Schuck takes the right turns in her travels to law

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Diane Schuck was devastated when she decided to shutter her travel agency.

“I didn’t have a clue where I was going to turn,” recalled Schuck, who worked as a travel agent for 25 years and owned her own agency, Renaissance Travel, for more than 10 years.

She loved her work.

But it was 2002. The warm-up to the Great Recession was underway. The Internet was changing the way the travel world worked. And the rent on her office in downtown Madison was about to double.

She had to close.

So when an acquaintance at a local law firm — a firm Schuck had worked with as a travel agent — suggested she apply for a receptionist job, Schuck wasn’t sure what would happen.

“I was coming into a position that I knew absolutely nothing about. I knew absolutely nothing about the files and the behind the scenes and what was needed to actually make it all work and not lose my mind,” said Schuck, a file technician with Boardman & Clark.

“And it was difficult at first, because it is hard once you’ve owned your own business having to pull back. But the other part is you don’t have to worry as much; when you own your own business you have employees, and you worry about them constantly,” said Schuck, who employed four people at her travel agency.

But she survived, and learned — first at the front desk and, later, in the law library.

In 2012, when Boardman, Suhr, Curry, & Field joined Lathrop & Clark to create Boardman & Clark, Schuck applied for a new position as file technician. Since then, she’s helped change over systems for the merger and, more recently, she’s been working on a file-destruction plan.

It’s been engaging work, partly because she found a family she never expected.

“I can’t imagine having a job where you just go there, put your time in and leave; that’s not living,” Schuck said. “I’m part of the team. I feel like I’m part of a family. Not many people can say that, and I feel very, very lucky. When I retire next year,

I’m really, really going to miss this place.”