Ron Fox

Office Address:

Marblehead, MA 01945

(781) 639-2322
   

Ron Fox

Career Planning for Lawyers


If there is no bliss in our work, no passion or ecstasy, we have not yet found our work. We may have a job, but we do not yet have work. We have a right to and a need for joy in our work. There can be no joy in living without joy in our work." Matthew Fox, a defrocked Catholic priest (no relation) The Reinvention of Work, p. 95

LAST 25 YEARS

Ron has, for the last twenty-five years, worked with lawyers in transition be they unemployed, underemployed or simply dissatisfied as well as law students providing them with advice and guidance on how to find positions consistent with their professional goals and personal values. Much of his practice involves helping dissatisfied corporate litigators learn they are not trapped, have options and can overcome the lack of self-worth and self-confidence caused by the failings of legal education His goal is to help lawyers take control over their careers …. and their lives and to gain autonomy, a sense of meaning, integrity, satisfaction and self-respect.

Ron is a frequest contributor on these subjects in his Lawyer Satisfaction Blog and on Twitter as @ronfox. He also serves as the Career Resource for Solo Practice University .

PRIOR TO THAT

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1963 and serving in the USArmy JAG, he took a position with a corporate law firm and immediately realized that he was in the wrong place. This was his first encounter, a personal one, with the issue of career planning.

Over the next 15 years he practiced law in an insurance company, with a solo practitioner, and in a firm he founded that represented low and middle-income people. He also became one of the first lawyers in the country to offer divorce mediation, served on the board of legal services programs, created lawyer referral programs and started an association of legal clinics.

Because of his experience with small firms and public interest organizations, he was hired in 1984 to be an adviser to those students at Harvard Law School not interested in working for large corporate law firms. For the next five years he provided individual guidance to hundreds of intelligent, creative, self-sufficient students, sadly watching most of them being reluctantly funneled by the law school to large law firms because the law school did not prepare them to practice law, did not make them aware of their options and focused on on-campus interviewing. He also edited the HLS Public Interest Directory.

After he left that law school when a new dean incorrectly stated that its students had little interest in representing individuals, he began advising law students and lawyers, consulting to and presenting workshops for over 25 law schools and bar associations such as the ABA Public Service Division's "Town Meeting"; co-facilitating a retreat for law school deans on Legal Education Reform at the Fetzer Institute; authoring “Lawful Pursuit: Careers in Public Interest Law” published by the ABA; and co-authoring the on-line column, "Find Satisfaction in the Law - Taking Control Over Your Career and Your Life " for FindLaw.


$58 For 24 Hours of New York CLE Full Compliance - Lowest Price
This CLE package will satisfy all of your New York CLE requirements! The MCLEZ New York Bundle A provides 24 hours of CLE credit, including 4 hrs of Ethics, Professionalism and Diversity.