Lyons' Den

...That was the cheesiest thing I've ever written.

I, personally, was having trouble getting in contact with a corporate lawyer. Luckily, Nathan ended up scheduling two interviews and he was nice enough to pass one off to me. I interviewed Ronald Lyons, a partner at the firm McMillan Metro, Attorneys at Law. He received a degree in accounting as an undergraduate and then attended law school. After law school, he was able to get a clerkship with a judge in Maryland's sixth judicial circuit. He was able to get an inside view of all the workings of the courthouse that way and it gave him a lot of opportunities to advance his career. He has been an attorney for thirty four years, focusing on transactional matters, rather than litigation.

Because he has been a lawyer for so long, I asked him if communication had become easier since he'd started out practicing. He informed me that he started before there were even word processors! This means that each document could be written once - maybe twice - on a type-writer, so it was crucial for him to be able to go in and make edits with that first draft. He would have to go back with white out as he made errors to ensure that the document was correct. Now, he told me, with emails and computers, he's able to go in and make corrections on a document, take things out, write things in, make notations and comments on things within the document they'd come up with. However, he did mention that the drawback of that kind of communication is that sometimes people have questions and they want their answers NOW. He told me of a client that emailed him at three in the morning once, expecting an answer to their question immediately.

Mr. Lyon's also made some interesting points when I asked him how communication factors into his job. He informed me that "everything they do is somehow related to communication." He says cases come in because there's a breakdown in communication or there are issues with the interpretation of laws, etc. etc. He things that communication is critical in developing cases and handling any and all matters that a client needs handling.

I almost didn't dress up for this interview - I considered being lazy and just going in my jeans and sweatshirt - but I'm so glad I caved and at least found some business casual clothes to wear. I've never actually been in a law office and I don't know what I was expecting, but I walked in and was greeted by a secretary, who called Mr. Lyons for me and informed him that I was in the lobby. During the actual interview, Mr. Lyons was very conversational and talked just slow enough for me to be able to take notes as he talked. The problem I found I had was I didn't know how to relay that I was listening and understanding what he was saying. I would be writing something and I didn't feel like it would be appropriate to keep butting in with "Uh huh." "Right." or anything else I was thinking. I also had an interesting time transitioning from one question to the next. He would fully answer the question for me and I would just kind of not and then roll right into the next question. Both of these seem to be things I need to work on in the future.

Fun fact: I actually recorded my interview, in all my awkward glory, but I have no idea how to post that up on here...