Creativity—You’re Full of It!

The American Bar Association asked me to write the introductory article for the November Issue of The Young Lawyer (one of their many magazines for attorneys). The issue is dedicated to the theme of Creativity. It’s on the streets now, so I can finally share the essay. Enjoy.

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Creativity—You’re Full of It!

By Kevin E. Houchin

You’re full of it! You really are. There’s no way that I’m the first person to tell you. You can’t deny it. You’re full of it up to your eyebrows.

Full of creativity. You were born with it. You are made of wonderful, delicious, colorful, smelly, heaping globs of creativity!

As a child, your humanity burned with the divine spirit of creativity. You imagined games. You imagined friends. And, you even created vivid experiences that existed only in your mind but existed nonetheless.

Then, you went to school.

You learned to live by other peoples’ rules and their ideas of how and what you “should” be. Walls grew that blocked your view of those wonderful places in your imagination. Those walls grew until finally the creativity of your heart, spirit, and right brain were all but abandoned in favor of subjects that could be objectively tested with multiple-choice exams and computer-graded bubble sheets.

Then, you went to law school.

Your walls were adorned with thorns and you were not even allowed to have ideas of your own. Any creativity you were allowed to display was carefully disguised as nuanced synthesis of precedent (other people’s ideas—the older and less original the better).

It felt like you had suddenly become unworthy of being the source of an idea or thought. You felt like a slave to a footnote or maybe like a footnote yourself.

But, you’re not in law school anymore. Now, you’re the only “source” that really matters. Your senior partner may determine your job status and salary, but you get to decide how much credibility to give those things.

If you’re feeling trapped in a job that doesn’t allow you to express your creativity, you have the power to change that. You don’t have to leave your job to feel more fulfilled. Rather, start chopping through the thorns and breaking down the walls that decades of education have placed around your creative spirit. Trust me, you can do this and still be an effective lawyer. It may even be the secret prerequisite to a happy and satisfied life in the law.

There’s no simple seven-step process to recovering your creative spirit. The journey is different for each of us. A simple start is to look for creative opportunities that already surround you. You happen to be holding one of them in your hand. This issue of The Young Lawyer is dedicated to helping lawyers recognize opportunities for expressing creativity in their lives and work. Use it to jumpstart ideas for creative outlets that you would enjoy. Paint, play music, sail, climb, write, spend time with family, do community service, sing—do something other than work.

It’s time to start living a more creative life. Read these articles. Fuel your spark of creativity, and then share your flame. You’re full of it!

Blog Talk Radio with Ann Levine

I’ll be talking about success in law school and beyond with Law School Expert Ann Levine today at 11:00am Mountain. The show will be on Blog Talk Radio. Here’s more information about the program.

One of the cool things about this is that Ann and I just reconnected due to our respective books for prospective law students and via Twitter and Facebook. However, we had worked together about a decade ago when she was at DU Law and I was at Stamats Communications. I was the account exectuve that lead the production of the DU Law admissions marketing materials and she worked in the student services office there and coordinated the photoshoots and student interviews for the project. She had a different last name then, and it feels like a lifetime ago to me, but it’s VERY nice to reconnect and proves the point that it’s always smart to be nice to people who come in and out of your life, because they’ll be back.

Files to Publisher

I just submitted the final files to the publisher for the book. It should be available for purchase in March. If you would like to receive a review copy (meaning you’ll read it and post/submit a review) just let me know and I’ll email you a digital copy. Of course as the publish date draws closer, I’ll stop giving away digital review copies.

Personal purpose statement:

“My purpose is to help as many people as I can reach as much of THEIR potential as THEY can.”

CSU Pre-Law Club Talk Tonight at 7:00

[ November 11, 2008; 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. ] I’ll be giving a talk Tuesday, November 11 at 7:00pm (short notice – I’m sorry) to the CSU Pre-Law Club. It’s on campus at Colorado State University. Building Clark C, Room 337

In related news: Business Week

The current BusinessWeek cites new research talking about how it’s not all right-brain skill that lead to success. The article doesn’t talk specifically about lawyers, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand how this research applies to law school. Here’s a quote:

“A new study concludes that social skills can be a better predictor of future earnings than test scores are. Christy Lleras, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sociologist, analyzed data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988, tracking 11,000 students from 10th grade until 10 years after their high school graduation. Her work, published in September’s Social Science Research, found that pupils described by teachers as conscientious, motivated, and able to relate well to peers and adults earned an average $3200 more yearly than those with equally good test scores but poorer social skills. Lleras says many socially adept students were helped by joining in team sports or other activities. It makes sense, she says, that in a service economy, ‘people with social skills will be much better equipped to navigate.’”

Unless you’re planning to work in a sealed cube, being a lawyer is definitely a “service” business.

Fuel the Spark

Kevin Houchin’s 5 Guiding Values for Success

Creativity—You’re Full of It!

The American Bar Association asked me to write the introductory article for the November Issue of The Young Lawyer (one of their many magazines for attorneys). The issue is dedicated to the theme of Creativity. It’s on the streets now, so I can finally share the essay. Enjoy.

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