My old buddy and fellow curmudgeon, Mark Herrmann, still writes for Above the Law once a week, as he has since it was readable and credible. Why is a mystery to me, as he’sf smart and funny, thus unrelatable to ATL’s readership these days. My best guess is that he’s still in the groove and, to the extent he’s able to offer any serious thoughts to a young lawyer, he wants to help. Mark’s that kind of guy.
So he wrote a post that was somewhat satirical, but with a point.
Folks polish their credentials, and their egos, when they draft their résumés.
Maybe there should be a rule: If you’re going to draft a résumé, you must simultaneously draft an anti-résumé.
Just to keep your ego in check.
There was a time when modesty was considered a virtue, and shameless self-promotion a vice. Now the mantra is that “if you don’t puff yourself, who will?” And so they lay claim to experience they don’t have, skills they’ve yet to develop and conceal any details that might give their plan away, like their year of graduation from law school or their admission to the bar.
The anti-résumé would be more honest: “Has tried only one case in [his or her] life; served as defense counsel; and the jury awarded more in damages than the plaintiff’s lawyer requested in closing argument.”
Even if you’re not obligated to post the honest description on your firm’s website, maybe you should be obligated to write it up, just to keep your ego in check.
Mark’s point here isn’t to condemn the marketing efforts of the less-than-worthy, but to remind them that their puffery is just that, puffery. Don’t believe your press releases. Have some humility. While making fun of the hype of self-promotion, don’t lose touch with reality. Not bad advice, right? Not at Above the Law.
The reaction to this column was fierce, with some readers saying the idea of writing an anti-résumé was a terrible one, sure to depress people and likely to cause suicides. How could I have written such dangerous words?
Likely to cause suicide? Dangerous words? How fragile, if not broken, could ATL readers be?
Mark’s response to this was to remind the most fragile readers that there are others who don’t share their mental state.
On the other hand, if you’re consumed by the idea of professional “success” — good grades, fancy clerkship, fancy job — and you’ve never attained that traditional success, then you might not view the idea of an anti-résumé as a cute joke. Rather, you might be bemoaning your lack of “success” in life and dismayed by the thought that you should be required to wallow in your self-evident “failures.” If you had to draft an anti-résumé, that could drive you over the edge — to drink, to drugs, to suicide. How could I have proposed such a thing?
Is this the portion of the ATL audience that lost their minds over Mark’s anti-résumé and was driven to suicide? Suicide? Do young lawyers not realize that everyone can’t come in first in the race? And this is hard enough to drive them over the edge, “to drink, to drugs, to suicide”?
I surely hope that the piece of my readership that I didn’t hear from falls into a different category — a well-adjusted middle. I assume that my average reader is average — went to an average school, performed about average, and went on to an average career. But if that hypothetical reader is emotionally secure and well-adjusted, then that reader should be satisfied with his or her life: Success is not, after all, a function of grades or clerkships or partnerships.
Does this well-adjusted middle exist? Like Mark, I surely hope so. But that others exist who would be driven to suicide over Mark’s post is hard to believe. Not only were they unable to see the humor in Mark’s anti-résumé post, but the message was too dangerous for them to accept without devolving to self-harm because it didn’t rub their tummies. If so, they should not be lawyers. They will not survive the practice of law.
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