Law21 Twitter Updates- Slater & Gordon/Russell Jones & Walker aims to "dominate" consumer legal services market in UK: http://t.co/6Na2ZNbR
- RT @grbeaton Slater & Gordon, Russell Jones Walker - not just another acquisition http://t.co/6Wotgv7l
- Crazy Like A Fox: Why Non-Equity Partners are More Valuable Than Associates: http://t.co/NYZAHfvQ
- It's not "lateral hiring" anymore; it's poaching: http://t.co/M43yyhOz Firms poached often enough will be in real danger.
Category Archives: New Lawyers
Law firms and the JetBlue guy
Even if former JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater didn’t plan his famous chute-deploying resignation in advance, he seems ready and willing to exploit the moment, perhaps to land a reality-TV hosting gig. If it does turn out that his Big Quit was staged (like that of Elyse Porterfield, the “Dry-Erase Girl” whose hoax didn’t even [...]
Also posted in Competition, Talent 4 Comments
The apprenticeship marketplace
Critical mass, like the famous definition of obscenity, is one of those things you can’t necessarily define but that you know when you see. We’re approaching a critical mass of discourse on the necessity of change within the American law school system, and when we reach that point, the focus will switch overnight from necessity [...]
Also posted in Innovation, Law School 5 Comments
Momentum
Momentum is one of those things everyone talks about but nobody can ever precisely define or quantify. It’s that sense that things are turning around or gathering speed in a certain direction, usually for the better — with a corollary borrowed from physics that the larger the object and the greater its velocity, the more [...]
Also posted in Billing, Innovation, Outsourcing 9 Comments
The canary in our coal mine
My newest column has been posted at Slaw, winner of the Canadian Association of Law Librarians’ 2009 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing. It’s the latest honour for Canada’s best legal website, and yet another reason to read this post there and take in the rest of the terrific content.
Also posted in Compensation, Law School 1 Comment
The legacy of work-life balance
I think we’ll soon be closing the book on one of the legal profession’s most-used and least-understood phrases of the last decade: “work-life balance.” It was still all the rage just a couple of years ago — new lawyers invoked it as a mantra, talent recruiters bandied it about, and many legal publications (including those [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Billing, Purpose, Satisfaction, Talent 13 Comments
Graduating into a recession
It’s rare that a reader asks me to write something on a specific topic, rarer still that multiple requests for the same subject come in. So the fact that a few people have now asked for a post about law students and the recession indicates just how much anxiety is rising in law schools and [...]
Also posted in Careers, Recession 8 Comments
The disappearing associate
Well, that was ugly. In case you missed it, or you need a summary, here’s what happened on a day (yesterday) that the ABA Journal called Black Thursday and Above The Law readers have decided should be named (a little early) the Valentine’s Day Massacre: Holland & Knight fired 70 lawyers and 173 staff DLA [...]
Also posted in Big Firms, Recession, Talent 7 Comments
Can’t get no LSATisfaction
Here’s something interesting: the consultancy Kerma Partners recently conducted an in-depth study of more than 1,300 current and past “timekeepers” on behalf of an AmLaw 25 law firm. The study identified which personal qualities and attributes of lawyers correlated most strongly with firm success factors such as productivity and longevity. Lawyers possessing the best of [...]
Also posted in Law School 3 Comments
Trading money for time in your legal career
One of the unexpected benefits of this blog for me is the correspondence I’ve received from people who’ve read something I’ve written and have struck up a conversation about it. Recently, I received an email from a reader in the western US, and I thought you might be interested in both his question and my [...]
Also posted in Careers, Satisfaction 4 Comments
Fixing the failings of new lawyer training