Operations

Biglaw has its annual and closely watched profits per partnership or PPP extravaganza, while Above the Law devotes an entire category to biglaw associate salaries and cuts.  But where can lawyers considering solo or small firm practice get a sense for what solo and small firm lawyers earn? The solo/small firm salary question is tougher…

If you’re a solo or small firm lawyer who litigates against biglaw, you’re probably familiar with the vanity footnote — that smug, yet entirely superfluous annotation to legislative history, obscure law review article, treatise or string citation included in many large firm briefs.  Though intended to corroborate a case cited in the text or flaunt…

I’ve never been a fan of NALP, the National Association of Legal Professionals.  So far as I’ve been able to tell, the organization focuses almost exclusively on supporting law school career offices in helping students get jobs at biglaw and promoting diversity within biglaw’s ranks.  Even NALP’s public interest initiatives are aimed not at helping…

Last week, my colleague Susan Cartier Liebel posted on why the ABA’s recent decision to slash dues for solos is too little, too late.  I agree.  While I appreciate the ABA for Solosez (and publishing the upcoming social media book I’ve co-authored with Niki Black), dues cuts or not, I won’t join simply because the…

Via Dan Pinnington at Slaw.ca, I learned of Merrilyn Tarlton’s excellent article, Figuring Out Your Place in the Race (ABA Law Practice Magazine, Jan/Feb. 2010).  Recognizing that technology advancements and economic upheaval have rendered extinct the high leverage business model, Tarlton predicts that “the future of the business of law is going to be about…

The twenty-first century version of loss leaders, big-law style, is nothing more than old fashioned price cutting wars, observes Toby Brown at Three Geeks and a Law Blog.  A loss leader refers to a pricing strategy whereby a product is advertised below cost to lure customers in the hopes of selling them more profitable, big…

UPDATE 2/4/10 – 7:45 am  Below is a post that I should not have written.  I let my temper get the better of me and attributed a view to a respected colleague, Mark Bennett, that I should not have.  Mark actually apologized in a comment, but I too am responsible.  Jumping to conclusions, as I…

Earlier this week, I traveled to Thomson Reuters/West’s headquarters in Eagan, Minnesota to preview, along with a group of other bloggers, a demonstration of the next generation of Westlaw, WestlawNext (go to the end of post for a round up of coverage).  Though originally, I’d intended to comment on the product from the solo/small firm…