About Bob

Biography

Bob Barasa The Crossroads Workshops are designed to provide an invigorating and inspiring experience to the over 50 attorney. It is my way of contributing something of value to the legal profession and a "vision" that I am very passionate about. I also receive the benefit of experiencing the camaraderie of many more of my colleagues.

I have been a practicing attorney in Chicago for over 30 years. I was born and raised in the Chicago area, and graduated from DePaul University, School of Law.

In addition to practicing law and raising a family in my last 50+ years, I obtained two patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, as a co-inventor of two restaurant equipment products (See "My Story" below).

I wanted to share some of my experiences so I have attached the entire biographical chapter of my book for your perusal and enjoyment. This book was written prior to the creation of the Crossroads Workshops.

"My Story" - A chapter from Crossroads

When I reached the age of 50, I had an epiphany. Basically, the warning light started blinking yellow and the imminent reality that I only had 25 more years to be young became more relevant. If I were anything like my parents, I would start getting some significant health concerns at age 75. The satisfying part of this realization was that I had the freedom to choose what the quality of these upcoming years would be. I had the option to let time pass as the status quo or I could investigate other stimulating possibilities. I also realized that this was my opportunity to intentionally design the remaining portion of my life. After 25 years of school and another 25 years of practicing law, I felt that I had earned this freedom to choose what my next 25 years would be.

Many of us went into the legal profession with high hopes. Justice is a wonderful concept. One of my favorite courses in law school was jurisprudence, the philosophy of law. That was 33 years ago; nice stuff to think about when you have a free rainy Sunday afternoon. How many of us have time to sit back and enjoy reading Corpus Juris Secundum, American Law Reports, and other treatises that are not related or billable to a legal case? Today’s law practice requires most of our energy to be focused on getting new business, keeping good clients, and handling office administrative matters. After that, we are quite exhausted.

As I mentioned earlier, becoming an attorney was a family tradition. My father’s father was the family’s first attorney. Then my father became an attorney along with his brother and sister. His sister eventually married a lawyer and they gave birth to two more lawyers. She became one of the first female attorneys in the state of Illinois. It made the idea of "straying" from the family path even more difficult. As you might expect from a family full of attorneys, there were numerous people in my family who were opinionated. As a young child, everyone in my family had to learn how to argue and debate effectively. If you had an idea that you wanted to promote, there were always numerous people around to point out ten preliminary reasons why it would not work. Trying to promote an idea that required thinking outside the box was as fruitful as arguing your case in front of stone statues at the Supreme Court.

Since my dad had four children and early on everyone but me had declared their desire not to be a lawyer, the last hope for family tradition landed upon yours truly. One of the best things that ever happened to me was becoming an attorney. It gave me the education and the earning power to make a living and have fun while I trekked my way through life.

At college age, most of us do not choose an occupation from a perspective of who we are or what we are really passionate about. Those quandaries are usually put on hold for later in life while we focus on making a living and raising a family. Actually, many of us had a basic idea or fantasy of what we would really love to do with our life but those dreams are usually too impractical to pay the bills. Good parents steer their children away from impracticality and towards security. My parents were no different. What we are passionate about at age 20 can wait. A sound foundation for making a living and supporting a family is the overriding concern for a parent.

As we trek our way through those early years, our individual strengths develop into many ideas and directions. Eventually, some beliefs and ideas become the things we value most. These values accumulate like building blocks and become our true self. A lot of the ideas related to what we want out of life are stored away in the attic for later in life. All of us could probably imagine an occupation based on our most exciting values but such fantasies are usually not within our reach in the early years. As time goes on, we become more ensconced in our profession and often more eager for greater fulfillment.

My first ten years as an attorney were fun and exciting. Even so, I have to admit that I never really loved it. I use to think that maybe I was not doing it right. I was still waiting for the fulfillment I wanted. For me, something was missing. The heart and soul of justice and jurisprudence seemed to be overshadowed by the practicalities of lawyering.

As a young person, I had been philosophically moved when I read Thoreau’s famous line, "…The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." As the years passed, I often wondered whether the lack of fulfillment implicit in that famous quote was simply an ominous fact of life.

I knew after ten years of practice that I needed to find something in addition to law that provided me greater fulfillment. It took me another ten years to muster the courage to do something about it. In my defense, I had the typical concerns—building a practice, a spouse, a mortgage, raising a family, growing a nest egg and the rest of the trimmings.

Fast forward to the twenty-year milestone and I am determined to take action. I have considered hundreds of possibilities and tried some too. I want to proceed in an orderly fashion and protect the life and law practice that I had built. Of course, I had the fear that my quest might fail and I would need a fallback.

Thinking that I might find the passion and purpose I was looking for in a different specialty of law, I tried new areas. I took lots of ICLE courses and have a full bookcase to prove it. I considered joining my dad in his general practice as a corporate and estate planning lawyer. That kind of work was very solid and dependable but it felt like a lateral move for numerous reasons.

I was living in the Lake County suburbs and was looking for a Lake County office. Dad, being the traditionalist, faithfully reminded me of the commandments of practicing law in Chicago. "If you are going to be a real lawyer, you need an office in the loop by LaSalle Street…and…Wear wing-tip shoes not those rubber-soled shoes because a lawyer always has to look like a lawyer." To a great extent, he was right. If we want the best clients, we have to play the part and wear the costume.

A few years passed and I had still not found what I was looking for. Then, my racquetball partner, who owned a large restaurant cleaning business, had an idea for developing a product for fast food restaurants. He had built from scratch a very successful restaurant "duct" cleaning business. He serviced hundreds of restaurants in the Chicago area. He had seen a competitor’s product and his idea was to design a better roof-grease collection device. That’s right: "roof grease." Most people have never heard of roof grease so this product was always an interesting topic for conversation.

A restaurant roof fan pulls the exhaust off the restaurant grill and fryers and discharges the smoke and grease mist through an exhaust fan on the roof. As the fan pulls the exhaust off the grill through grease filters, a grease-mist accumulates in the roof fan reservoir. The overflow is discharged onto the roof so that it does not flow back down the duct work and start a fire in the restaurant. Grease ruins the adhesive components in roofing materials. There are many products designed to collect this extra grease discharged by the roof fan.

We became business partners and formed a corporation. I was excited about the opportunity and the uniqueness of the venture was intoxicating. We eventually obtained two patents. Our anchor customer was a franchisee who owned over ninety Burger King Restaurants in the Chicago area. We had our product in over fifty restaurants the day we opened. I had no background or understanding of the sales profession, so I went out and bought all the books and tapes I could find on sales. The corporate people in the big chain restaurants enjoyed talking to me simply because I was an attorney and not a salesman.

My partner’s customer list was a gold mine for the product. We designed and patented our product that became a roof "grease filter assembly" with replaceable absorbent pads. The product name was the Greasehound and the Greasepuppy. I took a hands-on role in designing, testing and improving the product, and personally installing and observing the product on many of the Burger King roofs and other fast food restaurants.

Burger King was our biggest and best customer for both revenue and testing reasons. They have a serious need for roof grease protection because they flame-broil their burgers which generates more roof grease. In comparison, restaurants that oven-cook or fry their meat, like Boston Market and McDonald’s, have much less need.

A few years ago, I sold my interest but I am still of record with the United States Patent and Trademark Office as a co-inventor of two patents (see, uspto.gov quick search patents "barasa," grease filter assembly). This, along with $3.50, will get you a cup of latte at Starbuck’s. This was one of the most enjoyable times of my career. It mixed the creativity of inventing and developing a product with the business aspects of sales.

I have always had a passion for creative writing as a form of enjoyment and self-expression. At some point in my thirty-year career, I decided to attempt some serious creative writing as a sideline to law. To date, I have written one play, two half-plays, one children’s picture book and I was a participating writer on some local charity shows. I decided to quit trying to get published as a creative writer because I found publishers were looking for specific types of material to fit into the various popular markets. Getting published is not about "art" or expression so much as it is about being marketable. I received many pleasant rejection letters from editors over the years explaining the business aspects versus the creative aspects of publishing.

Obviously, there is a lot of writing in the law but the creative element is restricted by our system of precedent. I occasionally enjoyed writing briefs and I did a few appeals. Of course, being creative and asking the Appellate Court to carve out exceptions is more frustrating than fulfilling for a writer.

After I had been practicing criminal defense work for 25 years, I had amassed thousands of interesting war-stories ranging from ridiculous to astounding. Stories involving cops and robbers have always been popular. They were especially popular in the 1930’s and 1940’s when everyone enjoyed the radio after dinner and listened to shows like Dick Tracy and the Lone Ranger.

I decided to write a speech totally comprised of snippets from my most interesting and exciting criminal cases. For years, all my non-lawyer friends had loved hearing all the stranger than fiction stories. When I was promoting my patents, I had to learn about "sales." During that period, I became energized by motivational speakers who directed their wares to the sales industry. Tom Hopkins, Roger Dawson and Zig Ziglar were my favorites. To this day, I still love listening to all the motivational speakers.

I hatched the bright idea that I could mix the upbeat positive energy of motivational speaking with my legal war stories and give some very enjoyable speeches. I had lots of speaking skills from being in court for 25 years. I joined the two-year apprentice program of the National Speaker’s Association. I quickly learned that as a public speaker it was going to be very much like courtroom work in that you had to tell your audience what they wanted to hear.

I decided the National Speaker’s Association was not for me after hearing a guest speaker at one of our local chapter conferences. She was there to share some public speaking methods and techniques. She gave a powerful presentation and everyone was deeply moved. Afterwards, she discussed the various mechanics and design features of her presentation. As she summarized her comments, she directed our attention to a powerful segment of her speech where she described the death of her best friend’s husband from cancer. It was a potent and meaningful moment for all of us. She asked us to recall that moment. She then informed us that her friend’s husband did not actually die and that he survived the cancer. She stated the embellishment of that detail was critical to the mood level of the audience and the impact of the speech.

I did not want to embellish the facts in my public speaking. As you know, I have had to make up stories my whole career as a criminal defense attorney. I know how to embellish and emphasize situations. I can create smoke screens and throw red herrings with the best of them. I was looking for something more authentic than audience entertainment. Since my legal war stories speech required no embellishing, I kept it as a possibility but I was disenchanted with the public speaking profession in general.

My life coaching began about eleven years ago when I enrolled in a three-day conference on "transformational" based coaching. Transformational work is a big title for anyone who wants to transform or shift their life towards a more meaningful and purpose driven existence. It is the same genre as Deepak Chopra’s and Steven Covey’s motivational work. The seminar was a basic course on practical transformational principles and distinctions. I loved the seminar and loved the work.

One of my favorite principles concerned the distinction between "facts" and the "stories" we make up about the facts. Our tendency as human beings is to create stories around the events that occur in our life. It applies to both past and future perspectives. For example, when we look back at an upsetting event in our life, we often make up stories or drama about the event. Usually 90 percent of our recollection is about the "meaning" of the event (e.g., I should have gone to medical school instead). The raw fact is that we chose law school. The "perceived" impact, consequences and lost opportunities are the stories and drama we create about that choice.

A careful analysis usually reveals that approximately 10 percent of our recollection addresses the physical event as it occurred. Actually, this same phenomenon might explain the legal dilemma we often find ourselves in when there is a witness on each corner of an accident intersection and each one has a contradictory story.

As an example, I recently had breakfast with an attorney friend. He was looking back at his 35-year legal career with some regret. He had the definite feeling that he should have chosen one of the larger law firms to develop his legal career. Instead, he chose to work for the government. Now, along with his investments and pension, he does not have to worry about money unless he wants to drastically upgrade his lifestyle. He usually chooses to work ten to fifteen hours a week and can meet for a two-hour breakfast almost any day of the week. Nevertheless, he is still complaining!

After we outlined all these great features of his present life, he began to smile and admitted that his chosen path 35 years ago was not so bad. I pointed out that his regret about his choice 35 years ago was merely a story or drama that he created about that choice. Whether it was true or not is a non-issue because it happened so long ago. The stories we create about the past generally have very little value and we carry them around as "baggage" of some perceived wrong choice or occurrence. I also suggested that the genetic heart condition that he inherited from his father might have killed him ten years ago if he had gone with the high stress world of the larger firm. This latter scenario is also a "story" but it does not have the injurious effect of the negative story he was carrying around.

Since that first three-day conference eleven years ago, I have attended twelve transformational coaching seminars which met every week for three hours for ten weeks, totaling over 300 hours of this type of coaching. I resonated so much with this type of work that the company asked me to become a seminar leader. As much as I enjoyed the principles and the work, I was not satisfied with the parent organization and decided not to accept their offer. Even so, this training has been enormously valuable to me in every aspect of both my personal, legal and coaching life.

When I was 52 years old, I met a person who was being trained as a professional life coach by a different organization. He was not very clear when he described his type of life coaching. As I listened further, something resonated with me about the life coaching model. It seemed to combine the personal connection element with the aspect of being of assistance to others and the upbeat motivational components I found so attractive in motivational speaking. I decided it was worth investigating.

After some extensive due diligence, I decided that executive life coaching utilized an excellent balance between my skills as an attorney, the coaching seminars I enjoyed and the upbeat energy of motivational speakers. I decided to obtain specific training as a professional executive coach and develop a life coaching practice specializing in attorneys over the age of 50. This is where I felt that I could have the most positive impact within the legal profession.

As I conceptualized and began building my coaching practice, I thought it was important to create a two- or three-word "motto" which described who I was and what I stood for. Condensing all that into three words was the challenge. It took over six months of reflection. Then one gorgeous sunny morning, I was in one of my favorite places, a beautiful airport. Airports inspire me for some reason. While the sunshine poured in and I was feeling totally inspired, it came to me. My life and calling is about being, "dedicated to inspiration." Hence, my motto. Inspiration is a very important state of mind for me. It reminds me that I am truly alive as a spiritual being.

There were many moments throughout my 30-year legal career when I did not feel "inspired." Part of my epiphany at age 50 was that I wanted to live an "inspired" life from the moment I woke up in the morning to the time when my eyes closed at night, or at least some overwhelming majority of each day. I was not sure whether this ideal was attainable, but that was what I wanted.

I have been blessed with the gift of high energy. Nevertheless, there are times during the day, and especially later in the day, when I can feel exhausted and less than inspired. Even so, always within me is my 110 percent commitment to creating, causing and experiencing inspiration in my own life and in the lives of others.