Spartan Lawyer Winter 2018

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.

OCTAVIO DURAN, ’11

PARTNER, HART DAVID CARSON, LLP
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Try to avoid any work – any stressors – at home if you can. Do some breathing exercises, light yoga, read, and that will help a ton. And develop a network of resources to make yourself better educated about what you’re doing. I think that will help a lot because there’s a lot to say about being comfortable in your own shoes when you’re stepping up to bat.

When Octavio Duran was a little boy, he’d come home after school and watch Spanish soap operas with his mom (changing the channel was against the law). One of the telenovelas featured a lawyer as a lead character. “As a young kid, I thought ‘Oh, that’s kind of cool. I want to be an attorney’,” he said. That interest led him to mock trial teams, speech and debate clubs, and eventually to MSU Law.

After law school, Octavio struggled to find a position in a tough legal job market. He began practicing personal injury law, planning to use it as a stepping stone to a position in the public defender’s office. Little did he know that he’d find his true passion in that work.

“Personal injury provided everything I was looking for in the public defender’s office: trial experience, dealing with real people with real problems – helping people in need,” he said. Octavio also understands the hard reality of being a practitioner in this line of work. “Anyone who tells you they’re madly in love with their job and that every part is great is a bit delusional,” he said. “There are times when this work, like anything, is incredibly difficult.”

Outside of work, he finds great purpose serving his fellow lawyers and giving back to the legal community. As a member of the Chicago Bar Association, and the incoming president of its Young Lawyers Section, he’s part of a committee studying the work-life balance of attorneys and why burnout is still so prevalent among his colleagues.

He’s found his own ways to cope with the pressures of the job, including winding down to classical music, doing breathing exercises, trying out yoga, and reading a book at the end of a day’s work.