Archive for March 2015
What Makes A Great Client?
Tales about clients from hell abound. Visit any lawyer listserve and you’ll encounter weekly threads populated with complaints about crazy clients or advice on how to fire them. Bad clients aren’t exclusive to the legal profession either – doctors deal with them and one designer even set up a Clients from Hell website dedicated to them.…
Read MoreStop the Madness: How The NYCLA’s Ethics Opinion on LinkedIn Forces Lawyers To Act Deceptively And Violate Linked In’s User Agreement.
Deceive – to mislead by a false appearance or statement By now, in 2015, most of the general public over the age of 21 have been using Google, Facebook and LinkedIn for nearly a decade. During that time, they’ve acclimated to the culture of each of these online universes, and grown as adept in distinguishing…
Read MoreDismal Legal Employment Rates for Class of 2010: It Could Be 1937 All Over Again…Except Now, The Solo Option Is Feared, Not Revered.
For a profession that prides itself on hewing to precedent, how soon we lawyers forget our collective history. This time, amnesia has taken hold with respect to findings about unemployment trends in the legal profession as well as the promise of solo practice in a recent article, What Happened to the Class of 2010?…
Read MoreThree Reasons Why Other Solos Have the Potential To Be Your Great Friends
In the past, when I’ve worked at jobs, most of my friendships – to the extent that I formed them at all – never left the workplace. So this article, Lifehack article, Ten Reasons Why Your Coworkers Have the Potential To Be Your Greatest Friends caught my eye, if only to enable me to belatedly…
Read MoreYour Law Firm As a Family Business
Back in the day, farmers always hoped for at least one son who could provide free labor to keep the farm running. Likewise, today’s lawyers can also ask their children — or other family members — to lend a hand in the family business. I’ll confess that I’ve done so on more than one occasion.…
Read MoreDoes An Ethics Rule Requiring Technologic Competence Mean Much?
Do as we say, not as we do. That’s the message that the regulators send, as they fall in lock step behind the ABA in adopting the ABA Model Code’s rule requiring lawyers to keep abreast of the benefits and risks of technology, as reported by Bob Ambrogi at Law Sites. According to Bob, thirteen…
Read MoreWomen Lag At BigLaw But Lead As Solos
Only in the twisted hierarchical legal profession would an increase in the number of women as counsel and staff lawyers be viewed as cause for celebration. Yet according to this Law 360 article, “industry experts are applauding the fact that 40 percent of non-partner and associate roles at law firms are now occupied by women…
Read MoreOpen Your Own Academy
Though it’s usually the other way around, every so often, solos and smalls can take a lesson from big law initiatives. Two months ago, I blogged about Holland and Knight’s security lab, where the firm tests its clients’ systems for security flaws and recommends fixes for vulnerabilities – and now, I’ve just come across The…
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