Travel Secrets from 15 Mobile Lawyers
Attorney at Work has published a spectacular white paper Attorney At Work: A Field Guide For Mobile Lawyers. Among other things it includes travel tips from mega-milers like Simon Chester, Sally Schmidt, Mark Tamminga, Dan Pinnington, Patrick Mckenna, Timothy Corcoran, Wendy Werner, Sharon Nelson, John Simek, John Tredennick, Reid Trautz, Tom Mighell, Patrick Murray, Ida Abbott and yours truly.
I've flown 770,000 miles and my travel advice is set out below. That's me hiking the Phoneline Trail in Sabino Canyon in Tucson, Arizona.
Kudos to Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, Joan Feldman and Mark Feldman for publishing 54 pages packed with useful material for the lawyer on the move.
What is the biggest challenge that travel presents for you? Staying current with the home office. I rigorously follow my Outlook appointment calendar and set alarms on my iPhone to notify me of appointments and calls.
What is the best thing about all this travel? A change of scenery and a chance to see colleagues and longtime friends.
What must you absolutely have when working away from the office? Medical marijuana, prescriptions and a bag of cookies—kidding!
Best tips for successful travel for work?
- Check flights on Expedia and filter the results by “flight duration.” I always choose the shortest flight.
- The day I travel, I get up at my wake-up time in my destination time zone.
- Drink Emergencee and take vitamins and lysine the morning of a travel day.
- I pack quickly, because my shaving kit includes duplicates of everything at home. I keep my traveling clothes together under a plastic dry cleaner bag, and my briefcase is a rolling Office Depot/Walgreens/Radio Shack.
- Stick to familiar places: I always use the same airlines, book the same hotels and eat at my favorite restaurants in the cities where I’ve been before. The less unfamiliarity I can build into my trip, the better.
- Get an aisle seat near the lavatory for long flights.
- Bring earplugs and a sleep mask. This helps with noisy seatmates on a plane, unexpected construction outside the hotel and bright lights seeping into the hotel room (think Las Vegas).
- Avoid babies (noise), old people (clogged aisles), and sick people.
iPhone apps: GoHowAirport (which tells you stores near the gate), FourSquare, NPR Station Finder, Weather Channel, plus Yelp.com and TripAdvisor.com.
Traveling can be enervating. How do you keep your energy level up? Get lots of sleep, go to bed early, skip the late-night drinking forays. As Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.”
Over your career, have you identified specific travel booby-traps that you’d warn others against? US Airways, Miami airport, and bad weather airports like Chicago and Denver.
Travel motto? “Get up early and allow plenty of time to get there.”
✪ Computer: Dell Latitude laptop.
✪ Smartphone: iPhone.
✪ Tablet: Don’t have one. Too much to carry.
✪ Business bag: Swiss Army Victorinox rolling briefcase.
