My website was old. 

Ten years ago (at age 47 if you must know) finished my stint as President of the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association.  Our organization had helped the citizens of our state survive two consecutive initiative battles - caps on medical negligence damages and a roll back of the Insurance Fair Conduct Act.  We were bashed by the insurance industry in the process via millions in TV ads. 

Took on the small personal mission of sharing the inner workings of life as a plaintiff lawyer.  Hoping that through transparency, others might see that lawyers were real people too. 

Cristina (eldest currently 6 month pregnant daughter who now works as a recruiter and is married to Sol Simmers (real estate agent at Windermere))  created a personalized website for me.  We gathered family photos, artwork and projects of the girls who used to play "office," and stories of new puppy Nala the saucy Brittany Spaniel.   

Met Kevin O'Keefe and began The Velvet Hammer Blog on Lexblog.  Catherine Fleming, attorney marketing wiz, formalized the website. 

Over the next decade wrote 450 blog posts.  Moved the Blog to its own platform.   Then took off a year to write a book.  That was written.  But not finished.  And after realizing it might never be completed decided maybe blogging should be resumed.

But the website looked exactly the same as it had.  Including the ten year old photo.  It was time for an overhaul.

Enter daughter #2 Alysha (who just graduated from UW with a Masters in Public Administration and is a better writer than I).  During spring break she completely redid the website.  Noelle daughter #3 (who went off to school at Belmont in Nashville and has decided to settle their apparently permanently (which I'm fine with because it is way better than Singapore) and is artistic) helped with some of the design.  

The new photos were taken by Alysha's dear friend Julia Canfield whom she met years ago through the yoga community.  Only natural light was used and as you can tell - no photoshopping occurred though I wouldn't have minded removing some of the dark circles under my eyes.   The video was taken at 6:00 a.m. on top of the hill where Nala and I are often found running by Jens Bracht, son of Dana whom I went to Kindergarten with.  Jens used a camera mounted on a stick that he held at different degrees while coasting upon a skateboard alongside us.

I'm thrilled with how it turned out.  Not too lawyer-ish.  More human-ish.  And a tad Diva-ish.  

Alysha's website design company can be reached:  info@mooncakemarketing.com

Full video is on youtube:  https://youtu.be/jCpx2MboRZE