Archive for June 2012
Does It Make Your Heart Sing? A Litmus Test for Law Firm Decisions
My first permanent office, a sublet space in a marble-column-ed Class B building down the street from the White House, was hardly the fanciest in Washington D.C., particularly back in the mid-’90s when big law firm partners still tried to impress clients with mahogany conference room tables and ginormous corner offices. Furnished with cast-offs from…
Read MoreIs Lawyer Advertising Contract To the Tune of $2680 Per Lead Also A Fee Splitting Arrangement?
Depending upon where you live, you may have seen William Shatner shilling for law firms like Alabama-based Slocumb Law Firm on television. Poor production quality notwithstanding, Slocumb’s television advertising comes with a hefty price tag. According to the Washington Legal Times, Mike Slocumb is suing solo D.C practitioner, Michael Wilson for $197,000 in unpaid fees…
Read MoreWhy Does Having It All Mean Working for Others All The Time?
This month’s issue of the Atlantic brings yet another voice in the endless, evolving discussion of Why Women Still Can’t Have It All, and what can we do about it? Although I appreciated the honesty of the piece, I don’t understand why people as smart as the author, Ann Marie Slaughter, a former honcho in…
Read MoreIs the ABA Ethics 2020 Committee Actually Reading the Comments? What’s Wrong With My Proposal on Model Rule 5.5?
Granted, I’m not a legal ethics professor or scholar, a marketing guru or an affiliate of a vendor or insurance company that sponsors the ABA. Still, I expected that because I am practicing lawyer (albeit not a virtual one) who takes ethics seriously and bears the brunt of any newfangled initiatives, that the ABA Ethics…
Read MoreAdvance Your Practice With FastCase’s FREE Advance Sheets
With a torrent of information streaming through our email, social media channels and RSS feeds daily, most of us have become regimented in filtering. We eyeball headlines, prioritize links from designated Twitter followers, strain articles without a particular tag or search term and use the delete key without mercy. While our compulsive filtering immunizes us…
Read MorePhotos Make the Website So Rock Them; Don’t “Stock” Them
No, you’re not experiencing a bout of deja vu. You’ve seen these photos or some similar iteration before. The clay figures. The guy or gal sketching business charts on the glass board. The inspirational road signs. Fish jumping from one bowl to another. Perhaps you stumbled across them online while browsing Google Images or in…
Read MoreWhy The Best Solo and Small Firm Lawyers Aren’t the Best Entrepreneurs
About a year ago, in response to then- Above the Law columnist Jay Shepard, I asserted that wanting to run a business is NOT the most important characteristic for lawyers wanting to start their own practice. I postulated that lawyers who hang a shingle for the excitement of running a business rather than a passion…
Read MoreLawyers Aren’t Just Subject to Ethical Advertising Rules, But Platform Terms of Service
Sit in on any CLE on social media these days, and you’ll be privy to the laundry list of ethics issues that crop up when lawyers use social media. But even though lawyers answer to a higher calling, we’re not immune from the rules that govern the masses online. And increasingly, these days, the applicable…
Read More