Too busy? What benefit does busy-ness bring?
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 […]
Wrap-up on The Ms. JD — Legally Female Conference, and “Work-Life Blending”
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 […]
Value billing
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 […]
Understanding your client’s business
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 […]
Incentives of pay, partnership, and purpose.
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 […]
Interesting new resources for women who are lawyers
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 […]
Don’t count the billable hour out just yet.
Many lawyers and commentators like to criticize the billable hour as the source of all legal woes — or at least work/life balance challenges. There’s a certain appeal to the argument since, after all, the idea behind the billable hour is that experienced attorneys know more and are more skilled and therefore can accomplish more for […]