Dispatches from a legal profession on the brink
Filed under: Purpose
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… Read more »
Filed under: Clients, Competition, Purpose
We need to start thinking about what the post-lawyer justice system is going to look like. I can see how this might be an absurd or even heretical notion to some people. But there’s reason to believe that lawyers won’t be an essential part of the legal system in the future — and if so,… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Clients, Generations
In one of last week’s posts, I talked about inter-generational tension within some law firms and how it can undermine these firms’ succession planning efforts. But as important as it is not to alienate good young talent through something as silly as generational resentment, law firms that are clueless about demographic differences risk an even… Read more »
Filed under: Innovation
Ron Friedmann at the Strategic Legal Technology blog has a terrific new post that should shift a few paradigms about how in-house counsel deploy legal talent to tackle various tasks. Ron crossed an x-axis that plotted the complexity of work with a y-axis that plotted the volume of work, and ended up with what he… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, Generations, Management
Law.com’s Small Firm Business features an article today about succession planning for law firms. I’ve seen a lot of these articles lately, talking about the importance of transitioning clients from one generation of lawyers to the next, encouraging leadership development among younger lawyers, and motivating more senior practitioners to mentor the younger ones and share… Read more »
Filed under: Books, Solo & Small Firm
This is the first in what I hope will be a more than occasional foray into book reviews at Law21. There are so many good titles out there now that deal with law practice issues in an innovative way that I’d like to bring some of them to your attention. I have a few more… Read more »
Filed under: Clients, Ethics, Innovation
As you probably know by now, I’m a big fan of innovation in the law. But there’s good innovation and there’s bad innovation, and what’s emerging in the litigation field in the US and the UK looks to me like it belongs in the latter category. LegalWeek reports that UK hedge funds are lining up… Read more »
Filed under: Clients
Going through the stack of materials from my recent week of conferences, I was re-reading the notes I took at the Opening Plenary of the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association’s Spring Conference in Toronto, and thought you might be interested in some highlights from what was really a riveting panel discussion. The panelists, who offered valuable… Read more »
Filed under: Big Firms, New Lawyers, Talent
In conversation the other day with a longtime friend of mine, a mother of three on hiatus from the practice of law, the subject of articling students came up (for those outside Canada, articling year is a required apprenticeship period after graduation but before the call to the bar, and no, it doesn’t work as… Read more »
Filed under: Satisfaction
I spent several hours, Sunday before last, co-presenting a media training session for a group of in-house counsel. Among the many standard warnings we give to lawyers in these sessions is to proceed with caution around reporters, reminding trainees of the two ineluctable rules of the media: 1. Journalists are not your friends. 2. Nothing… Read more »
