I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to confront only the essential facts of life…and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
– Henry David Thoreau
As anyone who has taken a high school English literature class can tell you, the above quotation and the title of this blog are references to Walden by Henry David Thoreau, a book that along with Catcher in the Rye is, or at least should be, required reading for adolescents everywhere. Admittedly, I haven’t thought much about it since. But over the past year, as I’ve inched closer to departing my job in the legal department of a Fortune 15 healthcare company and starting my own entertainment law, intellectual property law, and small business law firm, I’ve found myself revisiting some of its themes.
As you might recall, Walden is among other things a treatise on self-reliance and spiritual discovery. Putting aside for a moment the irony of using Thoreau to prove a point (in a blog, no less) about the practice of law, voluntarily walking away from a steady paycheck at a growing company in favor of going it alone as a sole practitioner is at least a little bit like packing up your belongings and venturing into the wilderness. As a sole practitioner, there’s not a lot you can rely on except yourself, and that’s a scary proposition. But at the same time, working for yourself in an area of the law you are passionate about is immensely rewarding, at least partially because it is so challenging.
During law school, the idea of soloing was decidedly not on my radar. I’d been a writer ever since I was old enough to form thoughts, spent close to a decade as a musician in a rock band, and was employed as a tour manager for a Saddle Creek recording artist and music journalist for several online and print publications. Studying the legal methods by which artistic creations are protected made sense, but my goal in doing so was to land a job at an entertainment law or intellectual property law firm. But by the time graduation rolled around, it was apparent that the economy had other plans for me. Instead of stepping into a job with any one of the firms I’d forged connections with over the previous three years, I discovered that those firms were no longer hiring.
So instead I accepted an offer to work in the legal department of the aforementioned healthcare company. For the purpose of this narrative it would be convenient if that healthcare job had been unqualifiedly terrible, but in reality it was instructive. For one, the job was very much related to intellectual property, albeit in the context of multi-million dollar healthcare software licenses. Moreover, working with one of the healthcare company’s many business units was a crash course in business and corporate law. Still, after a year, the old itch to work alongside creative-minded people returned, and I began to pursue other options more closely aligned with my background and interests.
For advice in that pursuit, I called up a friend of mine, Chris Armor, to discuss my options. Chris had gone into business for himself as a consumer debt attorney, and had extolled the virtues of working for yourself. He listened to my concerns about my then-current job and offered some advice that turned out to be key in my decision to become a sole practitioner – something deceptively simple, but in my case compelling. He told me that if I knew what I wanted to do, then I should just do it. Why – if I know what I want to do and have the confidence that I can do it – should I let other people dictate the kind of law I practice?
Admittedly, my background and experience made it easier for me to follow Chris’ advice. At the very least, I knew I had several potential clients waiting in the wings and some fantastic referral sources. But for even the most inexperienced and disconnected individuals, the advice to strike your own path instead of waiting for somebody else to strike it for you is empowering. Armed with Chris’ logic, and—perhaps also drawing upon my inner Thoreau—I embarked upon my own experiment in self-reliance. I left my job and founded The Seay Firm LLC, choosing to practice in the fields of law closest to my heart: entertainment law, intellectual property law, and small business law.
While my journey as a sole practitioner is still relatively new, I can confidently report that, so far I love it. In Walden, Thoreau expresses his desire “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” Although I tend to phrase my own beliefs about being a sole practitioner somewhat less dramatically than that, I have to admit that there are some similarities. I’m doing the work I love with people I respect, and that confidence and happiness has translated into my work product. While I expect to have some days where I wonder if I made the right decision, I believe that those moments will be short lived, and in fact in the end will contribute to my already-burgeoning sense of accomplishment.
Subsequent blog posts will discuss issues related to entertainment law, intellectual property law, and small business law. For more music-listening-centered posts, you can visit my other blog, Stumbling Dice. I can promise, at the very least, that you won’t find any more references to Thoreau in any future blog posts on either blog. Finally, if during the course of reading my writings, you have any questions for me, feel free to forward them along to me using the How To Reach Us section of this website.
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