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Profession: Lawyer (Telecom regulation). Workday (times after 9:15 are generally fictitious. Who knows what's going to happen at a given time on any given day.

Profession: Lawyer (Telecom regulation). Workday (times after 9:15 are generally fictitious. Who knows what's going to happen at a given time on any given day.) [7:30]: Wake up. Skim news, including industry news sources like HN, and more specialized law/politics stuff like Communications Daily and Politico. [7:50]: Shower, get dressed (business casual), leave the house. [8:30]: Commute. listen to a podcast, read a book, or on busy days (or on days when I'm feeling highly motivated) read some work-relevant thing (an FCC document, industry whitepaper, you name it. There's always something.) [9:15]: Arrive at office. Catch up on email, if there are any I missed on the commute. (Of course, I'm generally reading, and trying to respond to, email at all times, whenever I'm awake and my inbox isn't empty.) [9:40]: Write. This is usually some sort of regulatory comment or letter. [12:15]: Lunch with a bunch of coworkers. [1:30]: Conference call with a client to share intelligence on the status of an issue we're working on. (Usually this means the status of a regulatory proceeding at the FCC, but not always.) [2:30]: [On good days] Conference call with a client to strategize about a some new issue they're concerned about. This involves the client explaining what their current problem is, and a little on the spot thinking about how I can help them to it under the FCC's regulations. Either they have a new product/service they want to launch with some possible regulatory issues, or have longer term regulatory ideas they want to start looking at (think, for example, Net Neutrality, TV White Spaces, etc.). [3:00]: Back to writing. Most writing projects take a day or two, so I won't typically finish writing anything on a given day. [4:00]: Research. Look into legal issues, technical background, or other types of information relating to a new project. Try to become an expert on whatever that thing happens to be. [6:15]: Record time, in 6 minute increments, all the time I spent working for every client that day. [6:30]: Head home. [7:15]: Arrive home. Eat dinner. [8:00]: Mop up things I forgot to do while I was in the office. [8:30]: Play video games, read, watch TV, work on side projects. [10:30]: Read in bed. [11:30]: Sleep.

modo_ 9y ago
Very interesting. I can imagine accounting for your time at 6 minute intervals is an acquired skill. You mentioned you work on side projects in the evening. Are those projects related to law? Wondering what something like that would consist of.
- pdabbadabba 9y ago
  Yeah. The time accounting is pretty annoying. This is a surprisingly big part of the reason that people leave firms for in-house jobs of the government. It's a significant source of stress for a lot of lawyers. As for side projects, it's usually not law related--although there is sometimes a nexus with the legal issues I'm working on. I did a lot of coding before law school, so it's sometimes that sort of project. One common theme: the FCC actually does a pretty good job of making all of its licensing and other data publicly available, but the interfaces are clunky and the raw data comes in all sorts of different crazy formats. So I'd like to put a system together to integrate all of that elegantly, but it always winds up seeming like more than I want to take on in my free time. :) I've also been doing some homebrewing.

modo_ 9y ago

Very interesting. I can imagine accounting for your time at 6 minute intervals is an acquired skill. You mentioned you work on side projects in the evening. Are those projects related to law? Wondering what something like that would consist of.

pdabbadabba 9y ago
Yeah. The time accounting is pretty annoying. This is a surprisingly big part of the reason that people leave firms for in-house jobs of the government. It's a significant source of stress for a lot of lawyers. As for side projects, it's usually not law related--although there is sometimes a nexus with the legal issues I'm working on. I did a lot of coding before law school, so it's sometimes that sort of project. One common theme: the FCC actually does a pretty good job of making all of its licensing and other data publicly available, but the interfaces are clunky and the raw data comes in all sorts of different crazy formats. So I'd like to put a system together to integrate all of that elegantly, but it always winds up seeming like more than I want to take on in my free time. :) I've also been doing some homebrewing.