I started my own law practice in October of 2006. I left my GC job hoping my contacts at that time would be sufficient to ensure a steady flow of work.
Before taking this leap, I was in-house counsel for nearly 9 years at two different companies. Before that, I was a law firm associate for two-and-a-half years (following a two-year federal judicial clerkship). So, at the time I launched my solo practice, my understanding of what a private firm practice should be was quite dated – particularly with respect to legal research.
On top of that, I had to manually insert the supplement pages into the volumes. This would take hours of tedious work, a soul-crushing waste of my time.
As time went on and I became busier, and the realization dawned on me that the Internet contained more valuable and more timely information, the dust started collecting on these books. Eventually I terminated every subscription I ever had.
The books are still up there on the shelf, missing years' worth of supplements and updates, collecting ever more dust. Maybe someday the books will have value as collectibles, like vinyl records, but I doubt it.
