I'm grateful to Bill Henderson, editor of Legal Evolution, for sharing the origin story of #makelawbetter on the LE platform. I offered to write about #makelawbetter after reading Jae Um's story of life and work in the time of COVID. Interestingly, what I ended up writing was not what I set out to write. And, it was what I needed to write. Below, I share the prologue of my LE post and invite you to continue reading at Legal Evolution. Bill has created an important platform featuring insight and learnings from legal innovators and I highly recommend you follow the valuable content shared there.
I was spurred by Jae Um’s Home Alone in New York (146) story here to write something about #makelawbetter dot org. (Many thanks for the shout-out, Jae!) After reading, I reached out to Bill who graciously accepted my offer to share the #makelawbetter story with Legal Evolution readers.
And, all week I’ve been trying to summon the creative energy to actually write. Like many of us in this time, high levels of anxiety have sapped my creativity. At just the moment I have unexpected time and space to be creative. One of many COVID-19 ironies, I suppose.
I’m finally writing now, a full week later, and I realize that this post is going to be about a couple of things. It’s going to be about #makelawbetter, which I’m calling a movement. And it’s going to also be about how this time is affecting the movement, shared through a tiny lens of my experience living in this moment.
And in this moment, I’m reminded of the lesson Mary Oliver shares in her poem “What I Have Learned So Far”: “All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.”
Ultimately, #makelawbetter is about sharing stories and through them learning and collaborating to build new and better ways. By sharing our stories, we are sewing seeds — essentially publishing the data that will help us learn from this moment, as we emerge on the other side. Whatever that may look like.
It is in this spirit, that I share the following.