Filed under: Globalization, Purpose, Talent
A press release came my way today from McCarthy Tétrault, announcing that the firm is the first Canadian “Partner Without Borders” of the Quebec division of Avocats Sans Frontieres. [Edit] ASF is an international NGO devoted to providing legal assistance and representation to vulnerable individuals and groups in developing countries or those in crisis. The… Read more »
Filed under: Careers, Law School, New Lawyers
Over at the Wall Street Journal‘s Law Blog, they’ve published a Q-and-A with a young New York law grad named Kirsten Wolf. She graduated from Boston University Law School in 2002 right into the dot-com collapse and couldn’t find work, even though she was a B+ student. She has the courage and grace to admit… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Billing, Compensation
From the Recorder comes news of a 220-lawyer firm in San Diego that has decided to abandon lockstep, year-of-call-based compensation for its associates. Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps has created no fewer than 14 different levels of associate compensation, based on what type of law the associate practises and how good she is at it…. Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Demographics, Small Centers, Solo & Small Firm
After making an offhand comment in a previous post, that only about 10% of all Canadian lawyers were in large law firms, I began to wonder if that was, you know, accurate. So I checked the statistical breakdowns available at the Federation of Law Societies of Canada website and confirmed that yes, out of 79,147… Read more »
Filed under: Clients, Compensation, New Lawyers
A noteworthy item in the National Law Journal today, interesting for a bunch of reasons. The thrust of the article is that with a recession likely to arrive in 2008, associates at many top US firms are likely to see an end to the salary and bonus frenzy that has obsessed the legal press for… Read more »
Filed under: Publishing, Satisfaction
Ten years ago, it was rare to see more than a passing mention of law practice management or legal business issues even in the legal press. Today, the legal press has finally caught up, but the mainstream media also seems to be warming to this topic. In recent weeks, we’ve seen prominent articles on lawyer… Read more »
Filed under: Clients, Innovation, Technology
This post originally appeared as an article at Slaw on December 16, 2007. If you’ve ever ordered an item from Amazon, you know that every time you log back in to the website, you’re greeted with a list of recommended books, CDs and DVDs. Amazon compiles this list based both on your product purchases and… Read more »
Filed under: Management
I’m always a little bemused by those notices in the legal press in which national law firms announce that “X has joined the partnership.” I find it odd that a lawyer in, say, the Montreal office could refer to another lawyer in, say, the Vancouver office, as “my partner.” It seems to stretch the word… Read more »
Filed under: Careers, Law School, New Lawyers
Law students seem to believe in a hierarchy of legal job options: large law firms #1, small law firms #1A, everything else #2 and lower. One of the main reasons for this is that the legal profession believes in it, too. You don’t have to buy your average private-firm lawyer too many drinks before they’ll… Read more »
Filed under: Innovation, Law School
Three interesting items in the inbox today, each of which reflects a different facet of the many forces hard at work on producing imminent changes to the profession. First comes news from the ABA’s Law School Admissions Council that the number of applications to U.S. law schools dropped in 2006 by 7.6%, the second straight… Read more »