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March 31, 2007
Saturday's Charon QC, and the Brit Blogs.
London's Charon QC is still for Saturdays. My friend Charon is always excellent, delivers and is right on time. The Times loves the guy. And today he has done a Saturday review of the past week. Another British blogger, and a surfer no less, Tim Kevan at The Barrister Blog, has started up a similar weekly review he calls Best of the Blogs. Both Charon and Tim mention US blogs in their reviews. We've posted before about the fine and innovative UK blogs out there.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:55 AM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2007
Asking clients for work: "Why are lawyers so shy?"
Over the years this keeps happening:
I take a General Counsel or non-lawyer executive or CFO of a targeted client to lunch or dinner to ask for work. At some point I briefly say what my firm does and how we can help the client on particular legal issues it has. I ask a few questions. I do a short (very informal) pitch which ends with: "We like [the company] and we'd love to work with you. How can I win/earn your business?"
The client rep laughs and says something like, "That's refreshing--because I can't tell you how many times I have dined, gone to sporting events or played golf with lawyers and they never ask me for my business. Sometimes this goes on for years. I know that's why they are there--but they won't ever get to the point."
"So what's up with that?" he or she continues, often openly amused. "Are most lawyers shy or something? Why would I want to hire a law firm not aggressive enough, direct enough or business-oriented enough to just ask for the work?"
True story: One in-house counsel from a Fortune 100 told me that a partner in a major law firm he saw regularly for years couldn't bring himself to inquire. They lawyer was the in-house guy's next door neighbor.
Is the careful, rational, polite, risk-averse "lawyer personality" to blame? I have no idea.....but I do know that business clients--whether or not they buy the image of the fire-breathing lawyer-AlphaHuman they see on television--expect lawyers to have the business instincts and the stones to ask for the work. So ask. Practice first if you must. Get a pitch and a strategy for each meeting. Don't wait until 30 minutes goes by or the table is cleared. Ask.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:58 AM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2007
EPA fines DOE: Here's something we don't see every day...
From Environmental Protection magazine, EPA Fines U.S. Energy Department $1.1 Million re: violations of agreement to clean up Hanford, Washington nuclear reservation.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2007
Asking for the business.
It sounds easy but lawyers have trouble doing it. In fact, the concept of "asking for the business" is revolutionary thinking for some of us. Not part of the lawyer personality. So for some direction, see my friend Jim Hassett's post "When To Close And 'Ask For The Business'" at his Legal Business Development.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)
Real, inexpensive and "natural" branding ideas.
To me, real branding for a services firm should be cheap, "natural", and not with goofy initials or logos that only work for IBM or Microsoft: just "real look and feel" trade dress branding, the kind associated with workaday letterhead and envelopes, and forged in the customer's overstimulated brain through repetition. Your name, the print style, color--decide, keep it, don't change it. See Michelle Golden's post Fun Branding for a Law Firm.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:40 AM | Comments (0)
March 27, 2007
A client service loo loo.
See from Wellington, New Zealand this shining, clean out-of-sight example of client service ardor and elbow grease in Geoff Sharp's piece "The Extra Mile" at mediator blah...blah.... Take notice, you work-life balancing Gen X and Y weenies--they don't make 'em like Geoff and me any more.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Bluegrass Blawg Review #101
Blawg Review, the weekly review of the best in legal blogging, run by some very talented and stalwart people, continues to amaze. This week's host is Diana Skaggs at Divorce Law Journal, based in Louisville, Kentucky, a state where WAC? has more distant kin on the Hull side, in both name and unclaimed DNA, than I generally care to disclose. And dudes, do see the Bong Hits 4 Jesus thing in #101. Dang! Louisville, Hunter Thompson's hometown, apparently grew more colorful and hipper from the days I lived in near-by Cincinnati, the Clean City.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2007
London post mortem: "Lon Chaney walkin' with the Queen..."
Having been overheard in Mayfair, walked in the rain in Soho and then ran amok in Kent, I dedicate this last trip to the feisty, eloquent, erudite and sometimes French-bashing Great Brit Bloggers: Charon QC, Justin Patten, Geeklawyer & Ruthie and Corporate Blawg UK. And due to New Orleans' Ray Ward, whose hair is perfect, I finally saw Lon Chaney, and his son, "walkin' with the Queen".
Posted by JD Hull at 12:50 AM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2007
Ah, NYC, and Congress, you talk a lot but.....
Two of the trans-Atlantic flights on two different airlines I've been on in the last year have played the Beach Boys' "California Girls" upon landing in New York. Is this a movement? It is clever, and maybe California Girls" should be the new national anthem anyway. Either that or "One Way Out" by the Allman Brothers.....We can lobby pro bono to introduce a bill. Would be more useful legislation than some of the stuff my 535 buds at my old jobs at the Longworth and Russell buildings have been coming up with lately.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2007
Ile St Louis: U.S. litigation conducted from Left Bank.
And why not? Law is no longer local--and neither is the apparatus for doing it. Besides, the technology helps clients.
A happy fellow under the Gargoyles this evening, I was not a free man this morning and afternoon. I was in the Munich airport getting ready to come here, Paris--and do nothing but be here--when I was confronted by cell phone with the mother of all goofy plaintiff junk science issues by Tom Welshonce in our Pittsburgh office on an action we're defending. Look, I'm not a tech-freak. I like quill pens, old books and medieval places, and don't think your PalmPilot is the same thing as your brain. But I'll admit that the Internet, electronic court filing, cell phones, e-mail, faxes, Skype and the right people permit you to quickly and efficiently file an emergency pleading in New Jersey, Kentucky or the UK from anywhere in the world. Even from here.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2007
A Milestone: Blawg Review #100
Here, and nicely done, by the Editor of Blawg Review. BR #100 includes past editions from around the world, including #65 by Dan Hull and #78 by Justin Patten.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)
Hahnenkamm, Kitzbühel
No one who has been to Kitzbühel has any reason to think that we are getting any work done.
But we are--see post below.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)
March 18, 2007
Austria: International Business Law Consortium
We've written about the Salzburg-based IBLC, which we joined in 1998, many times, including in:
"GCs: Do you really need Big, Clumsy & Unresponsive in 50 cities worldwide?"
Posted by JD Hull at 06:12 AM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2007
Barham, Kent
My third time here, where the representative of our IBLC London firm and I are getting ready for meetings in Austria. Barham is ancient and pastoral. Population is 1800. It was spelled Bioraham in 799, after Beora, a Saxon chief. The Anglican village church dates to the 1300s.
O famous Kent
What country has this isle than can compare with thee?
From Polyolbion, Michael Drayton (1563-1631)
Posted by JD Hull at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2007
London: American werewolf in Mayfair--and two UK stars.
Yesterday I met for an hour with each of the following: Justin Patten of Human Law, and a man known only as Charon QC--who brought along his beautiful, bright and useful-as-hell assistant. I'll write more about these impressive, innovative gentlemen later. For now, my advice: dudes, if you can meet other lawyer-blogger-thinkers face to face (and especially stars like Justin and Charon), just do it. Get away from your laptop. Get interactive like humans used to do it. Meet.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2007
London: lawyers, bloggers and The Stones--and Anne's chestnut tree.
Department of Broken Molds: I had lunch today near his Crown Office Row chambers with the infamous, celebrated and talented barrister and mediator Dr. Cyril Chern, an American lawyer and ex-Los Angeles judge, who I've known for 6 years. His mother is British--and he is here in London to stay. We met in Budapest, or was it Vienna, in 2001--and it was like the shock of recognition when two "similarly" unusual pain-in-the-ass people meet. Cyril, in the words of Dr. Thompson, is "not like the others". And then, walking down Fleet to Cannon Street, not far from Tower Bridge, I visited the London Stone, a day early. This quick trip to London is on my way to meetings in Austria. Today it was an honor and privilege to spend some time with the busy Cyril Chern. Tomorrow, I have the honor of meeting UK lawyer-bloggers Justin Patten and Charon QC. And it will be a privilege to spend some time with each of them.
Anne Frank would have been 78 this year, on June 12.
In 1992, I first visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam and was moved (that's understating it) to discover that Anne, who died at the Bergen-Belsen camp in 1945 at 15, had pinned up on the walls of her attic room photos of the exact same American film stars of the 1930s and 1940s my mother had also worshipped as a teenage girl. My own vibrant, youthful and outgoing mother, and Anne Frank, are about the same age. On the plane on the way over here, I read a piece in The Times, the London paper, that the comforting chestnut tree (now 150 years old) she wrote that she could see from her attic while her family was in hiding is now going to be chopped down, despite efforts to save it. The tree, now 27 tons, is in danger of falling over--but cuttings of the original are being nurtured in hopes of replanting a healthy tree.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2007
Place of oaths, deals and mystery: The London Stone
On Wednesday I'll walk east from Mayfair into legal London, down Fleet Street past Dr. Johnson's house and then past St. Paul's, on a stroll tracing and just above the Thames, to 111 Cannon Street, in the middle of the financial district. Thanks to Peter Ackroyd, author of London: The Biography, I'll stop and discover an unspectacular grate I've passed many times before. I'll look wistfully and imagine. Therein sits the unnoticed, forgotten and neglected London Stone, indisputably ancient, over which oaths were made and deals struck for centuries. There's an inscription on it, I'm told. Although linked to pre-Christ Druid ceremonies, historians can agree that it's at least a marker from
Roman times, making it a 2000 year-old symbol. A small boulder, at or near its present spot for centuries, it has even survived the Blitz, and was once the symbol of authority and heart of the City of London. In 1450, Jack Cade, opposing King Henry VI in the Kent peasant rebellion, struck his sword against the stone in a statement of sovereignty after arriving in London with his rebels. He declared himself lord of the city. Later that year, of course, Cade's head ended up on a pike on the London Bridge.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2007
Pat Lamb: The billable hour is doing just fine, thank you.
From my other friend and mentor, The Blawgfather, Patrick Lamb, at In Search of Perfect Client Service, this is good, even if it does mention me and mine:
NEWS FLASH! Reports of the Death of Hourly Rates Greatly Exaggerated!
Posted by JD Hull at 03:22 AM | Comments (0)
Charon QC - Rest in Peace.
My friend Charon QC has died. No flowers. CQC was nihilist. He'll be missed, mainly.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2007
Michael Fitzgibbons: Of Mice, Men and CEOs Blogging
At Canadian lawyer Michael Fitzgibbon's Thoughts From A Management Lawyer, see "CEO Blogging - The Risks and Rewards".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
U.S. raccoons invade Germany
Was only a matter of time. Deal with it. From Hermann the German and Spiegel International.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:36 PM | Comments (0)
Tom Kane: Don't compete on price.
See this valuable advice from Tom Kane at his Legal Marketing Blog: "Don't Compete on Price, It's a Loser". My two cents: that goes double if you are a boutique, or cluster of boutiques, competing for high-end clients with large law firms. In that case, you might even want to charge a bit more. And if you leave a large firm, be sure to keep your rates at least as high as they were.
Don't bottom-feed. Compete on service.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2007
Man of Kent, or a Kentish Man?
Soon, and after a few days acting as professionally, seriously and sanely as I possibly can in London during my usual first 48 hours of jet-lagged fog and ill-humour (an ironic curse I haven't shared that freely), I'll be in Kent. As with London, and with the County of Suffolk to the north, from where my mother's family came to Massachusetts via Ipswich 373 years ago, I am completely and hopelessly in love with Kent, mainly the "eastern" part. The County of Kent is the southeastern doorway to the British Isles--it has even more history, legend and myth than London. Lots, and maybe even too much, has happened here during the past 2500 years...
Eventually, in 51 BC, Julius Caesar called it Cantium, as home of the Cantiaci. Augustine founded what became the Anglican Church here in about 600 AD. And of course Thomas Becket, Chaucer's "holy blissful martyr", was killed here (Canterbury) in 1170. I'll stay with lawyer friends in a tiny and ancient rural village I've visited before--during my last visit not long ago, I helped Jane and Michael destroy and begin to re-build their home's 300+ year old fireplace, and I will inspect the finished hearth--and then leave with them for meetings in Austria. They work in legal London but live near Canterbury, in what is traditionally East Kent; therefore, I'll be among "Men of Kent" and "Maids of Kent".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)
Work-life balance is still a dumb-ass issue.
Republished here from an October 20 WAC? post. Our sitemeter says that people love to hate this post. But, hey, don't strain yourself--if you are a new lawyer, it can wait until Monday, maybe. Who cares if a few young dweebs are working in your shop on Saturday, or Sunday? All lawyers are the same, and equal, right? And learning how to be a useful lawyer shouldn't be that hard, probably, should it?
Man, you have a law degree--so you already made it, sort of. Have a drink. Smoke a big doobie--one that looks like a super-giant cigar and makes the whole room crazy. You are an elite person. You've got some great ties. Tell the waitress you're a lawyer. Time to be somebody...it can all just wait.
Relax. Don't suffer. Coast. Mail it in. Get by.
Have a good weekend.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2007
O'Keefe: BigLaw Blogging Is Where It Should Be.
Here's a good piece from Seattle's Kevin O'Keefe at Real Lawyers Have Blogs: "AmLaw 200 law firm blog growth in line with law firm blog growth".
Posted by JD Hull at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)
March 06, 2007
Not Too Many Larger Law Firms Blogging.
That finding is reported here in Carolyn Elefant's Legal Blog Watch piece. My take: clients who hire larger law firms (1) aren't that likely to read blogs to begin with; and (2) the few GCs who do read blogs aren't hiring law firms because of their blogs.
And why should they? Blogs are an important marketing supplement--similar to a website or Martindale-Hubbell--but are not likely to be the basis of a decision by an in-house lawyer for hiring a firm to do high-end or high pressure work. That may change--but that is the situation right now. In the meantime, legal weblogs are a wonderful new form of expression, a way for some smaller firms to market, and an important laboratory and forum for new ideas: both in law and in the business of law.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2007
Tom Eagleton (Sept. 4, 1929 – March 4, 2007)
The guy was mega-talented, never boring, and tragically unsung. I was lucky enough to be around Missouri Senator Tom Eagleton (D), a lot one summer long ago when I was attached (through Sen. Gaylord Nelson) to Kennedy's Health Subcommittee. No matter what you thought of his politics, Tom Eagleton (in Senate 1969-1987) was brighter, more driven, more creative, funnier, more polished, and way more interesting than most US politicians on the national stage....
He grew up privileged, but never acted like it. He seemed like a guy who might enjoy a beer. He was accomplished but fun. Openly irreverent, and with a strong Bohemian streak, he loved Pall Mall non-filters. Two or three puffs, and put it out. Over and over. If someone used in normal conversation the word "crazy", he's say "hey, let's watch that word around here, okay?" (making fun years later of his treatment for depression being all over the news in 1972). I can't do him justice--suffice to say Eagleton was something out of a great novel with richly-drawn, complex and beloved heros. I just really liked him.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
I'm sorry--and gulp--but Ann Coulter is wonderfully feisty and funny, too...she's right sometimes--so stop all this PC stuff or I'll turn into a Republican.
It's here (in case you missed it), people are up in arms, and yeah, I like her--and I like John Edwards, too. But Edwards is running for national office. Let's not get too excited about the word "faggot". Unfortunately, in her context, it just means lame and ineffectual; people know what I mean/you mean/Ann Coulter means in that context when you say it the way she said it. Besides, it was funny--and her main point was not about Edwards, being gay or Edwards being gay (which no one believes for a second); rather Coulter lamented that all forms of human eccentricity and even small-mindedness which we liberals do not like this week have become illnesses society much treat.
Despite being surrounded all day long by Republicans, WAC? is not homophobic, likes gays, likes non-gays, likes people, likes words and even prefers the alternatives of "poof" or "fudgepacker" from time to time ("packer", for short, and for ease of reference, is good, too...). I also like the words "weenie", "twit" and "harpy", and the expressions "wretched harridan" (for an unpleasant woman) and "big-enough-to-have-their-own-zip-code" (for extremely portly people). But none of these are suspect classifications under the law either--nor should they be. They are not "hate" speech. So WAC? probably needs lots of rehabs--including one for swearing (hey, is there a "one-stop" facility I can go to?).
Posted by JD Hull at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2007
3-party system: accept, evolve--or just smoke a Marlboro?
No child ever wrote to Santa, "Bring me, and a bunch of kids I've never met, a pony, and we'll share."
Politics, the art of controlling one's environment, is still important to me. For years I worked and/or raised money for candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties, and now I've grown very weary of the whole thing. But I still love author and humorist P.J. O'Rourke--for years Rolling Stone magazine's "Republican" counterweight to Hunter S. Thompson--who wrote the above in "Why I Am a Conservative in the First Place", RS (July 13-27, 1995). P.J.'s got a point--and it's a good place to start all political conversations. Human selfishness and willfulness is an old, old verity.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)
Venables and Holmes Conspire.
See Delia Venables' Internet Newsletter for Lawyers, March/April 2007. In May/June, Nick Holmes of Binary Law will join her as co-editor.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2007
Saturday's Charon QC
Charon QC never disappoints. He blogs often and for no reason other than he must write; for him, it's a form of both art and play. (Besides, I'm convinced the guy doesn't need the money.) See "Saturday shockers and other matters" and a Friday Charon post with a fine feral photo of downwardly mobile PM Blair in his younger days--and of the Brit upper class version of the Hell's Angels Labor Day Picnic.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
UK Bloggers: The Good, the Erudite and the UnHoly.
The triumvirate of UK legal weblogs: (1) Justin Patten's forthright and award-winning Human Law, (2) the urbane and lyrical Charon QC (just written up in The Times), and finally (3) Geeklawyer, London barrister, IP pundit and genuinely savage person who, when provoked in the right way, adds a dash of language that would make Jack Nicholson blush. Other stellar UK blawgs include Jeremy Phillips' IPKat, Nick Holmes' Binary Law and Delia Venables' law sites. There are 20 more listed on the left hand side of this blog. Soon WAC? is headed again to London and Kent, then to Kitzbuhel, Austria and lastly, for pure fun, and alone, to Paris. I note that Geeklawyer's co-blogger Ruthie--a solicitor with a love-hate
relationship with GL, and alleged to have a yen for Yank lawyers--has not yet offficially been cleared by Geeklawyer to meet WAC? at the old London Stone on Cannon Street near the Bank of China at high noon on March 14. She can't meet me in Paris either. But it's not all fun, games, boy toys, irreverence and black humour with this crowd. GL and the talented, alluring Ms. Ruthie are organizing a UK legal blogging conference for May 2007.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
Secret Agent Man: Ain't No Biz Like Show Biz
"Hollywood is the one place in the world where you can die of encouragement." --Dorothy Parker
"I read part of it all of the way through." --Samuel Goldwyn
With few detours, my firm, Hull McGuire PC, represents publicly-traded and often well known companies based in the US and Europe. We have the talent and drive to attract and keep big game, often in the automotive, steel, transportation and energy industries, so why not? We avoid individuals, even very rich ones, and also steer away from small to medium sized businesses. Both are often unsophisticated in the use of lawyers--they can't tell great ones from good ones from mediocre ones--and that is not our idea of a good time. While all clients are treated very well (that's an understatement), we'd rather answer to a General Counsel. No use in having your own firm and working your ass off with with smart lawyers unless you get interesting work from smart, appreciative clients. It's hard, high-pressure work, but we love it.
But here's something even harder, involving individuals, but just as much fun. About 5 years ago, and because of my frustrated writer's love of films, literature and the theater, I started to represent novelists and authors who wanted to turn their works--both fiction and autobiographical--into feature films. My niche is books which are critical if not commercial successes and need scripts and/or treatments (the latter of which I often work on myself). It's the hardest work I've ever done--and the ups and downs are manic and brutal. But it suits me: it combines story-telling, writing, selling, business and law. It's taken me to LA, where I made my first live pitch three years ago, to NYC, where I struck out in someone's office after blowing a meeting so badly all I could eat for the next two days was crow, and even to Manchester, England, where Granada Studios handed me my first rejection in 2002. (Pippa Cross herself yelled at me on the phone re: an adaptation she didn't like).
The rejections (except Pippa's) come with "encouragement"--and the trick is to separate the constructive criticism from the BS. So I love Ms. Parker's quote above. I'll write about our new cottage industry from time to time under "Secret Agent Man". In the meantime, a question: you know any good writers with a good published story? Compelling is required. Difficult artists welcome.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:57 PM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2007
Tom Collins: Keeping Clients
Each year, law firms and other professional firms all over the world--not to mention their best clients--spend extraordinary energy, time, manpower and millions of dollars to market and advertise. Just to get new clients and customers. But clients switch law firms quickly and often. So how do you keep them? And why should they stay? See "Client Retention in Law Firms" by Tom Collins at More Partner Income, consistently the best law practice management site, on WAC?'s favorite topic.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)