I spent a few hours this morning researching some nice folks I’ve been asked to introduce at a panel I’m moderating next weekend, and I thought immediately of Jeff Gamso’s intro of a panel yesterday at the Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers conference.
Gamso: “This is so and so, who’s a good criminal defense lawyer.” /end
This may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but I liked it. One of the things I find disturbing is the need for people to be self-aggrandizing, rather than to let their body of work speak for itself. “What,” you say? They have no body of work, so they have to be self-aggrandizing. After all, if they didn’t tell the world how groovy they are, how would anybody know?
Well, true. And that’s the point. If they have to tell the world, then chances are extremely good that they aren’t all that groovy. If they were, the world would know.
Whenever I do a presentation, I’m asked for a brief bio. I always provide the same thing: criminal defense lawyer and blawger at Simple Justice. And invariably, I get an email to “do a little better,” because it’s not long enough or impressive enough. Haven’t I won a Nobel Prize? Well, no. Sorry. What about a MacArthur Genius Grant. Nope. Not even a MacArthur cup of coffee. So why are you speaking?
Fair question. The best answer I have is someone asked me, and I suspect that has to do with something I’ve done in my life or career.
So what’s wrong with being a criminal defense lawyer? I think that’s a pretty good thing to be. I think it’s sufficiently “impressive,” if that’s your thing. So I’m not the only one, unlike the guy with the twitter bio that he’s grand poobah of the world (said non-ironically)? Well, I’m not. And if that’s not good enough for you. then tough nuggies. It’s what I am.
In preparing for my introductions, I started googling the people on my panel, and came to make some observations. First, for some people, the first thing that popped up was their Linked In profile. That is telling, in that there is no substantive “thing” that comes up about them, only their self-created promo.
Second, some people have brief and to the point bios on Linked In, while others note every burp, every volunteer board seat and every school going back to Busy Bee Nursery. Some provide a factual view of who they are, while others murder thousands of words, most of which are adjectives, in a fairly flagrant effort to convince the reader that, but for the sun in their eyes, they would have won the Nobel prize in marketing.
And some had very long, very detailed, very adjective-laden, bios that left me without the slightest clue what they did, no less why I would care.
What I came to realize, and appreciate, is that the less said, the better. The longer the bio, the harder they tried, the more self-aggrandizing they were, the clearer it was that they had nothing. They were shooting blanks, but trying desperately to come off as if they had a bazooka.
In contrast, the people who had no need to pull down their knickers and prove whose was bigger presented as serious people. They said far less, but far more. The very fact that they felt no compulsion to enhance their worth beyond what they were made it clear in my eyes that these were people who mattered.
Having come to appreciate this, I note that there is a direct inverse proportionate relationship between the number of words used to describe yourself and your relative importance. The more words, the less important. The fewer words, the more important.
Many, perhaps even most will disagree with me. They will tell me how they must, simply must, inform the world of their greatness, for if not, how else will the world know?!? Indeed, that is true. It’s just that the information you provide may tell one story to some people and a different story to others. This is how I read the story of your life from the choices you make in how to present yourself.
I’m sure many will think me foolish to limit my bio to criminal defense lawyer and blawger at Simple Justice, but that’s who I am and it suits me.
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The other way to read the fact that LinkedIn is first is that they aren’t spending time and money gaming the SEO process to beat a for-profit company whose only game is SEO (and advertising). If the profile isn’t full of adverbs, I’d read nothing into LinkedIn being first negative about the person. LinkedIn spends lots of money to get all its listings first.
Next topic: my speaking bio is usually: “He’s the lead attorney of Medina Law Group, an estate planning and elder law law firm. He enjoys the RedSox, his family, and his Apple toys – the order depends on the day.”
Humor is a good thing. Especially as a RedSox fan.
This will come as a shock to you, but some of us have actual stuff that has nothing to do with gaming SEO (amazing how a young mind goes there first) that shows up in google higher than LinkedIn. Of the people whose bios I ran, half had some very significant, very powerful aspects of the lives and careers that appeared far higher than LinkedIn and had nothing whatsoever to do with marketing.
It makes me sad how limited young lawyers understand accomplishments.
As far as your bio, it sounds like stock marketeer advice. Why do you need to call yourself “lead attorney” when your name is on the door? Is that New Jersey code? And why no dog? Aren’t you required to pretend you like pets so other people will think you’re empathetic?
As for the attempt at humor, I see that a lot in people’s twitter bios. It’s really funny the first few thousand times.
I just spent an evening drinking expensive wine with a few people who know you. We had a lot more to say about you than that. In fact, at one point, it descended into “Do your best Scott Greenfield impersonation.” That was a lot of fun.
It warms my heart when I can be the source of an evening’s amusement. I heard the wine was expensive, by the way.
Years ago, our county prosecutor was the speaker at a weekly luncheon, and the person who was supposed to introduce her didn’t show up. They asked me to fill in. So I gave the best intro I’ve ever given: “Julia Bates is a woman who needs no introduction.”
And I sat down.
And if you were the person who was supposed to do the intro, you would have done exactly the same thing.
Maybe. But then I might have spent days planning it.
And when I introduced Sister Helen Prejean, I told about the time she stole $20 from me. I mean, anybody can do one of those tedious recitals of background factoids that either everyone know or nobody cares about.
I don’t need to tell anyone how awesome I am. That’s my husband’s job.
SHG,
Would I out myself as a the utlimate trog if I told you I don’t know what LinkedIn is? Vote for Ike!
All the best.
RGK
Yes. Yes you would.
A couple of years ago, I was on a panel at the Cornell Club on social media. The woman next to me was the HR director for a multinational, who told the audience about the wonders of LinkedIn. She urged everyone to get on board, as LinkedIn was the grooviest thing ever.
When my turn came, I asked the room by show of hands, “who uses LinkedIn for any purpose other than to grab find out where a person works.” Not a hand went up. Then I asked, “who thinks LinkedIn is the corporate equivalent of a social media graveyard, where old people go to die.” Every hand in the room went up, with chuckling echoing through the room.
LinkedIn is about as old school as the internet gets. It’s the place to post a basic resume so that others can look you up and see who you are and what you do, and then leave as quickly as possible to move on to fun and interesting stuff on the internet. If you spend too much time on LinkedIn and your hair turns gray, face wrinkles, and skin begins to turn sallow, dry and crumble off your bones. It’s ugly.
So, this would be a bad time to ask for a comment plugin that displayed bits of our LinkedIn profile under our names as a comment author bio?
It’s never a bad time to ask. Just be careful what you ask for.
What? No public urination like Tannebaum, peoriapublicurinationlawyer.com?
Funny. In my defense I did that 3.5 years ago and have been (slowly) in the process of changing things and moving it over to a better page.
Plus, I’ve stopped taking public urination cases since Illinois abolished the death penalty. They just aren’t worth the time, anymore.
In fairness, that didn’t come from your LinkedIn page, which is appropriately modest, but your website, which is supposed to be, shall we say, complete.
Sir, wishing you the best and hope you have fun doing it. Maybe someone will record it and share it with the masses. Btw, if you open with a joke about lawyers, they’ll be laughing too hard to notice you wore a tie with three piece overalls. Maybe Wheezy will loan you his coat.
*The only thing missing in the so called Defense bios are the ‘Stats’ – (the vettable ones) Wins (jury trials to verdict), Losses (jury trials to verdict) & TapOuts. Why they aren’t proud of their records and why they fail to list what they will ‘not’ do, is a topic worthy of a posting of its own. Have fun & break something. Thanks.
Never trust a lawyer who says he doesn’t lose. That means he either doesn’t try cases or doesn’t try hard cases. Criminal defense lawyers lose. Not always, but we most assuredly lose.
In addition, it’s not really easy to calculate a “win” or a “loss.” If your client is charged with Robbery 1, and you go to trial and she is convicted of misdemeanor assault and let out of jail with time served, did you win or lose that case? What if it’s also a third strike case and the offer is plea and do life in prison?
As with many things when dealing with a lawyer, whether you won or lost a case frequently can only be answered with “it depends.”
Sorry if this is too off-topic.
It is, but so was mine.