Are you an Outlaw? Meet Adrian Dayton
Who has redefined what it means to think outside the law (aka OUTLAW) and is helping each of us in the process? Meet Adrian Dayton. He is the founder ClearView Social and has been named as the Top Social Media Consultant in the legal industry. Five years ago, he created ClearView Social as a scalable social marketing tool to get lawyers sharing content online. Adrian is an out-of-the-box thinker so we wanted to get to know him better. We asked him a few questions and his answers can be found below. Enjoy getting to know this Outlaw!
Q. What is your idea of happiness? A. Happiness for me is being with the friends and family I love the most in the most amazing places in the world. I’m passionate about traveling with my favorite people.
Q. Where would you like to live? A. Greenwich, Australia. It is a suburb of Sydney that is a ten minute ferry ride under the Harbour Bridge right up to the Sydney Opera House. I lived there for ten days with my family, and it's the most amazing commute I can imagine.
Q. Always paying attention or do you daydream? A. I am always dreaming. Its actually one of the things I’m most proud of. I’ll have some dream of a place I’d like to go, an activity I’d like to experience, or something I’d like to accomplish- and I just go after it. I feel sad when people tell me they don’t dream much anymore.
Q. What is your greatest fear? A. Dying old and alone. I can’t imagine a worse fate.
Q. If you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, who would it be and why? A. I think I’m most fascinated by Ghandi. He doesn’t even seem like a real person. He had so much conviction and integrity. The Indian people adored him because there was nobody like him. He has more power than any elected politician ever. There is this really amazing story where literally millions of Muslims and Hindi people were fighting and killing each other, so Ghandi went on a hunger strike. After a couple weeks, the fighting stopped. Nobody wanted to have Ghandi’s death on their head. That is integrity, that is leadership. Can you even imagine any of our world leaders today doing something like that? Unbelievable.
Q. What got you into working in the legal industry? A. I decided to go to Law School a few years after the dot.com bust and MBA’s were just kind of frowned on, so I was inspired by a church speaker on day to go to law school. Two months later I had taken the bar and months later I had a scholarship and had been accepted to law school. I tried practicing law for a while, but I didn’t love it, and the feeling was mutual. The firm let me go in early 2009 as the downturn was really hitting Buffalo hard. Six months later I wrote the first book on Social Media for Lawyers and the rest was history.
Q. What is your current state of mind? A. I have one single focus right now: building a successful software company that will change the way firms use social media. I’m not writing any books, I’m not chasing speaking gigs- I’m laser focused on building a great company. I’ve never been happier. I love this.
Q. What would you consider your greatest achievement? A. I’m super proud of my family and my three kids Taylor, Zeke and Lyla so they get the honorable mention as my greatest achievement, but really I think I am most proud of creating something out of nothing with the first social media consultancy in the legal industry. I’ve worked with some of the largest law firms in the world and then went on to create ClearView Social. I’m not a software engineer, haven’t written a single line of code, yet I feel like our team has created a software tool that is powerful and that is already changing the behavior of lawyers.
Q. Finish this sentence- if I won the lottery tomorrow I would... A. I know you won’t believe me, but I’d keep doing what I’m doing. The stakes wouldn’t be as high, and I might upgrade my car and my house, but otherwise, I would still be cranking on solving the same problems I’m working to solve now.
In 2009, Adrian was the victim of the economic downturn and lost his job as a corporate lawyer. A few months later his first book was published and he was hired by his first AmLaw 100 law firm. Since then he has spoken to more than 10,000 lawyers in large and small firms all over the world. He's received a lot of good press along the way. Published a second book. And was recently voted the #1 Social Media Consultant in the legal industry. But he ran into a serious problem at every firm he worked with as lawyers weren't sharing content online. So he founded ClearView Social to give large organizations a simple way to get lawyers sharing online in the legal industry.