellbeing? That simple. That this community of young lawyers, entering into shares experiences and new starts, is going to be just that- a community. Where they can swap ideas, and share resources, and offer feedback and encouragement to their colleagues.

This community would consist of leaning into the conversations that other legal bloggers start, commenting and offering expertise, piping up when someone has a question. At LexBlog, I’ve been thinking about what communities would look like broken down by niche areas of the law- bankruptcy lawyers collaborating with other bankruptcy lawyers, and divorce lawyers collaborating with other divorce lawyers. Swapping stories, sharing resources, offering expertise in the area of law you know best and getting back to the basics of knowing each other’s names, spending a few minutes each week checking in on each other’s mental health, and using one another to network wider and deeper.

What purpose would community serve in the legal tech industry? What value would this add for lawyers and law firms at whole? Well, I think Stefanie Marrone nailed the hammer on the head when she wrote,

“Your goal is to keep in touch with your professional network and to provide information of value to them that enables you to showcase your expertise without being boastful or salesy.”

I needed my sports community in high school to teach me how I could become the captain of the tennis team. I needed my fellow student-peers in college to study with me, quiz me, and share their knowledge and me mine. I needed my community while I was riding to stick with me as I changed a flat, offer their tools to fix my handlebars when I’d fall, and research our route daily to avoid closed roads and dead ends. I needed my community in Jackson so I could learn to make a home for myself personally, asking for locals advice on best-kept secrets around town as well as professionally, to grow a company I believed in and wanted to see flourish. That is what community does – it lets those with the most knowledge and those with little knowledge dine at the same table and equalize the playing field so at the end of a meal, both parties walk away more informed, more heard, and more compassionate for the people they’re sitting with.

Jim Deeters said it best “We didn’t want this to be a club, we want this to be a community, an anti-club if you will, because as soon as you say the word club, it invokes exclusivity. We want to be inclusive.”

The legal tech community? It’s not a club. There is no room for exclusivity. If you don’t believe me- ask what my major was. Sure as heck wasn’t law. Or tech. And yet, I found myself a seat at the table.