I was looking to see what Mark J. Welch was up to when I came across a surprise. In the mid-1990s, Mark founded the California Estate Planning, Probate and Trust Law Web site. It was a pretty good site with a great collection of celebrities’ wills. He later sold the site to another law firm. (The site now appears to be dead.) From 1997 to 2002, Mark worked as a consultant focusing on Internet marketing. He also founded and later sold Adbility.com, an annotated directory of Internet advertising and affiliate marketing programs. Early in his career, Mark co-wrote the Law Office Technology Review column with Barry D. Bayer, who continues to write the column still. At the time, I was editor-in-chief of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and a subscriber to the column.

So what is Mark’s latest venture? English teacher. As he reports on his personal site: “As of August 28, 2003, I am an English teacher at Oakland High School, in Oakland, California. Over the past year, I’ve spent almost all my time thinking about whether I should change careers (again) and become a secondary English teacher. During the 2002-2003 school year, I worked as a substitute teacher in Pleasanton. On my second morning working as a substitute teacher, a student said, ‘you’re smiling all the time .’ I kept smiling (inside and out) most of the year. If teaching can make me feel this wonderful, then I am headed in the right direction.”

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.