Continuing Legal (but not really) Education

I spent a summer interning for the good folks at the Department of Housing and Urban Development while still in law school.  At the end of it all, a couple folks chipped in and gave the other interns and me a gift card to Borders.

Years later, I found it in my desk drawer and thought I'd better use it since more than half of the value had disappeared (d'oh).  I spent a great deal of time thumbing through the books I found even mildly interesting.  Naturally, I went to the law section first.  The shelves were filled with do-it-yourself books aimed for non-lawyers.  Now if there's one thing law school taught me, it was how to research.... and all my research lead to one conclusion.  I had to get out of the legal section.

That's when I went to the small business section.  That's the point for today's post: law school didn't teach me how to start a solo practice.  My tax classes never taught me how to make profits and where to reinvest them. So I got a copy of Profits Aren't Everything, They're the Only Thing by George Cloutier.  It's a great short read that opened me to the business world in a way that law school lacks.

I plan to revisit the small business section aisle of the book store soon.  The bar requires us to continue our legal education, but as solo practitioners, our business education must continue as well or face a painfully slow failure.