Dispatches from a legal profession on the brink
Filed under: Law21
I’m delighted to be hosting the next edition of Blawg Review (#207) on Monday, April 13. For those not familiar, Blawg Review is a weekly collection of the best of the legal blogosphere, assembled each week by a different law blogger. This post is to invite all Law21 readers to nominate great posts made during… Read more »
Filed under: Technology
I’m back in Chicago, my favourite US city, for ABA TECHSHOW. Looking forward to meeting old friends and making new ones while picking up the latest in legal technology, practice management, and innovation insights. This year, if all goes well, I’m also going to try some liveblogging, or at least, quasi-liveblogging, from various sessions, building… Read more »
Filed under: Innovation, Law21
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m serving as Chair this year of the InnovAction Awards, an annual presentation by the College of Law Practice Management (which, by the way, has announced the September dates for its high-powered Futures Conference). The InnovAction Awards recognize and promote law firms, legal departments, and other providers of legal services that… Read more »
Filed under: Management
The massive grocery superstore in my neighbourhood has something like 17 checkouts. Great, you might think — 17 lines, no waiting. But I do wait, often, behind two or three people usually, and it’s not because the store is bulging with shoppers at any given time. It’s because at least some of those checkouts are… Read more »
Filed under: Innovation, Recession, Talent
The cover story in last week’s Economist got me thinking about the looming crisis in lawyer employment. “When jobs disappear” paints a bleak picture of a rising wave of unemployment worldwide that will hurt more and last longer than past employment crises. The credit crunch has forced companies to cut costs rapidly, while the massive… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Innovation
“If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” Every parent has uttered some variation on that line to a child who insists on doing something unwise, over-priced, or physically perilous simply because “everyone else is doing it.” Training children to resist peer pressure is one of the thankless but necessary… Read more »
Filed under: Innovation
I’ve experienced it, and maybe you have, too. In mid-flight, the seat-belt light comes on and the pilot announces that the airplane is entering an area of turbulence. Shortly afterward, various shakes and jolts start bumping you around, and while it can be unnerving, you knew it was coming and you’re not too concerned. Then,… Read more »
If you like your comedy dark, track the law firm layoff news. There’s the partner at Pillsbury LLP who, seated on a crowded but quiet commuter train into NewYork City, conducted a loud cellphone conversation with a colleague at the office that revealed planned associate layoffs at the firm, right down to naming the names… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Governance, Talent
The thing about change is that once it gets rolling, it’s almost impossible to control and can go in directions you neither anticipated nor like very much. That thought occurred to me while reading a report issued last week by the Legal Services Policy Institute, the think-tank division of UK legal training company The College… Read more »
Filed under: Publishing, Technology
Two thought-provoking posts from the UK shed some light on the future of the printed word in law. Nick Holmes at Binary Law notes the accelerating demise of the printed law review journal and other hard-copy forms of legal scholarship: “Where online equivalents are already paid for out of the budget or where free access… Read more »
