Dan Lear is a lawyer and self-proclaimed legal industry gadfly.  And he is coming to speak at The Florida Bar Affiliate Outreach Conference, this Friday, January 15th at the Casa Monica Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida.  I have been looking forward to hearing Dan speak from the first moment I read his bio on rightbrainlaw.co.  I mean, who even thinks to call himself a gadfly?  I’ll tell you who:  Dan Lear and Socrates.

A gadfly is a fly that bites livestock.  Socrates’ famous speech, as recounted in the Apology, gave new meaning to the annoying fly.  While defending himself against accusations that he was inventing new deities and corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates compares himself to a gadfly:

For if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to me, who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.

Through this famous speech, the drowsy, apathetic people of Athens realize that they do not know themselves and do not know what they claim to know.  Socrates reinvents the annoying gadfly as an interrupter of the status quo; as a person that poses provocative, difficult and stimulating questions; as a person who incites change.

And here enters Dan Lear.  Dan Lear is a gadfly of the sluggish and old-fashioned legal industry.  He advocates for more “legal hackers” to upset the status quo and encourages lawyers to use their creativity and intuition to solve the problems that face the legal profession today.  He recognizes that our profession is in crisis and knows that the future belongs to the lawyers who are not content with the conventional model and are willing to break the mold of the traditional “yes, but” mentality and enter the “why not?” world.

Dan Lear will speak at the General Assembly at The Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division Affiliate Outreach Conference on Friday, January 15, 2015 at 4:00pm at the Casa Monica Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida.  For more information, contact conference Chair, Christian George, christian.george@akerman.com or Co-Chair Margaret Good, mgood@matthewseastmoore.com.