“I spent four years marketing my legal practice online and it went OK.????”

In September 2018, Edgardo Sanchez held my iPhone while I sipped a piccolo latte outside Coffee Alchemy in Sydney’s Strand Arcade. He pushed record and I gave a summary of a recent piece of shareholder litigation.

There was no specific plan aside from “doing some marketing”.

I had been recently elevated and a litigious matter I was working on had settled. That gave me the time and the motivation to try to bring some work in.

At that time law firms liked marketing themselves with blog posts summarising recent cases, and the LinkedIn algorithm liked videos. I thought I could balance those two things.

The only legal videos I had seen at that time were divided into two categories: what I called “approachable” and “rigorous”.?

The former would see a (white, male) law firm principal standing in front of their firm’s logo, delivering crap advertising copy, and concluding with a call to action. “Did you know a trade mark can even be a smell? Call us now at Bloggs IP for all your trade mark needs.”

The latter would see one or sometimes two (white, male) lawyers teasing out some technical legal issue. The tone would be sombre. The language would be precise. The attention span would be tested.

I resolved to try to combine the two and go for: approachable rigour.

(I pause here to note that I did not, and do not, have the skin colour or gender identity to extract myself from the “white, male” issue. My contribution to dismantling the systems of oppression all around us will have to be another discussion for another time.)

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By the time Edgardo stopped recording and the video was uploaded, panic had set in. I had taken the approach to “ask forgiveness, not permission” but the idea of having to seek forgiveness from a pretty conservative profession still sent those stabs of anxiety right to the pit of my stomach.

If the issue was raised by someone I respected or who employed me I prepared to defend myself - meekly, quickly - and then just take the video down.

But the issue was never squarely raised.

And a week later I was in hospital having my brain scanned.

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I would later learn that in the days following the first note being uploaded I’d experienced a vasovagal convulsive syncope (where someone faints because they’re a bit scared of blood - it's real life-threatening, tough guy stuff) in a GP’s rooms and was taken to hospital in an ambulance.

Before the (embarrassing) nature of my issue was discovered and while there were worries about the state of my brain, I decided the back of the ambulance was the place to fix my laziness: I had not yet made my will. So, equipped with a rough recollection of Section 8 of the Succession Act 2006 (NSW), I whipped out my iPhone and sent an email expressing my wishes.

Probate of that email cannot now be granted (at least in solemn form) as I’ve tightened things up, and I was back to work shortly after.

One of the first items on my to-do list: ask Edgardo’s help to go and record a second one of those case notes.

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And the rest is history!

Four years of doing my best to share as much of my limited knowledge as I can in as many places as possible has left me here.

Some work comes in the door. (Though there could always be more!) I am in partnership with people I like and trust. The team I work with are empathic, highly intelligent, and engaged; they are approachable and rigorous.

As time has passed, I’ve come to use the project to talk about the importance of intersectionality, a horror podcast that I co-host with a friend (which you can find here: https://fbiradio.com/podcast/spooko/ ) , some rap songs, and how much fun it is to publicly dunk on one’s opponents.

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I’d recommend engaging in a similar project to others; though with a couple of additional comments.

People will say mean things. That’s not the nicest feeling, but I’m yet to be corrected on any matter of legal substance aside from the correct spelling of contra proferentem. And when people say mean things about my appearance, personality, or view of the world - that’s just an opportunity to make more content. I commend this approach to you.

People will say nice things. That’s more of a challenge. If you internalise the nice things people say about you on the internet, they become a source of your self-regard. And that then leads to you pursuing more: to feed the growing beast, you need more people saying more nice things on the internet. This affects your mental health of course, but also your content. The hashtags start stacking up, as does the algorithm baiting, and the risk of you saying something like “it’s so UNFAIR!” that certain content did not get the response you hoped for.

If you can: minimise the amount that the nice things “get through” and ignore vanity metrics.

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If you’ve got to this point in the article, that suggests you have some knowledge of the project and have been supportive of it.

So: THANK YOU.

Coffee and a Case Note has - in a very direct and literal way - changed the trajectory of my life. My job is a source of pleasure in a way it had never been previously and I have met some wonderful, wonderful people - many of whom I now work closely with.

So I’ll look forward to joining you again soon for another coffee, and another case note.

Jd’A