Customer Reviews

The Creative Lawyer: A Practical Guide to Authentic Professional Satisfaction

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Michael Melcher's The Creative Lawyer is the seminal work on finding authentic professional satisfaction. While targeting lawyers, the book's message is equally applicable to all professionals trying to create and live authentic lives.

Using the right combination of a left brain/right brain approach, Michael encourages us to take responsibility for our careers--to become "stewards" of them, in a way that is "systematically creative." I love that! Lawyers typically have the "systematic" part down, but need support, guidance and inspiration--along with very practical advice--to nurture and develop the "creative" part, that part of us that can "bring into being," "give rise to" and/or "produce through effort." The Creative Lawyer is not about finding your "inner artist" (although I suppose it could be) but rather about creating a life that works for you through exploration, planning and effort. And that is key.

Too many career advice books leave one with a sense that all one need do to create an ideal life is dream, affirm, and let the universe do its job. Michael knows better. He knows to live an authentic life requires effort. With wit, authenticity, and a sense knowing, Michael leads/guides us to it.

He starts where we all must--with an exploration of values. Michael knows that by clearly articulating our values, we infuse our ultimate plan of action with a greater power and likelihood of success. In effect, our organization, effort, and skill become energized by our core values. Michael goes on to help us develop a vision, learn to know and manage ourselves, develop our networks, and our habits of experimentation. He also gently implores us to challenge and interrogate our attachment to some taboo subjects--money, status, stability, and recognition, and leaves us with a powerful message: "Creating a life that works does not unfold logically"--a message that may prove to be a major "ah hah" for lawyers accustomed to using logic and analysis to solve problems.

As a professional coach and organizational consultant, I rely on Michael's book and its many exercises (including the "master plan template") to inform my practice and coach my clients. It is a superb resource. And as a former law professor and lawyer, I would like to see Michael's book used as the foundation for a new law school course focused on life management skills. Law schools are uniquely poised to support and develop creative lawyers who could then enter the profession with a grounding and basis to achieve an authentic professional life. The use of The Creative Lawyer as part of the law school curriculum could go a long way in preparing lawyers for a more fulfilled life in the law.

I highly recommend this book to lawyers, law students, law school professor and administrators, as well as career coaches and human performance developers.

There is a moment in every lawyer's life when you realize that you've made it--but you have no idea what "it" is. Luckily, that's the moment Michael Melcher's book sweeps in and (with rapier wit and profoundly clever insights) shows you which way is up. A law degree allegedly opens doors, but the right doors do not always appear in a typical law career. Melcher sheds light on the different--and creative--paths to true career satisfaction. Too many lawyers feel that they must abandon the law because they only know of one way to be a lawyer. Melcher shatters that myth and in the process, delivers tangible, effective advice from which every unsatisfied lawyer can benefit. This book is a perfect gift for yourself, a law student, or unhappy lawyer. Everyone should read it.

This book is written for lawyers, but really is useful for anyone who wants to find greater satisfaction in his/her work and life. It is a good read, articulate, entertaining, and insightful, but most importantly - it actually works. It gives you perspectives, tools and exercises that will absolutely make a difference in how you think about what you want and where you are going - if you do them. Like any book of this kind - reading it is interesting, and will probably provide some insights, but to really get the full benefit, you need to actually do the exercises. So get yourself a career creation buddy, or a coach, or just get off the couch and do them - and get on with the life you want.

Michael Melcher's book, The Creative Lawyer, is both an inspirational guide and a toolkit on how to find job satisfaction. The approach he outlines works: start with your values to create a personal vision statement, determine your areas of competencies, identify what you need to learn and explore new areas of growth, then craft a positioning statement to present yourself to the market. Melcher lays this out as a process and one that should be on-going. He also gives effective ways to network and use your pool of friends and colleagues to help you in your pursuit of a fulfilling job. At the end of each chapter is a reference list of articles and website that were very helpful. As an executive coach who works with people in career transition, I found the book extremely useful - the exercises work. However, I am not a lawyer and most of my clients are not lawyers, nor do they want to become one. So, why the title when the content appeals to anyone in search of a new career? In spite of this, The Creative Lawyer is just what it says it is: A Practical Guide to Authentic Professional Satisfaction.

As an executive coach, who specializes in coaching mid-career attorneys, I am in a unique position to comment on Michael Melcher's book. It is excellent. The book covers key points regarding how to improve your life as a lawyer, covers them concisely, and presents them with specific exercises so they can be applied. Any lawyer (and probably anyone else) with a sincere desire to develop a better understanding of themselves and to apply that understanding to improving his or her life, will find The Creative Lawyer a valuable tool.

Coaches, like Mr. Melcher and myself, guide people to investigate themselves, their circumstances, and their options and to develop acceptably low-risk strategies to improve all of the above. We use a wide array of methods and tools toward that end. In The Creative Lawyer, Melcher provides simple, revealing discussion and shares excellent exercises to support lawyers who want greater professional satisfaction and are ready to apply themselves (for as little as 20 minutes a day) toward that end. Among the tools that Melcher shares are methods of:
* Values identification. Most lawyers have only a vague idea of what their values really are, what really energizes them, what really fulfills them. Melcher shares several excellent exercises to help you get a clear handle on that fundamental issue. (Chapter 3--Who You Are Now: Identifying Your Values.)
* Putting values into action. He then offers a straight-ahead methodology to apply those values more and more in your life. (Chapter 4--Living Your Values in Work and Life.)
* Developing a vision. If you do not know where you are going, all roads will take you there. Developing clarity about where you want to go increases the likelihood of your getting there dramatically. (Chapter 6--Exercising Vision.)
* Knowing your type. Many lawyers think that being a great lawyer means meeting a particular model. The truth is that for you to be a great lawyer is different than it is for any other attorney. It has to do with applying your natural propensities. Melcher explains how to assess your "type" and how to apply that to your actions. (Chapter 7--Self-Management and Type.)

He also provides explanation and exercises for you to improve your
* Relationships (Chapter 8--How Relationships Matter.)
* Networking (Chapter 9--The Networking Chapter.) and
* Communications (Chapter 10--Mindful Communications.)

The final chapters of the book encourage and share methods to make a habit of personal growth and to deal with blocks that often stop that from happening. He wraps the whole package into a master plan template to make it comparatively easy to integrate the insights and plans you have about and for yourself.

Finally, while I will recommend this book to non-lawyers as well as lawyers, it is significant that Melcher is an attorney. His gut understanding of what a lawyer does and what a lawyer's life is like enables him to speak to members of our profession in a way that is not found in other self-help books.

Great book for lawyers who are at
the early stages of thinking themselves out of their legal box and for
people - like me - who are revisiting this process to define the next steps.

The author gives an eye-opening description of the Meyer-Briggs types in
lawyers and legal work. It was comforting to find out that there are more intuitive and creative lawyers out
there! Some of the exercises were
good to do for clarification, esp. the assessment of skills gaps, the writing exercises on vision and mission statements. I like
the concept of job/career experiments.


This book legitimizes the existence and concept of being a creative lawyer. This
will help to open minds and hearts for creative approaches to both legal career development and to a more innovative approach of legal information and workprocesses as such.

The title suggested to me that this book is about creativity in law and legal thinking, while the content is mostly about being creative in your career path. The subtitle covers the book very well.

As a lawyer who went back to business school to find a new path, I can attest to the fact that this book will help you in finding your own path. We're shaped by our ideas, principles and experiences but what the book helps you to do (lawyer or not) is to organize those 3 areas to help you going forward. To get the true benefit of Melcher's book...make sure you do all the exercises and follow-up by reading all the book recommendations. Well worth your time and money.

I'm a lawyer in the Midwestern U.S. I was fortunate to attend a CLE event last year at which Mr. Melcher spoke. Not only was his live presentation excellent, witty and useful -- his book is fantastic as well! I read it through once and am now (still) working through the exercises (hey, lawyers are busy!) I can't recommend the book and exercises enough.

The book covers a wide variety of topics relevant to any attorney who wishes to live more joyously and authentically. Melcher's chapter "Mindful Communications" is worth the price of admission alone, it will forever change how you talk about yourself with others. The chapter "Money and Other Blocks" does an excellent job of investigating blocks to the life we'd rather have. The "Master Plan Template" will help you map out a successful and creative journey in a clear and systematic way.

The writing style is concise and Melcher injects enough humor to keep the reader smiling or laughing knowingly. It's clear Mr. Melcher really knows what it's like to be a lawyer -- the good, bad and ugly.

I agree with one of the other reviewers who said this book should be the basis of a law school course. There is a fabulous variety of tools and tips in this book -- tools that would serve any lawyer very well.

One more note: I recently ran into a lawyer who'd been at the CLE where Mr. Melcher spoke last year. He asked if I'd read "the book that speaker from New York City wrote." I replied I had and loved it. I was expecting this rather conservative colleague to say something negative about the book. Instead, he said "I'm reading it too and it's really great. I've even done some of the exercises!" So not only would I recommend this book to younger lawyers but I'd also recommend it to more established attorneys. It seems you can sometimes teach an old dog new tricks if the trainer is good enough.

Thanks for the great book, Mr. Melcher.

A must-read for the young lawyer; this book offers great insight into how to use a law job as a means to the career you want - whether inside or outside of the law. Well written and practical, this book is extremely helpful in assessing your career and planning your next steps. Highly recommended.

A wonderful career guide for lawyers, or those who are thinking of becoming lawyers. The book provides practical tools for helping to shape a career in the law that reflects your professional and personal interests and goals. The Creative Lawyer contains many helpful tips and exercises tailored to those in the legal profession, which help to set the book apart from other career guides on the market. I think that The Creative Lawyer is a must read for every lawyer or anyone who wants to help a lawyer in his or her life achieve greater career and personal satisfaction.