In Law Firms of Endearment, I wrote that “[f]or law firms, primary stakeholders are clients, benches, bars, clients, employees, suppliers, communities and partners.” A Law Firm of Endearment, however, “becomes a vehicle of service to every stakeholder group.”1 Clearly, the bench is a primary stakeholder for attorneys. This is easily discernable by considering what happens […]
A lateral hire is attractive. They are already trained. They already have experience. They have already been vetted. Usually, the objective of hiring someone laterally is filling an existing need in the firm or organization with as close of a match as possible, usually from outside the firm or organization. For me, it was an […]
Shared office space, coworking, virtual office, whatever you want to call it, shared office space is the future. Even large traditional firms are sharing space with attorneys outside the firm walls with no guarantee that at least some of legal work won’t happen at Starbucks or a Regus facility. With growing acceptability of shared office space, what […]
Rather than best practice, my law firm was really hodgepodge. Most of my practices, I adopted from attorneys I worked for. I copied several practice forms from a “Bridge the Gap” continuing legal education course. I changed a sentence or two in my forms as I bumped into cases that suggested a change. When a problem […]
A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. -Samuel Goldwyn You may win in court even though you failed to reduce your agreement to writing. Even so, the best practice is to reduce your agreement to writing. In most situations, written agreements do an excellent job of clarifying what everyone’s duties are. In […]
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility – Uncle Ben An Attorney Superpower Almost every study shows that the legal industry has been slow to embrace technology. That is understandable. Traditional methods have been working for over a century, why change? Even in legal research, where technology flourishes, there are still landmines waiting for lawyers who […]
Brave things do not simply occur. -Charlie Fowler I have the darndest time admitting that I don’t know something I ought to already know. I’m fine going to continuing education on new rules or some advanced technique. I’m not fine admitting that I don’t know – especially when I should. That’s why I was not […]
It’s the Simple things that are really effective. Try to remember that. -Theodore Sturgeon I’ve never enjoyed the business side of business. Still don’t. The idea of putting down a case I am working on and picking up a bank statement to reconcile makes my butt itch.1 That is why I hired an office […]