I’m deeply flattered that the ABA Journal recognized me as one of its ten solo legal rebels. Trouble is, I don’t feel very rebellious these days.
That wasn’t always so. Back in law school more than two decades ago, I was a rebel in the truest sense of the term, defying conventional wisdom and challenging every perceived inequity. After just two weeks in law school, I started writing columns for the campus newspaper, decrying the “brutal and inhuman Socratic method” (yup, that’s what I called it after just two weeks), the elitism and hierarchy of the legal profession and the self-imposed isolation of the law school from the rest of the university, a harbinger of how as lawyers we’d likewise think ourselves apart from society.
When the law school newspaper (different from the campus paper) wouldn’t publish my article criticizing how legal writing was taught (for example, emphasizing number of sources located rather than efficiency), I started my own underground paper, The Dissent. I’ve even got real proof of my formerly rebellious ways: the National Law Journal covered my letter writing campaign to persuade big law firms to change their recruiting practices – and in a most bizarre coincidence, it was Ed Adams, who now heads the ABA Journal Legal Rebels campaign who wrote the piece (check the link).
Even after graduation, I kept on fighting — until my belief that I knew better (combined with a down economy) got me laid off from my position as an associate. But I still wanted to practice law, so I started my own firm. At the same time, I realized that if I was going to succeed as a lawyer, I’d need to focus my energy on working within the system instead of trying constantly to tear it down. [click to continue…]
Law schools today get a bad rap, often deservedly so. From outrageous tuition to to ineffectual, elitist law professors to fraudulent post-graduation employment statistics to failure to teach practical skills, law schools have become the scapegoats for everything wrong with the legal profession.
Including theft over-billing. Yes, you read that right. Lawyer coach Rjon Robins blames law school for Ohio lawyer Kristin Stahlbush’s two-year suspension (one year stayed) for submitting “false and fraudulent” time records claiming 3451 hours of court appointed work for 2006. Sadly, Stalbush’s conduct wasn’t a one-time occurrence either. In addition to submitting three bills reflecting more than 24 hours of work in one day, one of Stahlbush’s bills showed 90.3 hours of work during a 96 hour period, while another showed 139.5 hours of work during a 144 hour period. All told, Stalhbush would have had to work an impossible schedule of 10 hours a day, 365 days a year to account for the time billed to the court in 2006.
Notwithstanding that the Ohio Supreme Court found that Stahlbush gave “patently false testimony” about having worked all of the hours billed, and that “poor record keeping alone cannot explain over-billing of such magnitude” [Opinion at 7], Robins lashes out at the “self-righteous” commenters who criticize Stahbush’s ethical transgressions, while giving her a pass. Instead, Robins portrays Stahlbush as a casualty of a legal education system that fails to prepare lawyers for real world practice:
The sad fact of the matter is that law schools do a generally poor job of preparing graduates to deal with the practical realities of managing the business-side of a law firm. And there are very few CLE programs offered which focus on the practical realities of managing a law firm in the real world.
That is a world which exists with a hundred different demands, distractions & demands that a solo lawyer or owner of a small law firm function as both an effective advocate, counselor & adviser AND ALSO an effective owner, operator and manager of their business too….
Perhaps if Ms. Stahlbush had been properly trained to start, effectively manage and even profitably market her law firm this situation could have been avoided.
What? Is Robins claiming that if law school had taught Stahlbush to manage her timekeeping properly, she wouldn’t have lost track of her hours and submitted invoices totaling 3451 hours for court appointed work? Or that if Stahlbush had taken a practice management course in law school and learned to run a profitable practice, she wouldn’t have had to bilk the court system to make up the shortfall?
Either way, Robins is dangerously wrong. If a lawyer doesn’t realize that a bill totaling more than 24 hours for a for a day’s work is flat wrong, frankly, she’s beyond help — and all of the practice management training in the world isn’t going to make a difference. Moreover, running a profitable practice doesn’t guarantee that lawyers won’t steal – if it did, we wouldn’t see cases like this one involving a biglaw partner and his marketing consultant wife charged fraud for submitting $400,000 in false bills to the San Francisco school district and insurers for the treatment of their autistic son. [click to continue…]
Yesterday, I received a call from one of my blog readers, somewhat out of the blue. A rising 2L at a top tier school, the student explained that he was interested in learning more about the feasibility of starting a law practice right out of law school. Yet as we talked more, however, it seemed that the student had another, more basic question on his mind: whether to go further into debt, to the tune of $150,000, to obtain a law degree or to cut his losses. And then he posed this question to me:
Knowing what you do about the today’s economy and job prospects in the legal market, would you have gone to law school?
For me, answering yes was fairly easy for a couple of reasons. Foremost, I really like practicing law. Corny as it sounds, I cherish my law degree and revel in being part of a profession that, as imperfect though it may be, is also comprised of amazing people with amazing stories. After twenty-two years in, I still get a thrill when I step up to the podium to argue an appeal. I still marvel that a lowly solo like myself can do stuff that matters, whether it’s preventing a multi-million dollar pipeline company from condemning my clients’ property (and winning attorneys’ fees to boot) or helping a financially troubled homeowner hold on to his house just a little bit longer or just showing up. Most of all, I’m amazed that with nothing more than my law degree and stubborn persistence, that I’ve been able to build something – a law firm out of thin air and on my own terms. [click to continue…]
Flats are complicated, ladies. Okay, no, they’re not, but writing “flats are so easy that even monkeys can wear them” wouldn’t make for much of an exposition. Really, where do you go from there? Everyone is thinking of monkeys wearing shoes, and the gravity of the moment is lost.
Flats are pretty fool-proof, it’s true, but there are some variations in the group. Obviously, this post is not going to include canvas flats, those beachy shoes with short laces that are pretty seasonal and don’t last very long at all. Similarly, slip-ons may be too casual for the workplace, even though most of you presumably work in smaller and more casual law offices. They’re a decent choice for the attorney that works at home but has to go out to do errands and doesn’t want to run into a client while wearing flip-flops (a blog post for another time).
Generally, we’re going to be sticking to the main flat families: ballet, pointed toe, and cap toe. Sometimes the categories intersect, like a cap toe ballet flat (reminiscent of classic Chanel footwear, for example). And I’m going to avoid linking you to my favorite pair of maroon Tory Burch Reva flats today, and instead focus on black flats. Colored ones are for next time, when we let our hair down a little. [click to continue…]
A few posts back, I shared a bunch of high heels to wear to work. However, they were a tad on the boring side: black, and…black. That’s pretty much all there was. This time, I’m opting for a much needed injection of diversity, and sharing with you a couple of work appropriate heels that aren’t black. Next time? Flats. I promise.
I stuck with heels under 3.5″ because, in my opinion, there’s no reason to go higher. Not at work. And yes, normally I stick to 3″, but there were some super cute heels at 3.5″ that I really liked and wanted to share because, oh, man, pretty. [click to continue…]
