{"id":1328,"date":"2017-04-30T18:00:08","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T17:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2017-04-30T18:24:52","modified_gmt":"2017-04-30T17:24:52","slug":"hyphens-and-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/de\/hyphens-and-the-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Hyphens and the law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chase Jarvis<\/span><\/a><\/span>, top photographer and CEO of creativelive.com (@chasejarvis on pretty much all social platforms) contends that many people (mainly in the creative sector, but also extending into virtually all business areas)\u00a0increasingly lead what he calls „multi-hyphenate lives“.<\/span><\/p>\n

Multiple hyphens<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The underlying\u00a0thought is that having one occupation or role\u00a0throughout or even at any point in a career has to a large extent become a thing of the past. Getting a corporate job and holding it until retirement increasingly is the exception to the rule. The same applies\u00a0for doing only a specific kind of task as part of a job description. <\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, Jarvis argues, the changing\u00a0environment eliminates boundaries between previously separated areas and the available resources allow and force professionals to transcend these traditional borders. One can and might have\u00a0to wear the hats of, for example, founder, marketer, podcaster, producer and copy writer, creative\/artist and business person, all at the same time. And maybe there is even a residual corporate job in the mix, adding „employee“ to the collection. This multitude of roles can be taken to result in a description as founder-marketer-podcaster-producer-writer-etc. – you get the concept. Hence the hyphens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in the\u00a0idea and how he talks and thinks about, check-out\u00a0posts, tweets and in particular podcasts<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0of Chase, he returns to it quite regularly.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Lawyers are „in“ on it<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever the implications in other walks of life, having a multi-faceted and multi-role work\u00a0description is entirely customary in the legal sphere. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lawyers tend to do it all.\u00a0<\/span>Marketing. Business development. Hiring. Firing. Training. Admin. Office organisation. Interior design (who chose your desk?). Project management (getting all the input in time to get the report out in time to get the board meeting prepared to get…). Travel planning (unhappy with the hotel chosen by your assistant? ever booked one yourself instead?). Being a leader (even as a junior lawyer \u2013 who instructed that intern?). The list goes on. And much of this applies in the largest and the smallest firms alike.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am not debating whether that is a good thing or not (depends), whether this in some areas is a necessity (very likely), quite a hindrance to efficiency in others (also\u00a0very\u00a0likely) or a very much valued aspect of being in a profession (pretty certain, for some lawyers at least).<\/span><\/p>\n

The field behind the hyphen<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

My point is merely\u00a0that each of these aspects is an entry-point into a whole field of expertise. Type „marketing“ into Amazon or a search engine of your choice and see what comes up. Or „leadership“. Or „project management“. <\/span>There are people devoting large chunks of their\u00a0time to\u00a0each of these aspects, doing research, figuring out what works, writing papers and books about it. There very likely is a huge\u00a0relevant body of knowledge out there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Being aware of and using at least part of that knowledge\u00a0can make all the difference in being successful as a lawyer. Using marketing as an example, this means there is\u00a0no\u00a0need to reinvent the wheel, worry about the fact that\u00a0they don’t really teach „marketing for lawyers in a transactional firm“ in law-school or rely on thinly-sliced and only partly relevant\u00a0information put forward by bar associations. <\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, it can be highly valuable to remember that „legal marketing“ or „marketing transactional legal advice“ is not its own, special and completely separate discipline. It is „marketing“ applied to a specific\u00a0sector. Very much the same way that successful marketing for hair gel and nuclear power plants likely looks somewhat different. But each\u00a0still is marketing, with a number of fundamentals to be applied, books to be read, people to be asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

Applying it in practice<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong, all this\u00a0might not take away the need for lawyers\u00a0to get involved.\u00a0Certain needed adjustments to the legal environment might require a lawyer’s hand. After all, whatever is done\u00a0has to be effective for the relevant\u00a0practice, the relevant clients and the relevant markets\u00a0– all of these lawyers will likely know\u00a0best. But nevertheless, very likely there is a deeply-rooted and firm foundation out there on which at minimum\u00a0some of the\u00a0efforts can be built. It’s worth looking for it, learning at least a little about it, using what fits.<\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, this applies to all the things-joined-by-hyphens in our\u00a0professional lives. Given the\u00a0general\u00a0lack of time and corresponding need for efficiency, I strongly believe that\u00a0being very clear about the hat(s) we have on in a given situation makes it so much easier to put together that puzzle of tasks that ultimately amounts to a successful\u00a0legal career. It makes it easier to locate and use resources that can help us do what’s on our plates.<\/span><\/p>\n

As lawyers we are by nature multi-hyphenate (thanks Chase, I just love that expression!). The same actually applies to most professions, craftspersons, freelancers etc. Nevertheless,\u00a0the apparent arrival\u00a0of the concept in mainstream is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of what is behind that collection\u00a0of sometimes very different things on our to-do-lists or calendars.\u00a0Understanding and applying it can help to\u00a0effectively\u00a0navigate daily work-life. It can help to reduce complexity, find a place to start and ultimately improve the quality of what we’re doing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And isn\u2019t it cool\u00a0to be at the cutting edge?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chase Jarvis, top photographer and CEO of creativelive.com (@chasejarvis on pretty much all social platforms) contends that many people (mainly in the creative sector, but also extending into virtually all business areas)\u00a0increasingly lead what he calls „multi-hyphenate lives“. Multiple hyphens The underlying\u00a0thought is that having one occupation or role\u00a0throughout or even at any point in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malteholthaus.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}