Survival tips for new associates: David Dummer, an associate in the Dallas office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, has written an article with 10 survival tips for new associates. Although the tips are not particularly revolutionary, they set a good framework for new associates and might serve as a reminder for more advanced lawyers. Some [...]
Lessons Learned on Balance: I’ve read Ellen Rappaport Tanowitz’s article Balancing Act: Lessons Learned (published in the September issue of the ABA’s GP/Solo New Lawyer newsletter) several times now, and it’s touched me each time. After recounting the story of death at an unconscionably young age, Tanowitz writes:
Luke’s dad has taught me some very valuable lessons, that I [...]
Leadership Development for Lawyers Mark Beese, the “marketing guy” at Holland & Hart, shared a firm’s approach to establishing a leadership development program on his aptly named blog Leadership for Lawyers. Two points from his post struck me particularly, as follow:
1. There is not an outcry from lawyers for leadership development. Many partners already see themselves [...]
Work/life imbalance stereotypes: Tom Stern, a Fast Company expert blogger on work/life balance issues, has posted a list of the Top Ten Work/Life Balance Turn-Offs. This list of stereotypical characters (who may show up just in time to destroy your work/life balance) is both amusing and a good warning for those evaluating potential co-workers and [...]
There is such a thing as a bad client… Tom Kane’s Legal Marketing Blog inquires, Are Bad Clients Keeping You Up At Night? If you have bad clients (or wonder whether you do), the answer is surely yes. Tom draws from a post on the Bootstrapper blog to help identify bad client characteristics and to [...]
Energizing Associates Cordell Parvin offers a terrific post this week on what law firms can do to energize associates. His suggestions focus largely on making sure that associates understand how their work directly benefits the firm’s clients and providing meaningful feedback that ties in with each lawyer’s unique career plan. Sadly, as Parvin observes, “law [...]
This week’s shorts are posted on Monday instead of Tuesday for two reasons: first, because some very skilled people have been making (as-yet not visible, but substantial) changes to my blog and I don’t want to upset that applecart, and second, because I’ve been in San Diego for the past week for a conference and [...]
Today’s shorts are very, very short.
Email interpretation: We’ve come to rely on email as a quick and easy way to get a message across. Quicker than voicemail and an easy way to create a record, we use email for everything from assignments to news to forwarding jokes. David Giacalone of f/k/a offers commentary on a recent [...]
A few things from the last week that deserve to be highlighted…
Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq. offers a fascinating interview with Bruce Stachenfeld of Duval & Stachenfeld, a New York-based firm that’s made the news recently with its unusual compensation plan. The firm pays first-year lawyers $60,000 and calls them “opportunity associates.” The pay [...]
A few things I’ve been collecting in the last week…
1. Fundamental attribution error This is a new term for me, though the idea is familiar. Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project blogs about our human tendency to assume that other people’s actions reflect their character or attitudes and to overlook the environmental influences that may shape their [...]
December 11, 2007 
