Dispatches from a legal profession on the brink
Filed under: Innovation, Law21
It’s not often I can derive a blog post from a tweet, but Debbie Weil‘s recent Twitter entry sent me to this thought-provoking post at CopyBlogger, and got me thinking about the purpose of the legal blogosphere. Brian Clark’s entry talks about the phenomenon of “social proof” — people’s tendency to judge the quality of… Read more »
Filed under: Innovation
I’m not American, I didn’t cast a vote in the Nov. 4 election, and I’m not especially partisan (nor is this blog remotely political). I just wanted to make a very brief entry here about the courage to innovate. All of us have said, at one time or another, that there’s no point in trying… Read more »
Filed under: Talent
Funny, isn’t it, that you don’t hear many people using the phrase “$160,000 first-year associate salaries” these days? Along with its close relative, “$140 per barrel oil,” it’s a numeric mantra that enjoyed its heyday way back in that comparatively sunny era we call six months ago. Nowadays, though, no one seems to be talking… Read more »
Filed under: Clients
And now, your legal services marketplace update: “First six months of 2008 has weakest revenue growth in this decade. Expense growth is significantly higher than revenue growth. … [D]emand is falling, gross hours are falling. The old cliche that law firms are recession-proof has been debunked.” “Spending on outside counsel by corporations has dropped to… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Ethics, Technology
It’s been a great week for conversations with Law21 readers, because I’ve also had a terrific correspondence with John Gillies, head of Practice Support at Cassels Brock in Toronto. John brought to my attention an opinion issued this past summer by the New York City Bar Association regarding lawyers’ ethical obligations to retain and provide… Read more »
Filed under: Careers, New Lawyers, Satisfaction
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… Read more »
Filed under: Clients, Publishing
Hey there, legal professional — looking for a career change in these uncertain times? I have a legal publishing niche to recommend to you. But first, some background. This economic crisis has inspired some of the best legal blog writing I’ve seen in a while — urgent, direct, and relentlessly focused on communicating to readers… Read more »
Filed under: Innovation, Law School, New Lawyers
There’s an old story about a supposed experiment in which five apes are placed in a cage containing a stepladder. A banana is hanging from the roof of the cage, and a sprinkler with ice-cold water is positioned above it. Whenever an ape tries to climb the ladder to get the banana, the sprinkler comes… Read more »
Filed under: Law21
If you’re reading this post on an RSS feed, you might want to click on the link and check out the original entry. And if you’re reading this directly on the site, you can see that I’ve made some pretty substantial changes to Law21. So, welcome to the new design! WordPress has been a great… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Finance, Law School, Leadership
We’re already seeing some dominoes start to wobble in the legal community, as the short- and medium-term impact of the financial crisis becomes clearer. If you’re a law firm CFO or a law student nearing graduation, you probably won’t like what’s coming. But it looks to me like there are much bigger pieces likely to… Read more »
