Lawyer 2.0

I had my first honest-to-god client outing last night.  My boss and I went to dinner and a Local Sporting Event with two people from one of our largest clients. 

It’s interesting: I feel like I can develop a pretty good rapport with clients as long as I’m talking to them about their legal issues.  Socially?  I feel a little awkward.  Part of my desire to keep business from mixing with pleasure, I suppose.  Anyone who knows me could tell you: I’m a different person at work than I am away from work.  I mean, we all are, but I think the distinction is really, REALLY pronounced in my case (for example, my boss refuses to believe that my sense of humor isn’t exactly “mainstream.”  HAH!). 

For example, I’d like to pretend that admitting my neutrality with regard to Local Sports Team (admiration of which rises to an almost religious leve — oh, who am I kidding, I’m talking about the Red Sox) was part of some cleverly designed icebreaking strategy meant to stir up a discussion.  But alas, it was a result of my nervousness.  Note to self: come up with better strategy for talking about Red Sox if you’re going to keep practicing in Boston.  This might involve actually having to follow them.

Also, I found out that because my wife is a Yankees fan, and I’m neutral on the whole baseball question, that I must be a Yankees fan by default.  I swear, I think that people around here honestly can’t process the fact that there are people who aren’t interested in baseball.  Football, hockey — I can talk about those all day. 

…and this brings me round to the title of my post: marketing.  It’d be nice pretend that what I did last night was just a fun outing, but it wasn’t.  It was a chance to rub elbows with the client, and let them get to meet the guy on the other end of the phone/computer screen.  It was a chance to sell myself, and I’ve never been very good at that.  That’s probably going to be my biggest weakness, career-wise.  I want my work to stand on its own merits.  In this business…well, you can’t always get that.