Sometimes we think that the “grass is greener” at some other place of work. However, there are times when you look around and you just think, “if I could just be in ‘X’ department,” or “what I’d really be good at here at this firm is ‘X’.” We thought we’d give you the opportunity to express those thoughts here and let us all know what positions within your own organization you think you would want to take on. Unfortunately, I think many of you chicken-out because you were afraid that your current boss may read this and call you into his or her office for a scolding… (as I received a number of personal correspondences says specifically that.)

Luckily, we had a few brave souls that chimed in and let us know what positions they think are “hot” within their organization, and that they would like to try out (hypothetically, of course.) For those of you who contributed, we thank you. If you don’t see what job you’d like to trade for your current position, you may add that as a comment below (anonymously, if you think your boss reads 3 Geeks, too.)

Once you’ve digested this week’s contributions, scroll on down to the end and take a look at next week’s question where we ask if having enormous amounts of information at your disposal makes you more informed, or if it is actually making you less informed than you should be.

James Mullan
KM Systems Manager
Digital & Brand Marketing Manager Manager

It’s just a brilliant job title and there has to be some correlation between the number of words in your job title and pay, right?

Greg Lambert
Library/Records/Blogging Guy
Anything With Biz Dev!

We all know that law firms have cut and cut and cut over the past few years, and we’ve moved the fulcrum over so far that the only way that firms can maintain the 5% growth they have projected is to start bringing in more business. If you like the feeling of accomplishing something every day, you like a good challenge in your work life, and you have any amount of business sense (coupled with creativity and ingenuity), then Biz Dev is the place to be these days.

Toby Brown
AFA
Runner

I got my start in law firms as a runner. My job was running packages of stuff from here to there. Typically lawyers would wait until the last minute, something like 10 minutes before a document needed to be filed with the court, then hand it to me and say “Get it filed!” One time I was wearing cowboy boots (it was a local western theme day) and had to run 6 blocks wearing those boots, but still got the courts’ time stamped confirmation.  The job was great. It had a ton of variety and I was rarely sitting at a desk for too long. I even got to be outside regularly.  The downsides: 1) Pay, 2) Now this is out-sourced.  So I guess I’ll keep my current job as Director of BS.

Ayelette Robinson
KM
Innovator

Wouldn’t it be fun to have a full-time career devoted to being creative and coming up with new ideas? Being able to spend my time exclusively on brainstorming with others, thinking up new and better ways to solve problems, and figuring out which of those could be really successful, would be pretty neat. Fortunately, I get to do that as part of my current role already, but I have to admit that being dubbed Chief Innovator would be the bee’s knees.

Steve
The Man
Futurist

I would like to be paid to speculate on where the industry is going and then make recommendations on how technology can get you there faster and better.  The real key to making this job great is to be at a firm that will actually take action on new and innovative ideas.

Jaye Lapachet
Manager of Library Services (Librarian)
Attorney Development

I would like to try my hand at contributing to the development of attorneys. I don’t think they get enough training around the organization of information – I don’t mean cataloging – which hampers their work. Having a strategy when approaching a legal research problem adds confidence to the work. I think that librarians could contribute to the development side with our organizational skills as well.

Next Elephant Post Question:

Despite Access to Massive Amounts of Information… Do You Still Feel ‘Uninformed’?

This is kind of a take on our previous question of “how do you handle so much information.” However, we wanted to take a different slant on that topic and ask you if you actually feel like all of that information is making you feel like you are actually less informed than you think you should be??

I’m going to place in here a comment I got from Toby Brown when I brought this question up to him as a potential Elephant Post Question:

I mean seriously – how we can feel uninformed when we are drowning in information? So do we just feel uninformed since we are obviously missing a lot of that information? Do we feel it out of fear that we might not be getting the right information? Or are we all just ADDs now, madly in search of more, more, more information?

Jump in with your thoughts and let us know your perspective.