Articles Archives | Stacey Romberg

From Athlete to Advocate: Lessons Learned Through Sports Propel Lawyers to Compete as Champions, Part 2

05.22.2018 by Stacey Romberg //

Reprinted with permission from the American Bar Association GPSolo eReport.

This article is the second of four installments exploring the stories, lessons, and advice of high-level athletes who went on to become successful solo and small firm attorneys.

This article series explores the relationship between sports and the law, and how athletics provides the perfect training ground of hard work, discipline, strategic skills, competitiveness, passion, balance, teamwork, and sportsmanship—all desired qualities for running a successful solo or small-firm legal practice. In my first article (here), I introduced four notable athletes who went on to develop successful solo and small firm practices and who will be featured throughout this article series: Kathleen McRoberts, Merrell Bailey, Bob Mionske, and Patricia Miranda. This article will discuss how being involved in athletics can impact an attorney’s fundamental decisions about his or her career, including the initial decision to become an attorney, and later the choice of an area of practice and whether to start a solo or small firm legal practice.

Pursuing a Legal Career

For Patricia Miranda, her choices to pursue wrestling and, later, a career as an attorney were “tightly linked.” When Patricia began wrestling in middle school, her father actively sought to prevent her from pursuing her sport. As a recent Brazilian immigrant, Patricia’s father viewed wrestling as a “distraction” from what Patricia should be doing: studying, pursuing her career, and getting ahead in their adopted country. To discourage her from participating, he took active measures including scratching Patricia’s names from competition rosters. When Patricia was in high school, her father told her that he would sue the school district to prevent her from competing. Patricia stated, “I went to do a little research. Can he really sue the school? Can they really keep me from wrestling? And that’s when I stumbled onto Title IX. So I said, ‘Dad, we’re in America now! You can’t sue the school if they let me wrestle. We can only sue the school if they don’t let me wrestle.’”

Patricia continued, “I was so impressed that somebody, decades ago, had cared enough to fight for something like Title IX. That planted the seed for me to go to law school. I was amazed that someone, because of their profession, made that much of a difference in my life, and that law was the tool to do that. From that point on, I wanted to be an attorney.”

Choosing an Area of Practice

For cyclist Bob Mionske, his cycling career sparked an interest in marrying his knowledge of his sport to his desire to practice law and do trial work. As a result, Bob became the first attorney in the United States to focus his practice exclusively on bicycle law. After graduating from Willamette University College of Law in 1999, Bob moved to his home state of Wisconsin to work for a personal injury law firm. Bob stayed at the firm “for about 12 weeks” before deciding his new career needed to shift in a decidedly different direction. Bob stated, “I started thinking, this is not really what I had in mind. I got one trial in, and then there was nothing on the dockets for a long time. I was essentially sitting on my butt, between the drive there and the drive back, for nine hours a day. I realized I had made a mistake. The only way I was going to continue to be a lawyer was if I could find a way to do it for myself, and represent people that I had something in common with and that I could help. And that’s what led me to the cycling idea.”

Bob explained, “I actually was hired as an expert in law school on a cycling case. I realized that there were a lot of variables in prosecuting a bicycle injury case that were outside of the realm of the attorneys’ understanding. At that time, people weren’t sure what rights cyclists had. I lived in Madison, Wisconsin, which is a pretty ‘bikey’ town. I got this idea that maybe I could get some work that way, so I hung out a shingle.”

In 2001 Bob moved to Oregon and started a firm in Portland focusing on bicycle law. Primarily, Bob represents cyclists who suffer injuries owing to collisions with motor vehicles; however, he envisions a future in which his work may increasingly become obsolete. “Distracted driving has become an epidemic in this country. It’s not getting any better, unfortunately, notwithstanding that we have a prohibition from using handheld devices in Oregon. This area of practice is not going anywhere until we get smart cars. There’s been some talk that this technology will put us out of business. If that’s the case, that’s fine by me.”

Starting a Solo or Small Law Firm

My experience as a junior tennis player greatly influenced my choice, down the road, to start my own law firm. Unlike the experience of most junior tennis players today, my parents did not oversee my tournament play. If I wanted to play competitive tennis, I needed to manage all aspects of that commitment. For example, as a junior high and, later, a high school student, I needed to figure out what tournaments to play, how I would get there (including airline travel), how to pay for the associated costs, and how to sign up for housing. I often stayed with tennis families living near the vicinity of the tournament whom I had never met before. In addition to the logistical aspects of playing tennis, like any athlete, I needed to deal with the game itself—including playing opponents in a wide variety of weather conditions such as an Idaho spring snowstorm or a summer day exceeding 100 degrees, playing matches at midnight, and playing a variety of players with widely varying skill sets. Outside of doubles, when you play tennis, you play for yourself. You are solely responsible for your own results. Tennis taught me to be extremely independent, self-sufficient, resourceful, resilient, and adaptable at a young age. Later, when I worked in various law firms, I grew frustrated because I lacked the ability to make truly independent choices regarding my practice areas, clients, and case strategies. I longed for the ability to “fight through my matches on my own,” as I had always done in tennis. Like Bob, I decided that, if I was going to continue to be an attorney, I needed to make a course correction and hang out my own shingle.

Merrell Bailey, who competed in rowing, described the qualities needed to be a successful attorney in a solo or small firm law environment: “You have to be organized. You have to be detail oriented. You have to know what you’re trying to accomplish. You have a duty to yourself and your family to be successful. You have a duty to your staff to be successful. And you have a duty to your clients to do what you told them you would do, and do it very well.” When asked whether her experience as an athlete helped her cultivate these characteristics, Merrell responded, “Oh, certainly. The Division One athletes have to show up on time, they have to do what they say they are going to do, and they have to be coachable. Everything that makes an athlete successful also makes an attorney and business owner successful.”

Kathleen McRoberts, a former Division One tennis player, added an interesting note on how the competitiveness developed as an athlete contributes to the desire to start your own law firm. She laughingly commented, “I try to pretend that I’m not as competitive as I am.” She continued, on a more serious note, “As far as building my practice, wanting to have the biggest practice, wanting to be the expert in my region, that’s what the competitiveness means now. I want my law firm to be the very best in the region.”

In addition to influencing career choices, an athletic background may also impact an attorney’s approach to practicing law in terms of developing a disciplined work ethic and approaching cases with a high level of preparation and a well-thought-out strategy. My third article in this series will explore these concepts in more detail.

From Athlete to Advocate: Lessons Learned Through Sports Propel Lawyers to Compete as Champions

03.19.2018 by Stacey Romberg //

Reprinted with permission from the American Bar Association GPSolo eReport.

This article is the first of four installments exploring the stories, lessons, and advice of high-level athletes who went on to become successful solo and small firm attorneys.

Before becoming an attorney, I played tennis. I worked hard to become a ranked junior, both in my home state of Idaho and in the Intermountain region section,¹ winning a high school state doubles championship and then continuing to play tennis for two years at Idaho State University. From age 11 through 18, I enjoyed competing against five outstanding young women who consistently achieved the top Idaho rankings in our age group. Out of our group of six, four of us became attorneys.² Was this merely a coincidence? Or could it be that we learned some valuable lessons from all those hours spent practicing and competing that propelled us to our current legal careers? I contend it’s the latter.

This article series will explore the relationship between sports and the law, and how athletics provides the perfect training ground of hard work, discipline, strategic skills, competitiveness, passion, balance, teamwork, and sportsmanship—all desired qualities for running a successful solo or small-firm legal practice. To add to my experience, I interviewed four other athletes who will be featured throughout this article series.

Kathleen McRoberts

Another “graduate” of the group of six Idaho tennis players and my doubles partner throughout my junior tennis career, Kathleen earned junior rankings as high as number four in Intermountain and number 104 nationally, and she enjoyed a successful collegiate career at the University of Utah. After a stint as a geological engineer, Kathleen earned her law degree at Seattle University and an LLM in tax from the University of Florida. She later founded Third Party Reproduction Law, a small firm with offices in Boise, Idaho, and Provo, Utah, representing “clients in achieving their family goals through surrogacy, egg donation, sperm donation, and embryo donation.”³ Kathleen believes there may be a tie between playing tennis and founding a law firm. “To the extent that it’s an individual sport, you control your own destiny. It’s the same as a solo practice, you sort of control everything. It’s really how hard you want to work, how far you want to take it.”

Merrell Bailey

Merrell started out as a swimmer and then was recruited by a coach in her Florida high school to join the rowing team. She fell in love with the sport and later competed for the University of Central Florida’s rowing team. Merrell went on to graduate from Barry University School of Law and founded her own law firm, known as “Your Caring Law Firm.” Merrell now represents clients in the areas of estate planning, charitable planning, asset protection planning, family limited partnerships, nonprofit organizations, and gift, estate, and generation-skipping tax planning.⁴ In discussing the lessons learned from sports, Merrell opined:

Athletes are the employees that everybody wants because they are so disciplined, goal oriented, and coachable. For every trait that an employer has on their dream list, a college athlete has that attribute. For the law students, or the students thinking that they might go to law school, if they were athletes, they don’t need to worry about the fact that they might not have had a part-time job at the local mall. They’re going to be fine.

Bob Mionske

Bob initially competed as a ski racer while a student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While training in Oregon, Bob noticed that some members of the U.S. Ski Team biked in order to cross-train. Bob decided to give cycling a try, discovering, “I got the idea that I might be better at that than skiing, and so then I just kept my head down in that direction.” This was an excellent choice, given Bob’s exceptional cycling career. Bob became an Olympian as well as a U.S. National Champion (1990) and won more than 100 races in his seven-year career. In the 1988 Summer Olympics, held in Seoul, he placed fourth in the Individual Road Race. Bob also placed sixth in the 1990 Pan American Games held in Havana. In the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Bob assisted his teammate, Lance Armstrong, to a 14th-place finish. Bob became a professional racer in 1993, his final season, but began to realize, “I didn’t want to keep doing it. It was taking a lot out of me physically and even psychologically.” Bob retired from cycling and tackled the new phase of his life by attending the Willamette University College of Law.

After graduation, he went on to found his own small law firm in Portland, Oregon. Bob started the first bicycle law practice in the United States, “representing professional racers David Zabriskie, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, and Kevin Livingston, while also defending the legal rights of weekend warriors, commuters, and messengers.”⁵ Discussing the tenacity he developed as an athlete, Bob explains:

You might have a whole season as a bike racer where you just couldn’t do anything. You might start losing hope. But you stick it out another year, and then another, and then you have the best year of your career. But if you had quit when you were down, you would have been out of it. It’s the same in life. And obviously, that includes a legal practice.

Patricia Miranda

The daughter of Brazilian political refugees, Patricia decided to try out for her eighth-grade wrestling team at Redwood Middle School in Saratoga, California, noting: “I was the only girl there but didn’t think much of it.” As someone who loves a challenge, Patricia quickly became hooked. Breaking the stereotype of the male wrestler, she was the first female to wrestle for her middle school and high school. Patricia then attended Stanford University, where she wrestled on the men’s team. “My goal was to start for Stanford and to beat a competitor in Division One.” Although her coach labeled her as a bit “delusional,” Patricia did indeed accomplish her goal in college. She went on to win two World Cup gold medals in freestyle wrestling,⁶ another gold medal in the 2003 Pan American Games in Santo Domingo, three World Championship medals, and a bronze medal in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.

Patricia graduated from Yale Law School and is now a partner at the three-attorney law firm of Miranda, Magden & Miranda, LLP, with offices in Monterey and Salinas, California. She focuses her practice primarily on immigration law.⁷ Patricia believes that her athletic background and achievements helped ignite the desire for her to start a small practice, stating, “It takes a unique set of characteristics, I think, to want to be your own boss. The ability to have answered a lot of the questions about myself, and increase my ability to rely on myself, definitely helped me feel like I might be able to run my own business.”

These four inspiring and accomplished athletes now apply the life-altering lessons learned from sports to their notable legal careers as solo and small-firm lawyers. What can we learn from their experiences? I look forward to exploring these insights in my three upcoming articles in this series.

Notes

1. The United States Tennis Association divides the United States into sections for competitive purposes. I competed in the Intermountain Section, consisting of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and Wyoming.

2. Besides Kathleen McRoberts, who will be profiled in this series, the other two women are Patricia Cassell, chief prosecutor in the Summit County, Utah Attorneys’ Office; and Wendy J. Olsen, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Idaho who is now a partner in Stoel Rives LLP’s Boise, Idaho, office.

3. For more information, please see the firm’s website at thirdpartyreproduction.com.

4. For more information, please see the firm’s website at yourcaringlawfirm.com.

5. For more information, please see the firm’s website at bicyclelaw.com.

6. Patricia won the World Cups in 2003 (Tokyo) and 2007 (Krasnoyarsk).

7. For more information, please see the firm’s website at mirandalawgroup.com.

Spark: Tips for Maintaining Your Passion for the Practice of Law, Part 4: Legacy

06.26.2017 by Stacey Romberg //

Reprinted with permission from the American Bar Association GPSolo eReport.

This article is the last of four installments exploring ways to keep the spark of enthusiasm alive in your law practice.

In my first article in this series, I discussed the dissatisfaction that seems to permeate the legal profession, and the stressful nature of, and long hours associated with, the dual responsibilities of practicing law and running a small business. The questions posed at the end of my article were: “If you [knew that you] had six months left to live, or perhaps more practically as a long-term approach, six years to live, would you continue to work just as you are doing right now? Or would you make some changes?” My second article added the following queries: “If change is needed, what would those changes be? How could the changes be identified and implemented to have a lasting and favorable impact?” My second article went on to explore various approaches for self-examination, with the goal of identifying three areas for improvement. My third article offered suggestions for implementing these changes, which is “where the rubber meets the road.” In this article, I will consider the concept of legacy as a key component of renewing the spark of enthusiasm for your law practice.

The Macmillan Dictionary defines legacy as “something that someone has achieved that continues to exist after they stop working or die.” Katherine Meadowcraft, in her February 5, 2015, blog post for Huffington Post entitled “What Is Your Legacy?” states:

[L]egacy constitutes one’s character and good (or bad) deeds. It is important to note, it is not what one acquires but what one creates. I like to think of a legacy as encouraging the next generation, through one’s choices and actions, to identify and work towards realizing their own accomplishments and greatness. Our conduct in this life leaves behind ripples, an impact, of our actions after our death. In the afterword to The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, Tavis Smiley summed it up: “The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave.”

Last year, I participated as a panelist in a continuing legal education course focused on ethics. One of my fellow speakers made a statement during our presentation that struck a chord. He explained that he viewed his legal career as a giant canvas, a work of art that he created and added to daily. He invited the audience to consider, “What are you adding to your body of work each day?” In considering your legacy, some additional questions to ponder might include:

What are you accomplishing, looking at the canvas as a whole?
How are you developing your story each day in order to achieve the ending you want to create?
When your clients work with you, what impressions do they receive about attorneys and the legal profession?
What can other attorneys learn from you?
Are you a role model or a mentor?
Do you give back to your profession and the community? If so, how?
If your typical daily interactions with colleagues, office staff, and clients were broadcast on television, would you feel proud?
When you end your legal career, what do you want others to say about that career, and the type of lawyer that you exemplified? What would be said about you if you ended your career today?
Are you actively painting that canvas every day, creating the legacy that you want? Or, is there a significant gap between the type of lawyer you’d like to become and the way you are engaging with your work right now?

Practicing law and running a business as a solo or small firm practitioner offers myriad daily challenges and choices, big and small. For example:

You spent an hour researching something that you know you should have tackled more efficiently. Do you bill for all the time related to the research, or do you write some of it off?
You only slept four hours last night, and your brief is due today. You desperately need the help of your paralegal but, uncharacteristically, he’s late to work because his car ran out of gas. How do you respond?
Opposing counsel writes an unprofessional letter excoriating your client, and it lacks any substantive basis in fact and in law. What tone does your responsive letter take?
You enjoy sharing and commenting on Facebook posts related to our current political climate. Are your comments fully consistent with the reputation that you strive to achieve as an attorney?
Your biggest client is late with a payment. You need the money as soon as possible. The check finally comes in the mail, but the client overpaid the bill by two cents. Do you deposit the check into your trust account, wait the requisite amount of days to ensure the check cleared, and then take out your payment and mail the client a check for two cents? Or, do you deposit the check into your business checking account and choose to ignore the two-cent overpayment?

Lawyers frequently address questions of this nature. The practice of law is often challenging, demanding, and frustrating. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment rather than considering the big picture. If you begin thinking about your legacy—the canvas you are creating every single day, I submit that your responses to these challenges will become much easier. And legacy, by its very nature, invites enthusiasm and meaning into your law practice. Legacy presents the ultimate challenge by continually guiding us toward who we should strive to become. Consider the five questions posed above. Most attorneys know what we should do: We should write off some of our research time; be kind to our paralegal who made a mistake; write a responsive letter that takes a professional tone and relies upon legal authority rather than insults; keep our Facebook posts professional rather than engaging in name calling and profanity; and deposit the check into our trust account. When you are tempted, in the heat of the moment, to make a choice that chips away at your legacy, but then you think about legacy and choose differently, how does that feel? Empowering? Motivating? Dare I say, mature?[1] By focusing on that feeling and noticing the energy and confidence that comes with making good choices on a daily basis, your spark of enthusiasm toward your law practice may well be reignited.

In addition, I contend that a significant part of our legacy centers on our choices regarding the time, energy, and resources we spend giving back to others. As attorneys, we are fortunate to possess many skills needed by our communities. Opportunities to give back include speaking, writing, participating in bar activities, volunteering to assist a nonprofit, representing clients on a pro bono basis, donating to worthwhile causes, mentoring other attorneys, and maybe even running for public office. Can you meaningfully tackle all of these options? Probably not. But I suspect that you might be able to identify one or more opportunities to give back and mix those commitments into the daily canvas that you are creating. Each and every time you can make a difference in someone’s life, it will add to your legacy and increase the satisfaction and enjoyment you feel toward your law practice.

Last summer, I enjoyed spending time with a childhood friend who is now a mid-career attorney running her own small law firm. We chatted about her brother, now a surgeon in his mid-50s, who expressed a strong desire to retire. I asked my friend, “What about you?” She smiled, a very determined smile that I knew well from many years of friendship, and said, “Oh, no. I’m just getting started.” I hope that, by carefully examining your life and your law practice, identifying areas of improvement, successfully achieving lasting changes, and applying the concept of legacy as an overlay to all that you do, you, too, will feel as if you are just getting started.

Endnote

1. The Macmillan Dictionary provides two examples of “mature” that come into play in this context: “a mature adult is no longer young, and is considered to have the good qualities of an older person, for example the knowledge and experience of how to deal with particular situations”; and “the mature work of an artist, writer, etc. is produced when they are no longer young and have developed their skill to a high level.”