My name is Grant Peterson and I, along with my peer Kirksey Croft, serve as one of the Institute of Professional Leadership’s Hardwick Fellows for the 2024 academic year. In my role, I help publish entries for the Institute’s Lawyers as Leaders blog. I have the privilege of learning so many great lessons from our contributors. As I have read through our extensive archive of blogs (which you should do as well) I noticed that we have a glaring omission in our coverage. We have yet to answer the foundational question, “What is leadership?”
Posts
The Intersection of IP Law and Leadership Skills: Insights for Aspiring IP Professionals
Intellectual Property (IP) law is more than a specialized area of legal practice. It is a dynamic field that cultivates and demands essential leadership skills. As IP law evolves, so must the competencies of its practitioners. Drawing on my experiences as a J.D. candidate at the University of Tennessee College of Law along with my education, research, and practical experiences, I have found that excelling in IP law fosters critical leadership qualities. I have also found that institutions like The Institute for Professional Leadership at UT Law are uniquely positioned to develop these skills. This is a guide crafted for law students, recent graduates, and legal practitioners seeking to enhance their understanding of IP law while simultaneously developing their leadership potential.
Helping Others and Ourselves
When I decided that I wanted to go to law school, my main motivation was that I wanted to help people. At the time, I was a a junior in college, and I didn’t really know what helping people meant yet. I had seen also sorts of documentaries about the Innocence Project and watched movies like “Dark Waters” and “Erin Brockovich.” Helping people at this magnitude seemed so unattainable, so it was hard to picture what helping people would look like after three years in law school.
Change Isn’t Permanent, but Change Is
Change isn’t permanent, but change is. This insight did not come from Socrates, Plato, Confucius, or Camus. The rock group who claims this phrase is Rush, who slipped “change isn’t permanent, but change is” into the 1981 hit Tom Sawyer. I remember this because my father pointed out the line many years ago. And I have never forgotten it.
Memory. The concept of memory has caused great joy and frustration lately. Interestingly, we will deal with our memory and relationship with it throughout life. And on a consistency, more so than death and taxes. But what has been particularly interesting personally, is thinking through the way memories interface with your relationship with yourself, others, and society at large.
What does success mean to you?
If you type “success” into a Google search bar, many suggestions will come up. Quotes, definitions, success for women, success for men, success memes—overall, a ton of qualifiers and articles about different research into what success looks like and stories of all kinds of people who have achieved it.
But what is success, really? If you are reading this you are probably very familiar with the old lawyer adage, “It depends,” and in this case, it really does depend. On you. On your goals, your ambitions, what you are passionate about, what drives you, how you want to show up in the world and more.
Leading As Lawyers 