Category Archives: Purpose

The trusted advisor

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 [...]
Also posted in Ethics | 1 Comment

All good things…

My newest column is up and running at Slaw, where I’m always honoured it has a place. You can also find it directly below: ============================================ “Eighty percent of the poor in the United States are unable to afford a lawyer or find pro bono help for their civil legal problems, according to the American Bar Association.” That [...]
Also posted in Clients | 1 Comment

Spend wisely

One of the reasons — maybe the main reason — why lawyers are so risk-averse is that averting risk is kind of the whole point of having lawyers. People hire us for two reasons: (a) to fix a problem that’s already occurred, or (b) to arrange things so as to minimize or eliminate the risk [...]
Also posted in Clients | 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, New Lawyers, Satisfaction, Talent | 10 Comments

Lawyers as a public good

Thanks to San Diego lawyer and blogger Joseph Dang, I belatedly caught up with an article in California Lawyer magazine about the University of California at Irvine’s intention to launch a new law school this fall. If you’re not familiar with this plan, UC Irvine ambiti0usly aims to debut in the Top 20 rank of [...]
Also posted in Law School | 3 Comments

A few thoughts about Wall Street

Ottawa is a long way, literally and figuratively, from the financial core of the United States, and my wife is the economics major in the family. So I’m not going to pretend to have any insights to offer on the sucking chest wounds opening up on Wall Street these days. If you’re looking for good [...]
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The day after tomorrow

As Patrick J. Lamb of Valorem Law Firm reminds us, change is inevitable once a marketplace has decided to do things differently. In a week in which the American Bar Association not only gave offshoring a passing grade but positively embraced it (Ron Friedmann and Russell Smith contribute their thoughts), and in which the prospect [...]
Posted in Purpose | 1 Comment

Could clients drive firms to do more pro bono?

Australia, the legal profession’s innovation laboratory, is busy delivering another dose of fresh thinking. The state of Victoria is requiring all law firms that take on legal work for the government to perform pro bono work as a condition of the retainer — specifically, to the tune of 5% to 15% of the total value [...]
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Restoring the culture of trust

Seth Godin served one up on the legal profession last week, and he wasn’t even trying. He was writing about marketers and their responsibility to serve a greater interest than the narrow, short-term goal of increasing a client’s sales. He identified two points at opposite ends of an aspirational spectrum — statesmen and lawyers — [...]
Posted in Purpose | 5 Comments

Professionalism reloaded

The Law Society of Upper Canada has just published the papers submitted as part of the Chief Justice’s Tenth Colloquium on the Legal Profession, which was held here in Ottawa last month and at which I appeared as the keynote commentary speaker. If you’re battling insomnia and would like to read the full, 6,700-word version [...]
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