Quick History Notes

Start Date:  May 1993

End Date: February 1996

Law Library Management Services:  Law Librarian and Law Desk National Trainer

My Reason for Leaving: It was not an easy one, but it was time to expand my consulting and teaching horizons.

I had just returned to Houston, TX, and had been there for only a day or two.  I spotted the ad for a Law librarian.  I had no experience with it, but I loved living in libraries most of my young life.  So I called the number and spent nearly an hour with Ms. Mayo.  At the end of the call, she said I had the job and would show up at her office tomorrow morning dressed professionally.  Ok, let's be honest now- the life of the law librarian is not glamorous. It's not a lot of fun, and you can get plenty of paper cuts if you are not careful.  You are assigned certain clients' libraries, and upon arrival, you locate a sometimes very large stack of paper pages.  You must follow the instructions to add or replace pages in the law books.  Sometimes, it would include replacement books.  It could be mind-numbing, yet I enjoyed the solitude and the pride of doing a good job.

OK, it got boring after a while.  Then, one day, while I was working in the office, Sheila got a phone call that would change our lives.  She set an appointment and chose two of us to attend the meeting.  Still clueless about what to expect, we sat there as the well-dressed lady from New York strode into the office.  We found out that she is a major-level executive at the Law Desk.  But none of us had even heard of Law Desk.  It was that new.  So, she sits down with the two of us and asks us to pretend we are teaching a lawyer how to use Law Desk (she has gone over a high-level review)—my first professional speaking engagement, filled with fear of the unknown.  My coworker froze on the spot, started to cry, and ran out of the room.  The Law Desk lady looked at me and said, well, it's your turn; for the next 15 minutes, I relied on a valuable lesson I learned in Speech/Debate classes in High School - "if you can't dazzle them with your smarts, then baffle them with your BS."  And so I did, for the next 20 minutes I acted like I knew everything about Law Desk, and proceeded to teach her how it worked, how it would save research time, and take up a lot less space in the library than all those books.

When I finished, Ms. Mayo and the Law Desk representative just stared at me. It was probably just a few minutes, but I swear it felt like hours as the clock on the wall ticked. Finally, the representative stood up and clapped. I was at first embarrassed; I'd never had a standing ovation before.  She said she would send over the contracts, laptops, full set of Law Desk CDRoms, and the essential information to be conveyed in sessions.  I would take all that information and create the first training materials and methods. I told Ms. Mayo that I felt this was way over my head, and she said, no, it's not; we just watched you spend 20 minutes entertaining us- you will be excellent at this job.

Ms. Mayo was right.  I took to this like I loved it, and I did.  I created pages and pages of materials to pass out during sessions.  I created my trainer notebook and notes.  I made the Train the Trianer material.  I tried it out on the poor coworker who crashed, and she still crashed.  But once I got started, I couldn't be stopped.  I taught in law firms.  I taught at legal conventions.  I taught Judges and their staff in courts all across America.  I will say this: Judges don't get technology, and some couldn't even use the mouse!  I learned humility and patience.  Finally, after about two years, we were invited to a Law Desk convention to receive an award.  Two days earlier, I was very ill and rushed to the hospital.  I had to have my gallbladder removed and was not able to attend.  They did send me a nice cookie edible arrangement, but I wasn't allowed to eat cookies; the staff and friends didn't mind at all while they visited.

Sadly, this was also the end of the contract. Law Desk took the entire program back in-house.  But this experience changed my life forever.  I thought I wanted to be a teacher and a consultant.