I began working as a virtual legal office in 2007 from South Africa, then Europe, Canada and finally from a couple of ocean front beach apartments in Florida and the Caribbean.
Hey, nothing is perfect! 🙂 I love it and I loved it. But I was alone most of the time. I missed the camaraderie of been in an office full of people. The ability to reach out to friends and ask questions, go to lunch, I even missed the nagging office politics – the latter only a little.
I had found a paradise lifestyle, but I found it all alone. I needed friends, not just for social reasons but also for career, to ask questions, to share victories and opportunities with. I needed peers to help and to team up with on larger projects. Friends and colleagues I could trust with my clients, with my plans with my ideas. Most of all colleagues I could grow with professionally and spend time with at fabulously exciting places like London, Vienna, Sidney, Milan, Madrid, Hong Kong, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Paris, etc. You get the idea.
On the business side, I could see clearly I was not alone. Almost 1300 members in the Online Bar Association in 6 weeks corroborated that. As fellow OBA member, Mark Marino remarked, “we lawyers like to build relationships first before doing business.” Our focus since we began was building a highly social organization. One in which you can build with trust each other and business will follow.
The vision for OBA is social 1st , business 2nd. The exponential evolution of technology, including free social media platforms allows us to build relationships online in ways we never envisioned 10 year ago. Whilst relationships online are great, we all know that the life long bonds of trust are forged in the face to face encounters.
We’re planning that today. We’re organizing regional events and a global conference. As founders of OBA, we don’t decide when that happens – you do!
Your efforts in connecting with each other, in being open, vulnerable and candid determine how quickly we can build momentum and excitement. You are the stars! Look around and read the introductions of the 10% of you that have shared your lives and careers. To me you’re 100% amazing: talented, experienced and you know where we’re headed. You know how much fun this will be, and you know what being an active OBA member feels and looks like as we evolve into a global organization of talent and trust.
You know how this opens up the world to you.
Law stopped being a jurisdictionally bound practice years ago. Even litigation is quickly evolving into a borderless practice. Our relationships will be a determining factor in our happiness 1st first and wealth 2nd. In fact, these will run parallel. But not in the old transactional sense of being “that guy” that sells to everyone, but by being genuine, authentic and generous. No one wants to be spammed anymore. We want to have friends that care, friends that aren’t in it for the money, friends that are willing to be vulnerable, open and kind.
That’s why I launched OBA. What we can and will create together wakes me up every morning with joy. 🙂
Jorge Colón's Blog 