Filed under: Law21, Solo & Small Firm
After all these years, I’m going back to law school. I’m happy to announce I’m making my first appearance as a Guest Lecturer at Solo Practice University on Tuesday, January 12 at noon ET. After having numerous great conversations with SPU founder Susan Cartier Liebel by phone and email over the years, it’ll be tremendous… Read more »
My collection of prized possessions is extremely small — the feature item is probably a ticket stub from Game 6 of the 1993 World Series (Joe Carter’s home run off Mitch Williams). Among that narrow collection, you’ll find a personally inscribed copy of David Maister’s last book, Strategy and the Fat Smoker, and if your… Read more »
Filed under: Clients
What’s left to say about the 2000s? What the legal profession (and the marketplace in which it operates) have just gone through was, as Brad Hildebrandt points out, unprecedented in almost every way. I won’t recap the changes — as Law21′s second full year draws to a close, you can read about them in many… Read more »
Filed under: Clients, Solo & Small Firm
You’ve seen plenty of references to the decline of traditional news media here, usually in the context of similar struggles in the legal marketplace. Instead of dwelling on that industry’s problems, however, here’s what looks like one of its future successes, and how it might have potentially profound applications to the law. It’s the rise… Read more »
What if you could take a law firm, carve away all the parts of it you don’t like, and keep all the parts you did? What if, from the client perspective, you could get rid of high and rising prices, time-based bills, gratuitous overhead costs and unfamiliarity with your business? What if, from the lawyer… Read more »
Filed under: Stem
Steve Matthews, my colleague at Stem Legal, has announced that nominations are now being accepted for the 2009 Clawbies, which recognize the very best in Canadian law blogging. The fourth annual awards are seeking your recommendations for Canadian law blogs that deserve widespread recognition for excellence over the past year. In particular, we’d like you… Read more »
Filed under: Innovation
My newest column at Slaw, the best of Canada’s increasingly impressive law blog collection, has been posted. Go read it there and check out the rest of the news and remarkable insights Slaw makes available every day. As always, here’s the article reproduced for my records. Just 20 short years ago, if you wanted to… Read more »
Filed under: Law21
Just a quick note to pass on some good news: Law21 has made the ABA Journal‘s Blawg 100 list for the second straight year! My thanks to the Blawg 100 committee for including this site in its listings — it continues to be an honour to be in such excellent company. Check out the other… Read more »
Filed under: Billing
Even a dyed-in-the-wool optimist like me didn’t think there’d be so much progress so fast on what’s increasingly referred to as “alternative fee arrangements” (AFAs). Fulbright & Jaworski’s 6th Annual Litigation Trends Survey says 45% of clients are using AFAs like fixed and outcome-based fees. Hildebrandt’s survey of 231 companies showed about half are or… Read more »
Filed under: Governance, Law School
In conversation last week with a law school professor, the subject of law firms’ tunnel vision when recruiting law graduates came up. Firms focus relentlessly on the students with the highest grades, the professor lamented, even though these students can be one-dimensional performers with an affinity for the academic environment and no competing pressures outside… Read more »