A useful, reassuring guide to midcareer course correcting for attorneys.
Lawyers tired of the rat race should take responsibility for crafting a more fulfilling career, according to this spirited self-help book.
Lefkowitz, an attorney and career coach, aims her advice mainly at other lawyers who feel as if they’re stuck in a rut, endlessly overworked, underpaid, and trapped by law school debt or family obligations. All is not lost, she contends, if readers are willing to shape their careers by “design” rather than by “default.” She lays out 10 principles of successful career change that can help readers assess their circumstances and prospects, collect data to use in making choices, let go of past decisions that aren’t working instead of doubling down on them, get along with colleagues, bring in more revenue that will boost their clout within their firms, shift their mindsets from pessimism and caution to hopefulness and confidence, and gird themselves for the risk and discomfort that come with making major career changes. Lefkowitz illustrates these principles with anecdotes from her coaching practice, wherein she gently coaxes clients past their neurotic roadblocking and toward career breakthroughs in which they demand free time to have a life, refuse thankless administrative work so they can increase billable hours, claim credit due, reach for a partnership, take a pay cut and leave their soulless corporate firm to work at a nonprofit that defends people against the powerful, or jump off the legal hamster wheel altogether to pursue the dream of teaching. Lefkowitz knows this terrain well—“I’ve experienced the pounding heart and sweaty palms at the utterance of two words by a judge, ‘Ms. Lefkowitz?’ ”—and writes about it in vivid, earthy prose. (“ ‘So,’ I asked Marjorie, ‘what exactly makes you feel so loyal to these douchebags?’ ”) Her advice is as straight to the point as a well-written legal brief—“dread, sadness, or crying at the thought of going to work” is a sure sign that a change is needed—and sometimes pithily aphoristic. (“Here’s the thing about people pleasing. It’s never enough….If you can’t say no, you will find yourself buried in a pile of yesses.”) Lawyers in particular will appreciate the author’s lessons, but others will glean important insights as well.
A useful, reassuring guide to midcareer course correcting for attorneys.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63905-130-4
Page Count: 163
Publisher: American Bar Association
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.
A program of cash-management techniques for aspiring entrepreneurs, aimed at a minority readership.
At the beginning of this business book, Mariga reflects on the birth of her daughter, Florence, and on the depressing prospect of returning to her corporate job and missing some of her baby’s early moments. She realized that she “wanted to show Florence…that I could, that she could, that anyone could be anything they wanted to be in this world.” To that end, she wanted to start her own business, and she “wanted to help entrepreneurs build successful businesses that provide opportunities for others.” In a sentiment reflected by others she’s interviewed, she says that she wanted to strengthen her family legacy, so she founded her own accounting firm. She paints a vivid picture of the hardscrabble early days of other minority business owners like herself, the child of an African American mother and a Chinese father who also had a family accounting business. She and others were “all hustling to acquire clients and build our businesses…and most of us had absolutely nothing to show for it.” She was inspired by Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First money management system, and the bulk of her book is devoted to an explanation of how to make this system work for minority business enterprises. (Michalowicz provides a foreword to the book.) One of the primary goals of Profit First is to build “a self-sustaining, debt-free company,” so a large part of Mariga’s work deals with the details of managing finances, building and abiding by budgets, and handling the swings of emotion that occur every step of the way. As sharply focused as these insights are, the author’s recollections of her own experiences are more rewarding, as when she tells readers of her brief time as a cut-rate accountant and learning that it was a mistake to try to compete on price. These stories, as well as financing specifics and clear encouragements (“Small changes and adjustments accumulate. Over time, they will lead you to your goal”), will make this book invaluable to entrepreneurs of all kinds.
A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.Pub Date: May 25, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7357759-0-6
Page Count: 230
Publisher: The Avant-Garde Project, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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