Are you making an impact as a lawyer?

Seth Godin asks on this Martin Luther King Day if you’re making an impact.

Rather than carrying an opportunity around like an un-cashed check in your wallet, Godin asks if you’re doing the work you’re capable of so as to make a real difference.

Most of us are carrying around a check, an opportunity to make an impact, to do the work we’re capable of, to ship the art that would make a difference.

No, the world isn’t fair, and most people don’t get all the chances they deserve. There are barriers due to income, to race, to social standing and to education, and they are inexcusable and must fall. But the check remains, now more than ever. The opportunity to step up and to fail (and then to fail again, and to fail again) and to continue failing until we succeed is greater now than it has ever been.Godin cites what Martin Luther King Junior spoke about back when I was a kid to import on you the urgency of acting now.

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.”

As a lawyer, you are blessed with more opportunity to make a difference than the vast majority of people. Are you letting fear and procrastination stand in the way of making a real difference?

Think about it. I know I will.