In my experience, newer associates often have challenges in determining what they do and don’t have the authority to do. Some may take on too little authority, undermining their usefulness to more senior lawyers who need not be consulted about every decision, and others may take on too much, possibly compromising strategic decisions that should be the senior […]
It should go without saying that client service is the bottom-line, critical piece of practice that cannot be overlooked. Unfortunately, that message does seem to be overlooked in some areas. At the risk of stating the obvious, clients are an attorney’s lifeblood. Without clients, practicing law is impossible. That makes your clients pretty important, doesn’t […]
It’s come to my attention again that many, perhaps most, litigators step all over one of my pet peeves. My pet peeves aren’t a big deal to anyone but me, but committing this particular error should be. I hate, detest, despise hearing an attorney, especially a litigator in a jury trial, refer to his or […]
The Wall Street Journal law blog is featuring Mark Herrmann’s The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law this week. The series started today with a review and an excerpt from the book on defending depositions, and the blog promises that excerpts will continue through the week. If you’d like to go whole hog and buy the book […]
Have you heard this distinction before? All sorts of management experts talk about how people can work more efficiently, more effectively, maximizing the results of time. Some of them even have good ideas. I’ve been thinking about what it means to say that practicing law is hard work. I don’t have any question that it […]
It’s often easy, and rather in vogue, to think that practicing law is a drain, a burden, incompatible with having a personal life. Sometimes that’s true. If it’s more often than not true for any individual lawyer, there’s a problem that needs a solution — a new way of approaching practice or managing your energy, […]
Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the degree to which one is: * aware of one’s own feelings, * able to discriminate among those feelings and to manage them to faciliate appropriate responses, * able to motivate oneself despite feelings of self-doubt, inertia, etc., * able to recognize others’ emotions based on various cues, * empathetic […]
Timesheets routinely come up as a bemoaned part of practice, something that no one likes to do. Many lawyers develop the habit of doing timesheets in bulk, usually at the end of the week but sometimes at the end of the month. That’s a terrible habit for a wide variety of reasons. Unless your notes are […]
I ran across a fascinating marketing tip sheet recently. It’s written by Jay Conrad Levinson, who has achieved notoriety as the author behind the Guerrilla Marketing series. What I found is the 15 Secrets of Guerrilla Marketing (no longer available). I will admit up front that I haven’t read a single Guerrilla Marketing book or […]
Just about every firm has some formal mechanism for evaluating associates. The format varies, but the general idea is always the same: to collect feedback on how well each associate is performing and to pass that on to the associate, preferably with some comments about how the associate might improve. Fair enough, except that the […]