Jan 25, 2009

The little voice inside my head

So, that little lawyer-shaped devil inside my head has been talking to me again. Loud. The first time was last Sunday, as I spent a couple hours giving a friend legal advice on her business plan, and found myself getting more excited than I had been in ages. And it didn't seem to matter that I didn't know what on earth I was talking about (that's right folks, just because your friend/relative/random person you meet at a party has a legal degree, it doesn't mean he or she necessarily knows anything about the laws relating to divorce/intellectual property in the Middle East/fishing licences in Vanuatu/fill in the blank...)

A few days later, as I started working on my second project since I started life at BM, I realized my thoughts had inexplicably turned away from the proper alignment of boxes on my powerpoint slide to pontificate loudly on the inherent and possibly dangerous legal ambiguity in a document my client was about to sign. Fortunately, the client was not in the room, but the rest of my team was looking daggers at me (and possibly contemplating having me committed to a mental institution... or a due diligence cupboard).

And then there's the fact that I seem to be the only person in my immediate vicinity who thought the most interesting thing in the news this week was that Obama took the oath of office for a second time. But I could just see in my mind the myriad of legal arguments I could make, if asked, for both sides of the fascinating question of whether or not he had been acting ultra vires in his first day in office. (And right now you're thinking that just the fact that I'm using the term ultra vires in a sentence should be enough to have me committed...)

So what should I do about this little devil on my shoulder, whispering sweet nothings in my ear? Ignore it? Consider a switch back into law? Have my hearing checked?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

here's 2c from a stranger: wait out the storm. quit consulting. do something more intellectually challenging.

i find myself in a bit of an interesting position too. having just gotten to INSEAD, i'm discovering just how special my job was, just how creative the people around me were, how blissful it was not to know anything about double-entry book keeping.

PS I love your blog.

N said...

Well, should the whispering turn into screaming, I guess you know the answer...
take care,
N

Anonymous said...

... maybe should have taken some more entrepreneurship classes back in school? :)