There’s a great scene in the movie Southside With You (at 1:46) about Barack and Michelle Obama’s courtship where Barack Obama addresses a group of community members at a local meeting. They’ve been told “no” about something or other, and Obama suggests that rather than take the word at face value, they flip it around…

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Last spring, I tagged along on a trip to China with two of my sisters who were traveling on a research grant.  One of my sister’s colleagues accompanied us to the subway station where we politely waited as throngs of people pushed past us to board the escalator.  After a minute or two, my sister’s…

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Today marks the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and a time for starting fresh. We don’t make resolutions as we do for the secular new year, but instead, do something more important as we free ourselves of the weight of our mistakes and imperfections from the past year so that we…

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Imagine that you plan to get married. You race over to the bookstore and buy up a half-dozen bridal magazines to look at dresses or tuxedos or outfits for the wedding party. You peruse the wedding websites to identify a couple of cool venues in your area, then hop over to Pinterest or Instagram to…

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Warren Brown, the popular Washington Post auto reporter who passed away last week could have had virtually any beat he wanted when he came to the Post in 1978 as an Ivy-League credentialed African American journalist at a time when the paper was trying to diversify its reporting ranks. But somewhat surprisingly, Brown chose to…

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This past week, a rather vigorous Twitter debate over whether ethics regulators should characterize and regulate benign lawyer matching platforms as for-profit referral organizations was ultimately shut down with cries for “collaboration” and let’s all work together kumbaya-style to find a system that works for everyone and promotes access-to-justice besides.  Leaving aside whether it’s realistic…

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To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the solo and small firm practitioner has been greatly exaggerated. At least that’s the case if one is to believe the Attorney Compensation Report released by Martindale-Hubbell today which found that solo and small firm lawyers take home an average of $198,000 in annual income.  The Report’s conclusions relied on responses…

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Starting and running a law firm isn’t always the joyful journey that many of us imagine.  When it comes to the decision of whether to start a firm, many lawyers suffer from analysis paralysis, drawing up detailed business plans and weighing the pros and cons and waiting for “the right time,” (whenever that is) that…

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