Do you ever feel stressed? Overwhelmed? As if it’s impossible to meet all of the demands you’re facing at any given moment? Although most of our society seems to have those feelings at least some of the time, anecdotal evidence suggests that a significant number of lawyers experience them frequently. And perhaps it’s no surprise, […]
Stephanie West Allen has tagged me to participate in the Gotta Get Goals meme. The idea is to share 5-10 over-the-top, fabulous goals that I will need to achieve to say I’ve reached my wildest dreams in life. Now, that’s fun! I’ve always kept goal lists in one form or another, simply because I think it’s […]
Money is always an interesting topic, and wealth even more so. I remember being in middle school and fantasizing with friends about being rich. We imagined that if we could just make about $60,000, we’d be set. (Of course, I’d venture to guess that all of our parents were earning at least double that at […]
I had an interesting conversation this weekend with a group of friends and colleagues about what I’m doing now. Although I’m still practicing law part-time (with no desire to stop, honestly), coaching — and specifically, coaching lawyers — has taken the prize as my top pursuit. So I’ve told these folks about the Georgetown University […]
There’s a nice article in last Friday’s New York Times titled Too Busy to Notice You’re Too Busy. While I admit to a frisson of annoyance at the author’s introduction (she’s married, two children, working part-time, a volunteer, a regular exerciser, and a socializer who employs a housecleaner twice a month), it does seem to […]
As I mentioned in a previous post, Ms. JD held a kick-off conference at Yale Law School last Saturday. I wasn’t able to attend (sadly for me, I was literally elbow-deep in mulch, adding sweat equity to a rural Maryland property to be resold in about 3 years, for what I trust will be great […]
As you have no doubt noticed, there’s quite a bit of debate these days about traditional hourly billing vs. “value billing.” I recently touched on the issue here. I ran across a quotation today that put the controversy in a different light: “You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value […]
I’ve long believed that newer associates (especially, but not exclusively) don’t understand their clients’ business and how business issues effect legal services. Without understanding what the business context is for the legal issue you’re working on, it’s going to be difficult to know how important the issue is — i.e., is this a “bet the […]
The Wall Street Journal Law Blog ran a nice post yesterday on the projections of BigLaw managing partners for 2007. The post summarizes and discusses data from the Citigroup Private Bank’s forthcoming “Managing Partner Confidence Index,” supported by slides from the underlying study. Not too surprisingly, most managing partners expect both revenues and expenses to increase. 44% of […]
One of my mother’s friends, Margie Pitts Hames, argued in the Supreme Court in 1971, in Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade. She told me that when she went to the clerk’s office before arguing, she was told to put on her hat — because court reporters at that time were required to wear […]