The Lawyers Weekly Interview, Part II: details never before revealed about life & career of MidLaw scrivener

The last post before this one set out the first part of the North Carolina Lawyers Weekly’s article and interview with MidLaw’s scrivener. Heath Hamacher wrote the Lawyers Weekly piece, and edited the interview “for length and clarity.” Below is Part II, the rest of the interview, which mostly addresses personal biographical details.

LW:   Tell me a little about your upbringing and how you came to get into the practice of law.

MIDLAW:   I was born and raised in Tarboro and Edgecombe County, North Carolina, which I later learned is the center of the universe. My father was in the horse-and-mule business until that played out and his work subsided into farming. What I learned about farming caused me to develop an interest in other ways of earning a living.

I got onto the path that led me to law practice late one evening many years ago when, in the course of a gentlemen’s card game, one of the players remarked that anyone who signed up to take the law boards the next day would be released from duty and provided with transportation to either Long Binh or Saigon where the tests would be administered.

I signed up for a day off, and one thing led to another.

 

LW:   Tell me about your practice area and exactly what you do as an attorney.

MIDLAW:   I started in a very general business law practice, focused mainly on litigation; then I followed opportunities that led to me becoming the general counsel of the North Carolina Savings and Loan League and later the North Carolina Bankers Association, and to representing financial services companies.

The time came about 15 years ago when my partners, Jim Williams and Dan McGinn, came and asked me to consider becoming the managing partner of our firm. I thought about that and agreed to do it if the partners approved, but on two conditions; namely: (i) that I could not both serve clients and also be managing partner at the same time, and (ii) that I would not be required ever to fill out a time sheet again. (I was bluffing about the second one, but it worked.)

At midnight this past December 31, Reid Phillips became our managing partner and now I am sort of rebuilding what I do. Something will come up.

 

LW:   Where did the idea of doing a blog come from? Its subject matter is pretty eclectic. Do you just write whatever’s on your mind?

MIDLAW:   Before there were blogs, I wrote a regular series of posts for the North Carolina Bankers Association’s website; before that, I wrote legal memoranda which the S&L League published. I started doing the blog because I wanted to understand what blogs are and how they might be used by law firms. Something I published on the blog (about hummus) got written up in the Greensboro newspaper, and all of a sudden I was in the blog business.

The blog is focused on a few topics: (i) mid-size law firms and law practice management; (ii) 19th Century NC lawyers (mostly from Edgecombe and Guilford Counties) and some things about Tarboro generally; (iii) legal services delivery (I am on the IOLTA board); (iv) the importance of liberal arts education; and (v) something we call the MidLaw Diet, which is about hummus mostly.

I certainly do not write about whatever is on my mind. I might get sued.

 

LW:   Tell me about your family. Are you married? To whom? How long? How many children and their ages.

MIDLAW:   I am well and truly married to Sally Patton Winslow, as I have been ever since 1980. We are the parents of Margaret Winslow who is 32 years old and lives in Greensboro, where she is Director of Strategic Initiatives at Elon Law School; and of Ted Winslow who is 27 years old and who teaches languages and literature and lives in Castellón de la Plana, Spain.

 

LW:   What do you do when you manage to find some free time? Any hobbies besides blogging?

MIDLAW:   We have this great place in the woods in southwest Virginia, where I engage in sedentary pursuits and limited physical activities, and where I like to go whenever I can. Also, I am very involved as a trustee of a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania (Westtown School) and of Guilford College in Greensboro. Hobbies might include reading or something. Maybe cooking.

Lessons Learned: this takes time

If you are going to do this, then you’ve got to invest time in it.

That means not doing something else. Or, not doing this often.

There’s much to be said about law firms as organizations. I spoke about those things at a program on Friday and what I said prompted a lot of comments. Those comments have stimulated thoughts. But how to get time to capture and scrub them?

So, the lesson learned is that,  if you are going to do this, you must  invest time. That requires (i) finding the time, and (ii) committing to the discipline.

Back when my principal focus was a banking practice, I used to post notes about banking law once a week without fail on a trade association website. That was before blogs and the notes arose directly from the practice.

For now, the upshot is “not doing this often.”

The Lost Episodes

Part of the purpose of this is to learn how to do this (on the cheap).

When I set this blog up, somehow a series of earlier comments (“posts,” that the right word?) disappeared. I left them for only a minute over at LinkedIn while I was trying to learn how to use LinkedIn, Twitter and a WordPress blog all together. When I went back my posts were gone. And I had not kept copies. They are gone.

There is a lesson in this that I must learn. I keep having it taught to me – over and over. They say that anything posted on the Internet is out there forever. No. That is so unless you wish it were and then it is not. (Keep copies.)

Second, my frustration at losing those posts (as I remember them, they were brilliant) will be relieved only by referring to them hereafter as “the lost episodes.”