President's Message
| Publication year | 2023 |
| Pages | 04 |
WELCOME
The Island of Misfit Lawyers
BY J. RYANN PEYTON
I consider myself an "accidental lawyer" I attended law school seeking the degree but not the profession. My plan was to be the next Clarice Starling and use my law degree to support a future career with the FBI's behavior analysis unit. As it turns out, becoming an FBI Special Agent is a challenging career path, so instead of heading off to Quantico, I found myself in Denver attempting to find a professional identity in a profession I thought I was bypassing entirely.
As a first-generation lawyer, I didn't know what I was getting myself into, but I believed that I would eventually find myself in the work and among the people. I arrived into the profession and glanced around expectantly only to realize that I couldn't find myself anywhere. I felt like something was missing, and I quickly became aware of all the ways I simply didn't fit.
For the better part of a decade, I tried my best to contort myself into the "lawyer" and "professional" that I thought I was supposed to be. Despite my best efforts, however, I went home most days feeling like a misfit. I didn't belong in the courtroom. I didn't belong in an office 20 stories above 17th Street. I didn't belong at the cocktail parties and networking events. I didn't even belong in the clothes I wore every day to work. I simply couldn't contort myself out of the truth: this profession wasn't built for me.
So, what's a legal misfit to do? I tried my hardest to quit and leave a profession that didn't seem to want me in it. But every time I took a step toward the exit, something kept pulling me back. Maybe, I thought, we're all misfits in our own ways. What if this isn't a party of one but a party of many? What if the profession could embrace its rebels rather than repel them? And so, I began looking to build my own islands of misfit lawyers?places for the loners, the rebels, the empaths, the cynical optimists, the productive narcissists, the misunderstood, and the ones who feel like they simply aren't seen, heard, or valued by the culture of the traditional legal profession.
Over time I realized that Colorado's legal community has many self-proclaimed misfits, each of them seeking community, opportunity, and authenticity. Together, we form places of refuge, small islands, where those who don't fit the mold can find belonging. For those who...
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