Hi, gang! I thought I would put out a call to all Kossacks who are lawyers or law students (or, perhaps unlikely under judicial ethics canons of neutrality, judges).
It's true that politics and law overlap heavily, but it's hard to know from screen names what people do for a living.
Now that's ordinarily a private matter, and I would not presume to ask anyone her or his line of work. But I think that it might be useful for attorneys who are also Kossacks to get to know each other in some meaningful way.
So I will introduce myself. My screen name is real, i.e. T. Bruce Godfrey is how I am known at the Maryland Court of Appeals and the DC Court of Appeals (the highest court in each jurisdiction.) If you have no life whatsoever, you can look it up. I now live in Washington, DC, having moved here recently from the Baltimore area, and do contract/temporary work in multi-lingual document review. It's not a traditional practice model, and it's not "sexy" or glamorous, but has done me and my children well, overall. I have about 14 years of experience total, and my preferred work is actually for clients with faces, not accounts payable departments, which I did for over ten years before coming to the greener concrete pastures of DC professionally.
I made a business choice long ago that I was going to be "out" as political and blog in my own name. My websites are "open and notorious." Not everyone (attorney or not) can make my choice, and not everyone who "can" should do so. I respect this totally. Not every person, let alone attorney, can afford to have her or his name "out there." And if you don't want to identify yourself, don't. If you shouldn't. don't. If you feel comfortable outing yourself as an attorney, but don't want to say anything more, follow your conscience.
I figured that in this economy, it's useful for allies to network professionally. Especially for solo practitioners who may want business directed their way. But also, I would enjoy setting up a get-together for DC-area Kossack attorneys for extremely serious legal business, such as the consumption of reasonably priced beer.
So - any lawyers in the house wanna say to each other here? Best Bruce
Also, if people want to reach me, but don't want to post here, they can do so at bruce [/dot/] godfrey at ///////// crablaw doT.com (to foul the spammers.)