Get on the Same Level as Your Clients
Jack Vinson shares a suggestion from Sylvie Noel for laypeople communicating with experts:
[I]f you want to understand your local expert, tell her how much you already know about the subject. That way, she can adjust her vocabulary to your needs.
Good advice for starting out a new relationship with a client. Have them tell you how much they know about the subject first.
Technorati Tags: client+service, attorney, client
Count the Days by Counting Cards
Here are a few great planning and productivity tips from Eric Maisel, via this post on Worthwhile:
Get seven decks of cards with similar backs. Lay out all seven decks on your living room rug, backs showing. This is a year of days (give or take). Let the magnitude of a year sink in. Experience this wonderful availability of time. (This is a powerful exercise.)
Carefully count the number of days between two widely-separated holidays, for instance New Year's Day and the Fourth of July. Envision starting a large project on that first holiday (today!) and completing it by the second.
I wish I’d heard about the decks of cards exercise when I was mediating family law cases. It seems like a great way to convey the healing power of time, or to help couples work out their division of custody (he gets red cards, she gets black, or vice versa).
Technorati Tags: productivity, mediation
Wanna Love a Lawyer?
I know, as a married guy, I’m a bit out of touch with the dating scene, but is there an audience for this? From the website:
Lawyers in Love is the best place to meet successful, brainy lawyers, law students, and other legal professionals for friendship, dating, fun, romance and companionship. If your schedule makes it difficult for you to meet people, if you are still working during happy hours and other social events, if weekends are devoted to writing briefs, you will love this unique opportunity to find romance on the Web.
Temping in BigLaw
Temporary Attorney writes about temping in BigLaw. The blog’s author, Tom the temp, has been thinking a lot lately about how law schools report their employment numbers:
Isn't the legal profession and the law schools one big "Enron" kind of scandel? Think about it. Every year thousands of college graduates decide whether or not they want to "invest" in a legal education. (often a $100,000 proposition). They decide the feasibility of this investment not by relying on a 10(k), but rather by relying on the career statistics put out by the schools. The career statistics are standardized not by the SEC but rather by something called the NALP.
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Whether law schools "outright lie" on their NALP forms Tom the temp wouldn't know. This did get Tom the temp thinking about something he heard recently concerning a recently unemployed 2004 tier 2 law school graduate. Supposedly this woman was unemployed after passing the bar exam. Her career center wanted to know what she was up to because it was time to file their annual NALP employment report. At the time she was working a two day temp job stuffing envelopes in a law firm for four hours a day. Guess what the school reported? They took her hourly rate multiplied it by 2000 and claimed that she was an attorney in a 20-30 person law firm making a "projected" income of $50,000-60,000 dollars per year. Wow! Talk about an arithmetic trick. Under this mathematical model maybe Tom the temp isn't doing so bad after all. If only the mathematical illusion matched the reality of Tom the temp's unfortunate existence.
Entrepreneurial Lessons Learned
Rob May at BusinessPundit has given up entrepreneurship (for now) and gone back to a regular pay check. He shares some of the lessons he’s learned in this fabulous post. Here are a few of my favorites:
Know how you make money. Ideas are great, and I'm all for doing cool things, but cash is still king. How do you get cash?
Your estimates are wrong - Yes, even your worst case estimates.
You aren't your own boss - Your customers are way more demanding than any corporate boss could ever be.
Nobody cares that you are smart or knowledgeable (and you need to know if you really are) - Why not? Because everyone thinks they are smart and knowledgeable. Everyone is convinced they are good at business. Everyone thinks they can hire a talented team. Everyone thinks they can sell. Everyone thinks there is something special and different about them that will make them successful. But accruate self-evaluation skills are critical to entrepreneurial success. You have to know what you are good at, what you aren't good at but can learn, and what you will probably never be good at. I think this is a major reason businesses fail.
Doing Business with Friends and the Cost of Creativity
As the New Year begins, I admit I’m still in a bit of a reflective mood. Here are some brilliant insights in this post from Speak Up:
Art and commerce have an uneasy balance in all of our lives. Costs and figures and negotiating have a way of blurring the focus we should have towards the work. It is why pro bono work can be so fun. It is why creative directors have so many other things to do during their day besides create.
The stresses. The paperwork. The bad dogs, sick kids, missed busses and fights with our significant other can all factor into a job. Every job brings with it a new set of challenges. Some of which will not come from the work.
Just like there is a cost of doing business, there is a cost of creating. I am still learning how to put a price on that.
Their Pain, Your Gain
Barry Moltz has a recap of the 10 Lessons his students should have learned in his entrepreneurship class. The best one:
Every Business is About Solving Pain. Find the People that will Pay for it.
This should be an easy one for lawyers in particular. What pain do you solve?
Grinders and Drones
There is an interesting conversation taking place between Neil Witmer (via Larry Bodine’s blog) and Gerry Riskin about the ability of legal “grinders and drones” to become rainmakers.
A question that seems a bit lost in the discussion is just how do big-firm lawyers become grinders or drones? With the tremendous number of billable hours big firms require, might the firms be responsible for their own plight — by turning otherwise social, interesting young lawyers into grinders and drones to get those billable hours in? I do know this, big firms aren’t complaining when a second year associate ignores his/her family, forgoes a social life, and loses touch with former classmates while clocking 2,417 billables.
If the firms spent more time nurturing the skills that help young lawyers become rainmakers, instead of letting those skills atrophy, perhaps there would be a bunch more rainmaking partners.
UPDATE: Check out the Greatest American Lawyer’s Post on the same topic. As usual, he says it better than I did.
New Niche for Lawyers?
Looking for a practice niche? Mike McLaughlin has an idea for you:
It’s estimated that more than 40 percent of employed workers plan to begin job searches during the next 12 months, and almost 25 percent are already looking.
This study, conducted by Yahoo/HotJobs, is unscientific but shows a noteworthy trend.
Most people are looking for new jobs because they’re not happy with their current compensation. And almost half of the respondents believe their current jobs offer "no potential for career growth." The news gets worse: One in four people feels underappreciated as "valued employees."
Imagine feeling stuck in a job, unappreciated and underpaid. That’s a dangerous combination, which leads to unnecessary turnover.
Some employers risk getting blindsided by this trend, so it’s a compelling topic for discussion with most any client.
With 40 percent of employed workers looking for different work, how about marketing yourself as the Career Change Lawyer? You could offer a flat-rate package that included review of (and advice concerning) any non-compete/confidentiality agreements, severance packages, benefit issues, etc.
Heck, you accountants, bankers, and financial planners out there should do the same.
Grab the domain now and start your blog tomorrow!
"Presentation” does not mean “Documentation"
This post’s title comes from a comment in this 43 Folders thread on presentation tips. I’d also recommend this post from Particle Tree sharing some more PowerPoint/presentation resources.
A Deposition Trick from Police Officers?
This is one of those cool Tricks of the Trade I found and wanted to share:
If you want to know if someone is lying about his identity and using a fake name, ask him or her to spell it. People are much slower at spelling fake names than they are at spelling their own.
Queer Eye for the Legal Guy
If your firm is doing some cool stuff with technology, but (like me) you could always use more cool tech stuff, check out HP’s Legal Technology Awards competition. Sadly, I’m not eligible since HP sponsored the first LexThink and Dennis Kennedy and I did a commercial for them showcasing their Tablet PC’s. Damn!
Entry deadline is December 1, 2005.
LexThink Alum Needs Help
Al Robert, an absolutely great guy and smart lawyer needs your help.
Clean Up in Aisle Three
I ran across a post in The Experience Manifesto blog that talked about a recent NY Times article on the identity crisis facing many supermarkets. It seems that being a one-stop shop for groceries isn’t working so well anymore for the big chains like Kroger and Safeway, as they face competition from both the bottom (Wal-Mart) and the top (Whole Foods):
Now, the traditional supermarkets are trying everything they can think of to turn things around and win back customers. In a nod to Whole Foods, they are adding more organic and natural food items and selling more prepared foods for quick lunches and dinners. And they are cutting prices. In a nod to Whole Foods, they are adding more organic and natural food items and selling more prepared foods for quick lunches and dinners. And they are cutting prices. (Emphasis mine).
Let’s get this straight. Traditional grocery stores, whose business model was built upon being all things to all people, have decided they can beat both Wal Mart and Whole Foods? Since when can you win by competing on both service and price?
My advice, if you are looking for a new business, is to find one that can use an empty grocery store building, because there are going to be quite a few around.
And if you are a lawyer? Recognize that unless you dump hourly billing and leverage your productivity, the low-price battle is lost. That leaves service as the only competitive advantage we have.
Be Whole Foods, not Kroger.
Law Schools, Meet Art Schools. Art Schools, Meet Law Schools
J.D. Jordan writes a great piece in Newsweek titled, I’m an Artist, but not the Starving Kind. In it, he takes on the lack of practical business education in America’s law art schools. Some excerpts:
In my small, windowless classroom, in front of a baker's dozen of powerful G5 computers that line the walls, sit tomorrow's crop of great graphic designers, illustrators, filmmakers and animators. But despite their skills, their burgeoning individual styles and their unlimited creativity, they are crippled by the narrow focus of their education.
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What about creative business and copyright law? What about intellectual rights and business ethics? For that matter, what about basic history or civics? In a field largely defined by individual inspiration and accomplishment, where is the foundation for personal and financial success? Perhaps in an attempt to compensate for public schools which have stripped their curricula of arts education, art schools have left their graduates unprepared for the real world.
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But what can one professor do? These kids should have to take business education as a freshman requirement to learn how to manage their artistic enterprises before their enthusiasm sweeps them into a depreciated marketplace.
How prevalent is this problem in “professional” schools?
Worker Blind for Big Law Associates
A few years ago, I visited one of my law school classmates at his BigLaw job in Chicago. When we ducked out for happy hour, he threw his coat over his chair, turned on his desk lamp, and opened a book on his desk so anyone who stopped by would think he was still working, but had just stepped out for a few minutes. If he’d only had this. Thanks to B2Day for the link.
Being Part of the Solution: If Blawggers Ran Law Schools
So here’s my question: If you could improve legal education in this country today, how would you do it?
Last November, I asked five law student bloggers for their responses (find them here, they really are worth reading). Since I’ve been doing a bunch of complaining, here are a few things I’d change if I ran a law school:
1. Institute four core curriculum areas. Here they are, along with the bloggers I’d recruit in each:
Legal Knowledge: I’d leave this to the law professors already in the business, because they’ve already got their lesson plans done. I’d put Sabrina Pacifici in charge of them all, though.
Client Service: I’d split the task for developing this curriculum between Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, Zane Safrit, Kathy Sierra, and the CEO’s of Ritz-Carlton and Nordstrom— not a lawyer among them. That’s on purpose. I’d also bring in Ben Cowgill to teach legal ethics.
Law Firm Management and Marketing: This one is tough — only because there are so many choices. Bruce MacEwen gets tenure right away as do Gerry Riskin, Ed Poll and Kevin O’Keefe. I’d also add Rosa Say and Lisa Haneberg to teach the art of management, and, if they’re ready for the cushy life of academia, Tom Peters and Seth Godin to shake it up from time to time. I’d also add Larry Bodine and Ross Fishman to the mix.
Practical Skills: There are so many great practice-area specific blawggers out there, I’d have a hard time chosing the right ones. Instead, I’d leave that task to Tom Mighell who has the biggest “blawg of the day” rolodex in the country. My only requirement? Find room for Evan Schaeffer to teach trial skills, and Denise Howell and Ernie the Attorney to teach whatever the hell they want. I’d also farm out the entire Intellectual Property department to the ReThink(IP) guys (who’d find a way to deliver their grades via RSS).
2. Bring in Bar/Bri as a curriculum consultant. If Richard Conviser can teach you everything you need to pass the bar in two months, imagine what he’d be able to teach in three years! And while I’m at it, I’d negotiate a discount with Bar/Bri and make the bar review course free to the students (or included in their tuition).
3. Develop a three-way mentorship program. Assign every incoming 1L a lawyer and a client as mentors. Make the client someone who is in the practice area the student wants to enter after school (though this may pose some liability problems for students wanting to practice criminal law). Learning the old way of doing things from practicing lawyers is important, but the client contact would give a distinctive boost to the program. I’m convinced that client contact is what law students crave — because after all, if they join a big firm, they won’t see another real client in the flesh for several years.
4. Auction off legal research access to West or Lexis. For the privilege of exclusive access to the law students, I’d make the company promise to give five years of free service to graduating students.
5. Deliver lectures via podcasts. I’d encourage students to attend class with attendance bonuses (an added 1–2% to their final grade), but wouldn’t require them to attend class. Law students are adults, after all. Let them decide how important listening to that boring professor’s lecture is to them. Which leads me to …
6. Teach the professors to speak. I’d bring in Bert Decker and pay him double what he asks for to work with the professors on their presentation skills. This may be the single most cost-effective way to improve class attendance and student satisfaction.
7. Stop blowing smoke up students’ a**** about job placement. Admit right off that some students will be lousy lawyers and give them a way out of school with grace and dignity (see number 11). Also, I’d bring in lawyers who’ve either failed as lawyers or chosen another field to help students understand that law practice is really, really hard. I’d also make Curt Rosengren my Dean of Career Services.
8. Reach out to small firms. Seriously. Carolyn Elefant gets the nod here as my Director of Outreach to Real Lawyers. I wouldn’t ignore solo and small firm lawyers just because I want to get my school’s ranking in U.S. News and World Report up with the bucks the big firms pay. Solo and small firm lawyers can help law schools. I’d seek out successful small firm lawyers and give them an opportunity to share their mistakes and advice. I’d also make sure to give them something in return: access to student help, great CLE’s, free food and beer.
9. Ignore big firms. Seriously. (As an aside, if other schools are taking any of these suggestions seriously, then big law firms don’t care about their graduates anyway.) I’d make your students understand how miserable life can be for many big firm associates. Let students chose that path if they want to , but for God’s sake, don’t push them into it.
10. Partner with other schools. I’d partner with business schools, design schools, or schools of social work. I’d teach my school’s students to work with (and learn from ) the kinds of people they’ll interact with in the real world. Hell, I’d even partner with/adopt local elementary and high schools.
11. Guarantee student satisfaction. If I couldn’t deliver a satisfying scholastic experience, then I’d figure out how. One idea: Give the first semester of law school to students for free. If students don’t want to stay, I’ve given them a way to do what they want to do, and not feel trapped in school for another 2.5 years. Everyone will be happier. Students will be in school because they want to be. Professors will be teaching motivated students. And think of the positive publicity! Admission applications would go through the roof.
12. Remember, the law is not rocket science. I once proposed a class on small firm management to a St. Louis law school. One professor rejected the idea because he didn’t think it would be “academically rigorous enough.” That’s like refusing to teach doctors to give patients aspirin when the patient is having a heart attack because it’s not as rigorous as teaching open heart surgery. Law school, like law practice, can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be hard for the sake of being hard.
13. Remember, your students are your clients. If you actually run a law school, remember, your best source for ideas and inspiration are under your roof. Ask your students how they’d make law school better. You’ll get much better ideas than these. And one more thing, don’t be invisible. Your students want to know who you are and what makes you tick. I shared about five words with the Dean of my law school when I was at Washington University. I never had much to say to him, and he never introduced himself to me, or asked me a single question. Know how much cash I’ve given to my school? Less than I made from law.com’s sponsorship of my blog.
Well, that’s it. If you want to chime in on changing law school, feel free to do so in the comments to this post. I look forward to your suggestions.
Thinking Like Law Professors
Bruce MacEwen continues my rant from last week. In his post Name the Missing Law School Course, Bruce takes on (much better than I did, I’m sad to admit) the systematic failure of law schools to prepare their students for real-world law practice. As much as I hate to pull the bulk of his post into mine, I’m going to do it anyway (please don’t sue me, Bruce):
Far meatier and insightful is an article I stumbled across from July 2002 pointing out the existence, and the consequences, of a deplorable gap in law school education: The all but complete absence of courses on law firms as businesses.* This leaves associates starting out utterly in the dark about the fundamental dynamics that drive what they cost and what they're worth to their firms. Note that we're not talking about weighty strategic choices, the long-term impact of market positioning, the dilemmas facing mid-tier full-service firms, or any other advanced management issues: We're talking about billing, realization rates, the relative profitability of different practice areas, and other "low-hanging fruit."
To recur to my own experience, I had no clue at what point the firm might "break even" on me (and the firm, as you might expect, would have been the last to tell me).
Ignorance can lead associates into an attitude of entitlement—always an endearing trait to partners!—because they are simply clueless about how the money behind their salary check is generated. Associates with at least a modicum of savvy about the business realities of a firm are far less likely to fall into that trap.
Why are there virtually no such courses? This is an example of microeconomics trumping macroeconomics, as it were. (I'm somewhat contorting these terms, but bear with me.) From the "macro" perspective, the profession would be far better off, immediately and at very little cost, if law school graduates had been exposed to Firm Economics 101. On this I hope all readers of "Adam Smith, Esq." can agree.
But from the "micro" perspective of law school faculty or deans designing curricula, firm economics is an orphan: It isn't "academic," in the conventional sense; it doesn't have anything to do with training one to "think like a lawyer," it bears no connection to either substantive or procedural law; and it's a safe generalization to say that personality types attracted to the career of law professor don't think like businesspeople or economists.
Well, there you have it. Two leading legal bloggers agree that law schools suck at making lawyers. Anyone else out there?
Don't Talk About It, Be About It
New York City is so big and so dense that you don’t have to be terribly successful to be terribly successful.
Deductible Business Expenses
Leah Maclean, writer of the wonderful Working Solo blog, asked me to contribute (along with several other writers) to her series on the importance of a healthy lifestyle to business success. My contribution is here. The other contributions are great, and I encourage you to read them all.
One thing that's kept me thinking was this line from my post:
Poorhealth and strained family relations are both "business expenses" I'm unwillingto pay.
I've been traveling a lot lately and it seems that everytime I return home -- if even from a three day trip -- my daughter's face has changed and she sounds different. At least to me. Because Grace is a growing two year old, I'm quite certain she may actually be changing "right before my eyes." But I wonder, is this an experience that will continue to happen as she grows older? Right now, travel is both difficult and exciting -- because while I hate to miss a moment of her growing up, it is really cool to meet a different person when I return.
While I'm on the parenthood riff, here are some other random observations. It used to be that kissing any hurt, no matter how big or small, made it all better. Just this week, my daughter sadly says, "It still hurts, daddy" after I gave her the traditional healing kiss on her most recent boo-boo. Are my miraculous healing powers gone forever? And is this a sadder moment for me or her?
Every night, when my daughter sees her first star, she makes a wish. When we ask her what she wishes for, she proudly (and loudly) proclaims, "CANDY!" My wish is to have such simple wants and needs. Think about how cool it would be to have a wish that could be satisfied so easily. The children in Louisiana and Mississippi right now don't have the luxury of wishing for candy. Please do what you can to help.
Thanks for listening. Go hug and kiss your children. And pray for all of the children without a home.