Yesterday or the day before, something happened that put real fear and grief into me. I believed, for a short period of time, that the Unemployed Lawyer would be unmasked and I, the pitiful Alter-Ego, would be all that remained. But that was the pitiful Alter-Ego thinking, and not the Unemployed Lawyer. The Unemployed Lawyer is better than that. The Unemployed Lawyer will remain, not anonymous, because the Unemployed Lawyer is real and named and you know where to find me, but simply the Unemployed Lawyer.

When I woke on Sunday, November 16, 2008, with this website bursting from me like Athena from the brain of Zeus, I knew already that I would write and maintain it under an assumed identity. At the time, I thought I was doing it that way to protect any hope I had left of getting hired to do what I did before I became the Unemployed Lawyer. Even then, I did not hold out much hope, given that all I saw were friends getting fired every day, but still I kept thinking about that job and sending out applications until I had spreadsheets that showed I had actually applied to every large to mid-sized firm in certain metropolitan areas and was completely stuck for ideas.

I even remember writing to one early correspondent that I was nameless and locationless for “obvious reasons”.  I was then referring to my fear that I would be utterly and officially banned from the legal community for what I wrote and for creating the site to begin with. Looking back, I think those fears were always unjustified. Even at my angriest, I don’t think that I have ever written maliciously or with hate. Despair, yes. Sorrow, yes. Bewilderment, pain, amusement, irreverence; yes, yes, yes, and yes. I don’t think the whole legal world would shut its doors against me for this.

The Unemployed Lawyer is no longer a product of Alter-Ego fear.  I began to realize this some time ago. The Unemployed Lawyer likes being the Unemployed Lawyer. The Unemployed Lawyer can do what Alter-Ego can’t do. The Unemployed Lawyer can write without taint. The Unemployed Lawyer can write without the burden of first impressions, bitter partings, boozy lunches, long, long nights and early, early conference calls. For the Unemployed Lawyer, there is no woulda, shoulda, coulda. The Unemployed Lawyer is not a victim. The Unemployed Lawyer has no axe to grind. The Unemployed Lawyer is no fallen champion or freak of nature. The Unemployed Lawyer is clean as a whistle. You can see the Unemployed Lawyer straight on, without looking through any scrim of history, real or imagined.

When you read what the Unemployed Lawyer writes, you don’t read through a burden of subtext. As the Unemployed Lawyer, I say what I mean and I mean what I say.  As the Unemployed Lawyer, I show you who I am, in plain black and white, every time I write. I am a little in love with this.

You can’t misunderstand the Unemployed Lawyer. You can’t attribute ulterior motives to the Unemployed Lawyer. The Unemployed Lawyer is free. As the Unemployed Lawyer, I feel like I can fly. The Unemployed Lawyer likes feeling this way. The Unemployed Lawyer actually dreads becoming an employed lawyer again; surrendering all this freedom and immediacy and submitting to all those rules and concrete faces.

The Unemployed Lawyer is happy once a day. It will be very hard to give that up.

__________________________________________________________________

[1] Okay. Okay. So it's a TV series. It started as a comic book, then became a radio hit. Sometime in between (1930s or so, there were a couple of films made, but they're not what anybody thinks of). In this case, the claim to fame belongs to The Lone Ranger, Apex Film Corp., 1949-57, multiple directors over 169 episodes, starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels. After the series went off the air several feature films were released, but those films were collections of unaired episodes filmed for the series.