Discovering your career path

Speaking notes and slides from my career development presentation at the 18th Biennial National Conference on New Developments in Communications Law and Policy. The objective of my session at this joint LSUC/CBA event was to introduce a paper I wrote (paywalled - message me for a copy) directed to young communications law lawyers as a lead-in to a panel discussion.  

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Thank you to the organizers and sponsors of this conference for the opportunity to contribute to today’s discussion.

When I was first approached to offer a paper and some comments on the future of the communications bar and the skill set needed to succeed in a changing environment, I hesitated.

True, the majority of my career has been in this world and I still engage from time to time, but I worried I’d be coming at the topic as more of an outsider than an insider since I’m not trying to hold on or develop my identity as a communications lawyer. Some might even suggest that I may even be on the path to relinquishing my identity as a lawyer.

In recent years, I’ve been much more preoccupied with the business of law and legal technology, and with changes to the legal profession than with practicing as a lawyer. I work with legal technology startups, firms and other groups trying to figure how to pursue new ventures or face new challenges.

But with encouragement to marry my history and understanding of the work you all do with the some of the environmental changes affecting the way law is practiced, I prepared a paper that I’ve shamelessly styled as a letter to new communications lawyers with suggestions for your to keep in mind as your career unfolds.

I don’t claim to be qualified to give advice, but I do believe there is some value in talking about one’s experience, because it can often be the case that one’s thoughts and concerns are more widely shared than we might have expected.

Before I get into my paper, I’d like to share some advice offered by a person actually qualified to give it.

Retired Supreme Court justice Ian Binnie was the guest speaker last week at a Toronto Lawyers Association event for young lawyers.

Precedent Magazine reported his comments as follows:

“The advice I offer, having listened to a lot of advice over 50 years, is really that none of it is any good,”

“You’re far better off to throw away pre-conceptions. If you have a playbook as to how your career is going to develop, just forget about it because it’s not going to happen.”

“You, and you alone, are responsible for your career,”

“If you don’t grab a hold of your career and make your own decisions and look closely at whether you are achieving what you hoped to achieve, and you look back, as I do, from 50 years through the rear mirror, you’ve only yourself to blame.”

So on one hand, Justice Binnie agrees with me that you and you alone are responsible for your career…on the other hand, he was pretty clear that you shouldn’t take advice from either him or me.

I could suggest that his advice to ignore advice further extends to this panel you have before you, but I won’t. I’ll offer the dissenting opinion that you will be well served to hear what these people have to say.

As for my contributions, it’s a mashup of what I see in the rearview mirror and what may lie ahead.

I go deeper into what may lie ahead in the paper, but this morning I’m going to use my rearview mirror highlight how our experiences can both limit our understanding of career development and show us a path to taking control.

What you are about to see are paraphrased recollections of things people have said to me that created my biases to career development.

Before law school, I sold phones and long distance plans for MTS in Winnipeg. 

Rightly or wrongly, from this excellent boss I took away the idea that a person should expect to outgrow a job within three years.

I heard a different number during my interview to work at TELUS:  

… some quick math, and in my mind, that meant I could be vice-President of regulatory affairs by age 38 – the flipside was that if I didn’t get a promotion within 4 years, it would mean I was a failure, right? 

When I gave notice to the firm where I was articling to let them know of my intent to move to TELUS, my principal was very supportive. Having left a government job early in his career and turned another down 30 years later, he was feeling the grass was greener

 The managing partner of the firm, however, believed his grass was plenty green 

My take away from their different view points? To each their own! If the two people responsible for my legal training during articling didn’t agree on this point, there probably wasn’t a right answer

 Shortly after arriving at TELUS, one of the lawyers in the regulatory shop helped me adjust to my surroundings without freaking out.

 After four years of growth, development and opportunity, I was loving my surroundings. The work was fascinating I could always rely on my boss and our vice-president for great advice on how to communicate with the CRTC: 

In my paper, I discuss how the early stages of your legal career - including your view of what if means to be a lawyer and what it means to be successful - are determined by your environment. For so many reasons, I was extremely fortunate to start where I did. But it wasn’t until I moved with TELUS from Edmonton to Ottawa that I actually started to think about what I wanted to do and what it meant to me to build a successful legal career.

At the time in Edmonton, while there were a few communications lawyers who didn’t work for TELUS, it was still pretty much the only game in town.

My understanding the playing field changed when I got to Ottawa.

 A new senior vice president came on board to run the Ottawa office and she quickly expanded the team with an all star roster from across several companies and associations.

I learned two things very quickly – One – the talent level in this industry is very high – and Two – not only is moving around acceptable, is practically expected!!!

It seemed everybody in town had worked for the CRTC, Johnston and Buchan, the CAB, Bell or the CCTA at some point, so when the opportunity arose, I took a leap and left TELUS to go work in the cable industry.

And it was there that I learned my most treasured career lesson of all:

You have to know what it is that makes you truly valuable…irreplaceable may be a strong word, but in a competitive field and in an employment market where the seats at the top don’t change all that often, what are you going to do to get those opportunities to grow.

At the core of Ken’s secret to success, is the ability to bridge divides and knowing how to incorporate the knowledge and interests of one group into priorities and understanding of the other.

Call me a slow learner or call me a late bloomer, but 9 years from finishing law school and 14 years from the start of my first “grown up” job, I finally started to realize how much of my future was in my hands and how irrelevant to my happiness were my formerly pre-determined measures of success.

It was at this point that I stopped looking at career development as something tied to promotions or titles, and as something tied to my long-term interests.

In the paper, I talk about using a 10 year horizon to think about a wide range of roles that you could see yourself enjoying. This lens is useful when new opportunities come along, because what might have otherwise looked like a career detour, isn’t, when you can see how it gets you closer to something you might want to do.

In 2006, my 10 year horizon included a desire to be VP Regulatory at a phone company, to be a CRTC Commissioner or maybe a law professor. Over the years, the jobs on that horizon have varied greatly…I still haven’t abandoned some of my old goals…so whenever a Commissioner spot opens up at the CRTC…I’d be happy to entertain the discussion!!!!!

But here’s the thing, when you take ownership and allow yourself to consider different opportunities that don’t conform neatly to the legal career plan you developed in your first year or two outside of law school, interesting things can happen.

In late 2006, while working for Shaw as a regulatory director, I was invited to compete for a marketing director job in TELUS’ wholesale department. 

I enjoyed my work at Shaw and taking the job meant taking a pay cut, but I was already thinking more broadly about my career, so I it was possible for me to see how this could make me happy.

As a colleague had told me one time while sharing his career story, if you only consider yourself one thing – in his case, an engineer, in our case, a lawyer – you might not realize when someone is offering you a chance to do something really cool.

I’m going to end my personal career tour here and close with a quick summary of the advice I offer in the paper.

 We can say with certainty that the communications law environment will be an evergreen source of huge amounts of fascinating legal and policy work. But if you truly want to own your piece of it, I recommend three things:

1. Expand your definition of success
2. Expand your idea of what a lawyer should do
3. Expand your understanding of outside forces

I’ve spent enough time talking about the first 2, so I’ll close with a few words on “outside forces”

I’m not talking here about whether we’ll be debating a consolidated communications act, or about anything core to your substantive legal work. Rather, I’m talking about technology, changing workplaces and the long-term relevance of lawyers both generally and in the communication fields specifically.

I go into each of these in more detail in the paper, but the real message here is that some big changes are coming. There is still time to get your head around them and position yourself for success, but you won’t be able to do it if you keep your head down and just put your faith in hard work and a supportive boss.

Finally – I’m excited to sit down now and listen to this panel. I hope they challenge my assumptions and I know they will bring forward insights that will benefit us all.