Look! It’s a Salon des Lawyers! I love this idea:
“There is no ‘agenda’ for a LexThink! conference. No panel presentations. No keynote speakers either. Instead, we bring together really cool, smart and “big thinking” folks to talk about stuff. Really.
We’re convinced that smart people can be smart about anything. For many of our alumni, ideas gathered from (and connections made with) people from outside their industries were the most valuable part of their LexThink! experience. Our facilitators take these interesting people, mix them together, and use collaborative brainstorming techniques to stimulate small group discussions loosely tethered to a central theme.”
One thing that I have noticed about the legal profession is that it can be a real stone fortress of exclusivity. New associates learn the craft from more senior lawyers, by working and consulting with them and observing what they do. While this is a great way to learn, it is perplexing to find that there is almost no other way to learn. Knowledge within this profession is more often guarded than shared, and often the only way to find out is to know someone who knows. Blogging is beginning to change that, but slowly. I think there are several reasons for this hoarding of useful information in the legal profession, including the competitive nature of litigation, the difficulty of sharing stories without compromising client confidentiality, and the plain fact that lawyers just don’t have a lot of free time to put the lessons they’ve learned into accessible format for others. Be that as it may, it can be awfully isolating for those who are just starting out, or branching into a new specialty within the profession.
LexThink seems to fly in the face of that tradition of silence, encouraging lawyers to share their knowledge, and also their creativity, to make the legal profession better, from the inside. Sign me up!
I’m interested in hearing about how knowledge is shared and spread in your professions. How do you learn what you need to know to do your job well?
Many thanks to Drew for pointing out this provocative article by the The New York Times’s Maureen Dowd, which ties in to several vivid conversations we have had at Salon Des Geeks gatherings. It also cites a British study about gender, IQ and marriage that we discussed at the most recent State College Salon.
I found Dowd’s article fascinating mainly in how little it comports with my own experience. Her assertions that “women today have gone back to hunting their quarry…with elaborate schemes” or that “men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women,” are dizzyingly broad overgeneralizations that are unfair to both sexes. Conducting my own little study, I discovered that I know zero women who think that game-playing, acting coy, or buying self-help books with titles like “How to Catch and Keep a Man” are good ways of finding a mate. When asked if they play down their intelligence, education, or professional standing to make a man more comfortable on a date, the women I know start to get Really Irritated. Their consensus seems to be that if a smart woman makes him feel scaredy, why, that’s why they coined the phrase, “So nice to have met you, and goodbye.”
Similarly, in spite of Dowd’s assertion that men like to feel that they are hunting quarry while dating and enjoy the thrill of the chase, the men I know seem to experience no such confusion between romance and outdoor sports. Undoubtedly this is in part due to the crowd I hang out with (gentlemen, I salute you), but the men I know appreciate a witty, independent, and intelligent woman. They would be bored by a woman out of the pages of “How To Get Your Man and Keep Him,” and in fact, I would go so far as to say that they find that girl Frankly Terrifying. Deep down, these guys kind of resent having to pay the check Every Single Damn Time, although they are undoubtedly too polite to say so. They do not, like the man Dowd quotes, feel that paying the check is “one of the few remaining ways we can assert our manhood.” (Poor little muffin. I think he has already lost that game if he is clinging to a restaurant bill for his sexual identity).
Here is my radical suspicion: Everyone, irrespective of gender, loves to be respected and appreciated. If we would begin from that admittedly wacky assumption, we might iron out our gender role issues much more easily.
But enough out of me. Ever since I finished the article I have been pining for your input. Don’t keep me waiting!