Managing the Transition to Life After Legal Practice

Episode Notes

Transcript

Molly Ranns:

Hello and welcome to another edition of the State Bar of Michigan’s On Balance Podcast on Legal Talk Network. I am Molly Ranns.

JoAnn Hathaway:

And I’m JoAnn Hathaway. We are very pleased to have Kevin McGoff join us today as our podcast guest. Kevin is the author of a publication recently published by the ABA, called Find Your Landing Zone: Life Beyond theBar. To Compliment his book, Kevin also developed a successful program to help motivate lawyers to move from simply thinking about what’s next in life, to creating a personal plan to make it happen. And with that, Kevin, could you share some information about yourself with our listeners?

 Kevin McGoff:

Sure, I’d be happy to. It started out as a paper boy, an altar boy. I was a flower delivery man and a candyman. I had a route where I delivered candy and filled candy machines. But I graduated from that and went to law school and I worked for the disciplinary commission in Indiana. I was in a small firm, I was a Solo practitioner, and also with another law partner built a law firm that we eventually merged with a larger firm, which merged to a larger firm. And along the way, I had the good fortune to do all sorts of different types of law practice. I did criminal law from murders to traffic tickets, and I did family law, but I also worked in the field of legal ethics and wrote and spoke on that topic and represented a lot of lawyers and law firms along the way. And all those experiences worked out to where eventually I was the general Counsel for our law firm of about 200 lawyers.

Molly Ranns:

Kevin, to get started today, could you help us understand how you came to write your book, finding Your Landing Zone?

 Kevin McGoff:

Sure. Molly. I had a friend who, Scott King, who’s the head of the Continuing Legal Education Forum here in Indiana, and I’ve spoken on ethics for many years with lawyers from the Disciplinary Commission, Chuck Kid, and the end of our 30 some years of doing that, Scott said, you ought to think about developing a program that address lawyers transitioning either into different careers as lawyers to different careers altogether or even retiring. And he observed that he thought that I had such a strategic plan to end my law career, and I was amused by that. I broke out laughing. I said there was nothing strategic about this at all, but Scott and I continued our conversation and ultimately when I prepared an outline for this program, he said, you ought to think about writing a book. And as I prepared for my transition from being a lawyer to something else, I started doing travel writing.

I went to a class where I learned how to transfer my writing skills from writing briefs to writing travel stories. And so I liked writing and I started writing a book to compliment program that I was developing. And ultimately I took a creative writing class and met a woman who was an editor who helped me since I’d never written a book to transform my notes into a book. And I had the good fortune of the American Bar Association to accept it, my manuscript, and they published it. And so it was a work in progress over a number of years where there’s a quote from Peter Pan that odd things happened to all of us through life without our noticing for a time they ever happened. And that’s kind of how the book happened is it was evolving from doing some travel writing to a casual conversation to making some notes and meeting by chance this editor and it turns into a book and I am meeting Donna Gomer, the ABA publisher who said, yeah, I like it. I’m going to publish this.

JoAnn Hathaway:

Kevin, what do you hope others will take from the book and what do you hope to get out of it? Personally,

 Kevin McGoff:

I really hope that others will appreciate the fact that as a good friend told me once, there’s no such thing as an original thought. Everybody’s, everything has been sort of explored, but when you come at it from a different angle, then sometimes it sparks an inspiration. What I found when I was doing the work to research this thing, I’d read various books, I’d listen to podcasts, I’d talk to other people, and I’d say, I already know that, but then I question myself, if you A know it, B, you think it’s a good idea, why aren’t you doing anything about it? And so my hope is that others will take a look at this. It’s purposely short because I know how lawyers and busy professionals are. I used to have the stack of four and 500 page books on the nightstand is not that for a reason because I think that if lawyers or professional people take a look at it and there’s exercises in it, I designed it so that it’s something of a workshop so that there’s this self-reflection that the ideas come to one to say, I know that I can make a change because I’ve decided I need to change.

Either I want to do something different in my practice. I want to be better at something outside of my practice. I want to exercise more, ride my bike across the country, or retire in a way that’s productive. My hope is that people find snippets in that book when I get out of it. And what I found, there’s two quick stories I can tell you. There is a lawyer friend of mine who worked for a lawyer’s assistance and as I was in the early phases of this, she was kind enough to let me pilot my program to a group of her volunteers. And later she told me that after she listened to this and had read some of the things I’d written, she was inspired to pursue another career that’s incidental to all the experiences that she had as a professional in a lab program to start her own business.

And I was gratified that she told me that she, I was inspiring to her to make that happen. Just recently one of my physicians retired, and so I gave her a copy of the book. She retired, she calls me up out of the blue and said, would you meet me for a beer? I said, sure. And I go to meet her in the club down the road here, and she had my book, it was Dogeared she’d written in the exercises and she said, I’m still working on this, but this is helping me design a meaningful retirement for me and my husband. And that’s what I hope to get out of it is more stories like that. If people say, I did get a snippet out of your book, something inspired me to move forward, that has more as much gratifying as selling copies.

Molly Ranns:

Yeah, those are wonderful stories, Kevin. And I know I talk to so many lawyers every day who struggle with some of those transitions, especially that transition into working less or even retiring. And so I found the book to be really inspiring and I have to ask, the book includes some stories from your childhood. Do you have a favorite that you’re willing to share with us today?

 Kevin McGoff:

Yeah. My favorite story is a paper boy story where one of my customers that lived around the corner, Mr. Creek, was a slow pay and I tried everything I could to collect from him the way that the paper boy, and it was mostly paper boys back in that period of time, although my sister did get a route and ultimately there more female papers, delivery persons, but the neighbor, he’d empty his pockets. There’s nothing in my go and it worked. It came out of my pocket. So he was basically, all of my profits were in the money that he owed me. And finally my dad, who was great and my mom too of letting us go, figured this out on your own, he got inspired, I should say. And after I did this, my brother Terry and I played Army. So I had every army uniform belts, canteens, plastic weapons, helmets from World War ii and six o’clock in the morning I sued it up.

Camouflage paint was banned by my mother because we painted one of our brothers with it, so that was no longer allowed, but I hid in the Foria bushes jumped out when Mr. Creek headed for his car in the dark, collect for the times, and he turned his pockets inside out and he had no money again. So I went home. My father was eating his Rice Krispies getting ready for work. It’s six 30 in the morning and he said, I’ll go with you. He knew to wait until Friday night, which was how you collected back in those days. People got paid on Fridays, you went and collect on Fridays. Friday night we go to Mr. Creek’s house. My dad’s standing to the side, he’s got this party going on. I can still see there’s a lady sitting on the couch smoking a cigarette with a cocktail in hand.

I pound down the door, collect for the times. Mr. Creek comes to the door and I’m waiting for the, I don’t have any money story. My dad pops up loud enough for everybody in the room to hear you pay this kid, you pay him right now. And surprisingly, Mr. Creek had money that day and I got paid and off we went. And it was a great learning experience that at 11 years old I didn’t appreciate all the way but from it. And what I put in the book is that those mentors like dad, dad and I joked about that as a family lore and what joke, but I hope that I thanked him of that lesson. And that is something that I’ve talked about too along the way that I had great mentors beyond my dad that I did in the most instances have the opportunity to thank them even though maybe it took me 20 years to realize how they helped me and I didn’t thank them the day they helped me, but I circled back and that meant something to me really was meaningful to them, which is something I advise people to do.

That mentor pops into your head that you haven’t talked to in 10 years. Call him or her up and say, Hey, thanks for the lesson you taught. It’ll make your day. It’ll really make their day.

Molly Ranns:

That’s a great story, Kevin. We are now going to take a very short break from our conversation with Kevin McGoff to thank our sponsors.

JoAnn Hathaway:

Welcome back. We are thrilled to be here today with Kevin McGoff, author of Finding Your Landing Zone, life Beyond theBar. And Kevin, how does someone get started with affecting a change in their life or actually being more fulfilled?

 Kevin McGoff:

As most dads do, as all dads do, they have their pet phrases that sometimes when you’re a kid you don’t appreciate them, but one of dads was Do your spade work and you really have to be reflective when you’re thinking about what makes you happy. Part of that is how you spend your day. We spend more time a day working than we do at home in some instances, and so therefore, it ought to be meaningful. And as you move through life and find things that you like, you end up finding things that you don’t like and how do you move away from those? And it’s through not only introspection but also digging. I spent a lot of time in bookstores. I used to go to the self-help section. I think it’s a misnomer because there’s lots of good stuff there. I mean, Victor Frankel’s Search for Meeting and Dr.

Phil’s relationship had book or kind of in the same area, but I’d grab some books off the shelf. I was always careful to have something about a Hemingway and maybe travel through Europe sitting there. So if anybody that I knew happened along to say, oh, he must be through a rough patch here. He’s in the self-help section. I could always say that I’m doing research for a friend. I’m really here picking up a Hemingway in a Vieth travel book. But there’s lots there. The other advice I would give is to talk to people who’ve gone down the road before and also to engage in people that have an expertise, a financial advisor for one. I’m a believer in career coaching, and you can do that at about any different level. I had the good fortune to have a law firm that invested in their lawyers at the time where part of our continuing education fund was a certain amount of money we could use however we wanted.

And I used that and paired it with some of our own money to have a career coach. And that moved the needle on my life tremendously, and I didn’t really appreciate it until I went back and looked at the list of things that I said I wanted to accomplish 15 years ago and compared it to those things that I accomplished. I didn’t knock everything off the list, but a lot of it I did. So I would say get expert help. Another tip I would say is tell others that you’re committed to doing this. And that’s a simple, it’s accountability, right? I’m going to quit smoking, I’m going to go to the gym. Well, if you keep that in your head and you don’t do it, nobody’s going to call you out on it. But if you tell loved ones significant other, a good friend, yes, I’m going to really work this year towards figuring out what my next step is.

And after 30 days, ask how you’re doing. Hopefully you’ll be shamed to say nothing and that you’ve done something. And the other point that I would say is it does take courage to make another step, and I worked with a career coach and a rapport. Rapport who gave me lots of good advice that some of which I’ve imparted in the book, and she talks about how lawyers are a little bit timid sometimes in bargaining for themselves when they get to the point where they need to talk to their law partners or if you’re in a small practice law partner and maybe if one’s a Solo practitioner, which this still applies to figure out how things move along. It takes courage. I tell people, you have to believe in yourself and that sometimes lawyers are introverts, which I find interesting, but there’s a lot written about that. Molly and JoAnn, you know those studies. The other thing that I tell people is when you put your plan together, be bold, but not stupid, right? You can’t go to your partners and say, I cut down my time to the firm by half, but I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t touch my salary. Right? It doesn’t work that way.

Molly Ranns:

Kevin, you’ve talked about what you hope to get out of writing the book. Can you talk a little bit about what you’ve learned in the process and then also help us understand what’s up next for you?

 Kevin McGoff:

Yes, thank you. What I learned is that inspiration, to start a career, to make a change, to begin, a new challenge or to retire can come from just about anywhere. I have a good friend David Yates, who became a chef and he traveled the world. He’s worked on the Queen Mary. He’s worked in Paris, but he grew up in London in a working class family, but a television show inspired him when 15 years old watching a chef chop up an onion real fast. He said, I want to do that. So a TV show moved this guy, there’s another friend of mine, Jane Run. She created a playtime game to keep her 8-year-old sons occupied. That developed into a published game and became one of the bestselling games in Sweden. Another person I interviewed for the book, Christie Doss, she thought she was going to a networking opportunity to chat with somebody at CNN, and it turned into a job interview and she left a law firm as a young associate and became an on-air personality at CNN.

Another friend of mine, the wife encouraged him at age 44 to start running and he ran 50 marathons. They’re on a bike ride across Texas right now. They’ve crisscrossed the country. Every one of these people that I talked to told me two things. First of all, that they personally didn’t feel like they’d achieved anything that was extraordinary. And while I’m odd at some of these stories, they also said to a person, if I can do it, you can do it. That there’s really nothing holding you back. And so what I learned is we all have our talents. Sometimes those talents nest unused because in the law business, you’re so committed to clients and those things, the day-to-day. But ultimately, I learned that there’s nothing particularly special about humans who have done what observers may perceive to be extraordinary feats. The difference is they got up and did it.

They did what they wanted to do. For me, what’s next? Well, I’m thinking about another book and I’ve had a lot of input from non-lawyers saying that the message of Find Your Landing Zone is applicable to others, to professionals and other curious people. And so I may tinker with what I’ve done and add to it. I picked up a couple of recent stories, which I found interesting. I have law school classmate who retired from being a lawyer and is an actress and had parts in big movies, and there’s another lawyer just recently I came across who retired and went to Trek driving school as traveling the country. So there’s more stories out there that I’d like to share.

JoAnn Hathaway:

Kevin, do you have any final recommendations for our listeners, perhaps other resources available to them in affecting change and leading happier, more fulfilling lives?

 Kevin McGoff:

Sure, JoAnn. I think first of all, and I learned this in this project because one of people I interviewed shared this, you have to treat yourself as an identifiable project the same as you treat a client project. We don’t go to trial or show up at a closing for a financial transaction without having created and then executed on a plan. I can relate to the trial lawyer world where you’re planning for months, sometimes years on a big case to get to the Courtroom or get to a negotiation, and Jane said, yourself should be a project the same as a client. And I think that’s important too, that budget, the time to say, I want to achieve this. I want to read these books. I want to spend this Saturday morning once a month at the bookstore, combing through things and making some notes, and that’s a project that’s on my calendar.

Another thing I learned is take off the blinders. One of the persons that I spoke with, Christie Dawson, her opinion is that there’s a lot of lawyers that miss these opportunities that are right in front of them because they’re so hell bent on doing the day to day and making sure that we’re doing the best we can for clients that this other opportunity that’s nesting, maybe we even within a project or in the course of conversations with other lawyers we interact with that we miss out on because we don’t see change because we’re not looking for it. The last one I would impart is time is not an abundant commodity. And so starting right now at whatever stage in your career you find yourself is to commit a short burst of time to reflect on where you want to be. Do the spade work, ask questions, get help, and get moving.

I mean, I tell people, don’t be dragged along and become a spectator to your own life. Take charge of it. I really like to give book recommendations, and there’s two that I quote in Find Your Landing Zone. Albert Brooks has written a book called From Strength to Strength, and he’s got lots of snippets in there. It’s a short read, a valuable read. One of the pieces that struck me that satisfaction comes not from chasing bigger and bigger things, but paying attention to smaller and smaller things. I commend that book to your listeners. The other one is Matt Hague’s book, the Midnight Library. I won’t spoil the story, but it’s a good read. It’s a fairly recent book. My takeaway from there was, if you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story. And if you think about where you’ve been to date about just these chance things that happened to you in however many years you’ve been on the planet, change one thing and where would you be? My dad got transferred from Cleveland when I was two years old. Had that not happened, I never would’ve grown up in Indianapolis. I never would’ve met my wife. The other little things that happen, and if you think about that on a going forward basis where you have the opportunity to pick the thing that changes your life story, it’s a real opportunity.

JoAnn Hathaway:

Well, it does look like we’ve come to the end of our show. We’d like to thank our guest today, Kevin McGough, for a wonderful program.

 Kevin McGoff:

Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed speaking with you, and it’s been a nice conversation. Thank you.

Molly Ranns:

Kevin’s book is wonderful, and for anyone interested finding Your Landing Zone Life Beyond theBar, the ABA has offered a 20% discount for both the book and the ebook, and that code is FYLZ two zero. Again, FYLZ two zero. Kevin, if folks want to follow up with you personally, what’s the best way to do so?

 Kevin McGoff:

The best way is probably email. It’s my name Kevin dot McGoff, M-C-G-O-F-F, the [email protected]. But I also have a website where the travel writing that I’ve done, most of those articles are published, and also there’s links to the book and to this podcast and other podcasts, and that website [email protected]. That’s S-U-R-L-A-R-O-U-T-E-K m.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Molly Ranns:

Thank you again, Kevin.

 Kevin McGoff:

No, thank you. This has been a great chat.

Molly Ranns:

This has been another edition of the State Bar of Michigan On Balance Podcast.

JoAnn Hathaway:

I’m JoAnn Hathaway.

Molly Ranns:

And I’m Molly Ranns. Until next time, thank you for listening.

Speaker 4:

Thank you for listening to the State Bar of Michigan On Balance Podcast, brought to you by the State Bar of Michigan, and produced by the broadcast professionals at Legal Talk Network. If you’d like more information about today’s show, please visit legal talk network.com, subscribe via Apple Podcasts and RSS, find the State Bar of Michigan and Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or download Legal Talk Network’s, free app in Google Play and iTunes. The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network or the State Bar of Michigan or their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.