Linear Thinking

Dear Diary:

Sometimes I think that it would be awesome working in a think tank, especially an invention think tank where you are stuck in a room with a few other creative types and/or entrepreneurs and left with a shopping cart, rubber band, a half eaten apple and a tooth brush and you have to McGiver out the newest, baddest, most innovative invention. Out of spontaneity comes genius.

However, let’s not underestimate the worth of linear thinking.

I recently had coffee with an entrepreneur who was probably in his mid to late 30s. True, he had one semi-successful venture (as he mentioned over and over again, including how he framed the one article that appeared in the WSJ about him and his venture and asked me whether he should hang the article along with his diplomas up in his studio apartment above his bed as he did not have an office), but man, he was completely incapable of thinking linearly even in making small talk.

He would forget his point, forget what he just said, admit that he forgot what I said when I hadn’t said anything, argue a point that he wasn’t trying to make, etc. I wanted to hit him on the knuckles with a wooden ruler and tell him to grammatically diagram out his sentences before he spoke. (But it isn’t just him, I’ve noticed that many people without a law degree (even physics or math majors even though they tend to score the highest on the LSAT) have a difficult time making a concrete analytic arguments or points. People tend to jump around or argue similar but different points (much like 1Ls do fall semester).)

When he asked me about what I did, it was very, very clear he had no idea how companies were run or about corporate structure/governance or how to structure a deal or what strategies VC firms use or what type of return/deals angel investors are looking for even though these are the people he should be kissing up to for money so he ought to know how to cater to them (he also had an MBA from an Ivy–what do they teach in B-school??).

Now, he is obviously an outlier as I’m sure most business people do know how to structure a deal, etc. and to his credit, as an entrepreneur, he seems to have done moderately alright thus far not knowing these things so the point of this post isn’t to rag on him.

The point of this post is: I’m glad that I do know these things. I certainly didn’t learn these things in law school after reading cases ad naseum (and nothing I learned in writing that damn required appellate brief my 2L year has helped me as a corporate lawyer) and as painful as it was to fly by the seat of my pants after being thrown into the fire to see if I could sink or swim in BigLaw (how did you like those metaphors?) and learn how to draft, let alone, read a 200 page contract and ancillary documents and actually sort of know what I was doing, it’s helped me talk the talk and walk the walk when networking with B-people.

Interestingly, every personality or aptitude test I’ve taken since grade school said I was the “creative type” who didn’t like structure and enjoyed being spontaneous (I just took one from Career Builder)–all things that would say RUN AWAY from BigLaw (structured, conformist, attention to detail required, bureaucratic, risk adverse, anti-social, awkward, etc.) yet, I’ve developed the ability to operate in a structured environment and think linearly, carefully, and with attention to detail (though not when writing for this blog because 1) I post to this blog alot from my iPhone and it sucks trying to proof read and 2) I’m no longer paid to be attentive to detail)

I have to admit that BigLaw taught me how to do this. How else did I get through 400 contracts during due diligence and not drown in my own drool? Or find every misplaced comma in a 200 page contract? Or notice that pages 1-27 use curly quotation marks but pages 62-123 use straight quotation marks and inbetween those pages, it’s all a jumbled mess? I didn’t really learn this ability during law review because the things we churned out would make a real journal shudder. No, I had it beat into me in BigLaw. I can show you the scars to prove it.

Had the entrepreneur learned the skills that were painfully branded onto my ass by BigLaw, I think he could have gotten so much further in his career. There is a point where creativity/non-linear thinking stops leading to innovation and just leads to confusion and nonsensical babbling.

Before, I already wrote a post on some of the benefits of BigLaw, but I have to admit this is yet another benefit. But before you, my fellow still-employed (for now) BigLaw colleagues, say “a-HA! you see! BigLaw RUULLEESS” and high five each other like it was 1992, I’m only saying that I learned something from BigLaw. That’s all. Nothing else. I mean, I’m sure the prisoners learned *something* at Guantanamo but nobody’s arguing that Guantanamo’s rules.

-Still Glad I Got Out of the BigSlammer

Related posts:

1. Benefit
2. Reach out and touch…me
3. Square Hole
4. Lying
5. Bid-ness Development