Filed under: Careers, CLE, Governance, Law School, New Lawyers
It arrived quietly and without fanfare. I’ve seen no reports of it in the mainstream media or the legal press. In fact, the young-lawyer-focused law blogs Precedent and Law Is Cool are the only places I’ve seen talk about it so far. But the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Licensing and Accreditation Task Force Interim… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Globalization, Innovation
I was jazzed a year ago when Eversheds struck a deal with Tyco to become the service and manufacturing multinational’s primary outside counsel, reducing Tyco’s complement of law firms for most legal matters from 250 to 1. Those who doubted the wisdom of the arrangement at the time worried that Tyco would miss out on… Read more »
Filed under: CLE, Innovation, Small Centers
The cover story for National‘s March 2008 edition will explore mandatory continuing professional development, or MCPD, which will be up and running in Canada less than a year from now. If you’re from England, Wales, Australia, or any of the 43 US states with MCLE regimes, it might surprise you to learn that no Canadian… Read more »
Filed under: Technology
I finally managed to figure out what I was doing wrong with the RSS feed on WordPress — launching a new blog, I’m finding, is a lot like setting sail in a new ship while you’re still hammering the nails into the hull. If you’d like to obtain the Law21 feed, look for the RSS… Read more »
Filed under: Clients, Outsourcing
This article from The Recorder about in-house counsel who send legal work offshore includes a line that goes straight on to my list of favourite quotes. Scott Rickman, associate general counsel at Del Monte Foods, has this to say regarding law firms’ standard warnings about offshoring: “In these articles, there’s always a quote from a… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Billing, Clients, Competition, Innovation, Leadership, Management
There’s a lot of buzz building about an article in today’s New York Times with the rather odd title “Who’s Cuddly Now? Law Firms.” It summarizes a recent rash of new business models in American law firms, from flextime for lawyers to flat-fee bills for clients to alternative billable-hour schemes and more. It’s the second… Read more »
Filed under: Innovation, Management, Technology
With an assist to Ron Friedmann‘s Strategic Legal Technology blog for locating the story, here’s another neat law firm innovation that qualifies as a “why didn’t we think of that?” moment. A Buffalo law firm, Rupp Baase Pfalzgraf Cunningham & Coppola LLC (I’m sure glad I don’t answer the phones there), is giving each of… Read more »
Filed under: Innovation, Small Centers, Solo & Small Firm, Technology
I’ve just assigned a feature article for the April/May 2008 issue of National that aims to explore the future of the sole practitioner. As I noted in a previous post, I’m worried about the near-term prospects for solos, especially in smaller centers, but I’m bullish on their chances down the road, so long as they’re… Read more »
Filed under: Careers, Law School, New Lawyers
Everyone’s talking about it, so we might as well tackle it, too. It seems immaterial at this point whether the US economy is approaching, entering or currently experiencing a recession — it’s clear that the economy is slowing down and, more importantly, that people are getting worried and even scared about it. Some of this… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Generations, New Lawyers, Purpose, Satisfaction
Seth Godin, whom you’ll see linked fairly often in this space, writes about the new workaholic, the person who’s motivated not by fear but by passion: “The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it’s a hobby that pays. …[T]he new face of work, at least… Read more »