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May 31, 2007
LawBlog 2007: The Pub
An associate lawyer has been playing this podcast lately. For a couple of days I wrongly assumed it was an audio of the Hells Angels 1968 Memorial Day picnic or maybe the soundtrack from Barfly, the 1987 film on low-bottom Los Angeles drunks starring Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway and the elegant South African-born actress Alice Krige. Neither. It's a post-LawBlog 2007 debauch in a London pub on May 18 starring GeekLawyer and co-counsel Ruthie and featuring the astonishingly slurred voices of otherwise reputable solicitors, barristers, journalists and academics who went to schools like Oxford and Cambridge. Anglophile WAC? is both shocked and impressed. Update: More sober coverage was offered by Rupert White of The Law Society's Law Gazette, here and here.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:28 PM | Comments (0)
May 30, 2007
Large Law Firms
Patrick Lamb and Tom Kane comment on "The Way of the Mastodon", by Sun Microsystems General Counsel Mike Dillon. That article, which appeared on Dillon's own blog last week, has attracted major attention. Update: At Legal Blog Watch, lawyer-journalist Robert Ambrogi was also impressed by Dillon's piece.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)
May 29, 2007
Client Service Explained
Well, WAC? could not have said it better. For some time now at Hill & Knowlton's Client Service Insights (CSI), Leo Bottary has de-mystified the whole thing for us in 22 words in the upper right hand corner of his site. Bottary calls it Insight #1:
Put another way, client service is (1) easy to "get" (2) but hard to do--and only because very few of us will discipline ourselves to think it through and do it.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2007
Memorial Day Blawg Review
Lawyer-biker Norman Gregory Fernandez at Biker Law Blog does the honors this year in his thoughtful, knowledgeable and heart-felt Blawg Review #110. Here's a guy who appreciates one of Carl Sandburg's best poems on exactly the right day for it. The Editor of Blawg Review notes that Fernandez will be updating #110 with posts from other blogs throughout the day.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2007
We all work in the global services economy.
"We are all in the business of selling solutions--products and goods are just tools and details."
--Overheard in a Los Angeles coffee shop.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2007
Hail Britannia: LawBlog 2007
On Friday, May 18th, with sponsorship from UK-based IP player CPA Global, the Law Society Gazette, and the law firm of Freeth Cartwright, London barrister GeekLawyer and his co-writer Ruthie successfully pulled off the first UK and Europe Legal Blogging Conference, or LawBlog 2007. Here is their report. Speakers and better-known attendees included Professor Jeremy Phillips of IPKat, Justin Patten of Human Law and keynote speaker Charon QC, who has his own report. Update: Do see all the comments made about last Friday's LawBlog 2007 by the participants over at GeekLawyer. Brit lawyers are a relatively happy if eccentric lot.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 21, 2007
The Greatest on the Greats: Blawg Review #109
The Greatest American Lawyer, who after much intrigue finally outed himself as Michigan-based trial lawyer Enrico Schaefer, is a seeker and sayer of great truths about practicing law and more. Enrico just says it, and we have always listened. GAL, as WAC? will always think of Enrico, hosts this week's Blawg Review, #109. His theme for Blawg Review is the "Greatest" posts, ideas and people in the legal blogosphere. "Believe or not, it's just me."
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 08:19 AM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2007
Redux: What about clients you just don't like?
Answer: Don't court or accept them in the first place. If you already have such a client, you get through it, you try to do the best job you can, and you dump that client ASAP.
Sound unprofessional or unlawyer-like? Maybe so. Yet, with the notable exceptions of some criminal defendant appointments by a court and pro bono work, neither your client nor your firm should be even slightly prejudiced by distrust, disdain or an uneasy relationship. See our November 19, 2005 post "Rule 1: Represent only clients you like". And hear this from a 2006 radio show we appeared on.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:03 PM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2007
Queen City
Queen City, Clean City, City-State, the City of Seven Hills, and very well-kept secret, Cincinnati, Ohio was the only town my family lived in for more than three years in a row when we were "growing up moving" around the East and the Midwest in the 1950s and 1960s. It has everything you'd want: attractive, highly educated, family friendly, business oriented, lightly industrial and German-efficient yet friendly. It has and always has had a vibrant arts community. Quirky fact: for a while, lawyer Jerry Springer was our mayor.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2007
Francois Fillon, new French prime minister
No--not Francois Villon, the 15th century French poet and vagabond. This is a much different Francois: an experienced French politician and reformer with strong ties to Britain, including a Welsh lawyer wife. So see Spiegel International for a report about Francois Fillon, just appointed prime minister by the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. French conservatives expect Fillon, who has a more moderate style than Sarkozy, to be smooth, pro-business and a talented PM.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)
International arbitration: dealing with delay
Save this if you litigate abroad. "Faster, cheaper and better" is not, unfortunately, every business litigant's experience in obtaining and enforcing awards in international arbitration. But even under the current scheme of laws, conventions and treaties, arbitration still makes sense. So our friend Mel Simburg of Simburg Ketter, the Seattle member of the International Business Law Consortium, has written "Delay and Sanctions in International Arbitration." Simburg's guide is our kind of article by a fine lawyer. In 8 pages, Simburg (a) takes us through the U.S. Federal Arbitration Act, the New York Convention of 1958 (on the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards), and the procedural rules of UNCITRAL, WIPO and ICDR (international AAA), and then (b) offers practical devices and strategies for moving arbitrations along, combating delay and the use of sanctions.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 03:20 AM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2007
Legal Sanity and Blawg Review #108
New York's Arnie Herz is a thinker, writer, seer, and a guy my Mom in Ohio wants me to be more like. He will be hosting Blawg Review #108 tomorrow at his fine Legal Sanity blog. Arnie is and always has been light years ahead of most lawyers on issues of law firm culture, workplace and mentoring. He knows that great lawyers are great people: the ones who can grow. His theme at BR #108 will be creating successful business relationships in the law. In the meantime, see this recent Legal Sanity post, one that people I barely know keep e-mailing to me, called "Why Evolution Doesn't Favor Lawyers Who Are Jerks."
Posted by JD Hull at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2007
Hermann the German does Naples, Florida.
In addition to excellent customer service, great lawyering and the sheer fun of quietly and systematically taking higher-end business clients away from much larger law firms, What About Clients? focuses on doing business all over the world. Obviously, we like both U.S. and non-U.S. blogs on business, law, politics and foreign policy. However, the Berlin-based Observing Hermann...(cryptically subtitled "Hermann the German. And an amnesic American lost in Berlin.") is one of the few non-legal/non-business/non-policy blogs listed on the lower left of WAC? in our Directory of Non-U.S. Blogs. The reason: Hermann the German is one very rare human. He's funny, demented and smart--and, when in the right mood, he can write. See his post of Wednesday called "Shark Grossed Out Biting Into Old German Leg".
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2007
Blair out--Brown likely in. And then what?
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in many ways a politician as controversial in the UK as Bill Clinton has been in America, has announced he's stepping down on June 27. Do consult with WAC?'s London friend Charon QC on this change in leadership in
Au revoir, Sayonara, Ciao…Auf Wiedersehen, subtitled "Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a goner. He has abdicated". We also note that barrister-pundit GeekLawyer, who with co-writer Ruthie has organized the first UK Legal Blogging Conference on May 18, has published the similarly sentimental and touching "Victory in England Day".
So Chancellor Gordon Brown waits in the wings. Brown is widely to expected to emerge as the Labour Party's new leader and become the new prime minister--but there's lots of uncertainty about what kind of PM he'd be. For conventional news coverage, see from the BBC "What Is Brown Likely To Do As PM?"
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2007
Pat Lamb: King Billable Hour and European GCs
I love the discrepancy between inside and outside counsel on the issue of whether billable hour targets encourage padding. For only half of outside counsel to acknowledge the obvious suggests supreme disingenuity or that many outside lawyers in Europe live in Fantasy Land.
The Blogfather is on a roll. Over at In Search of Perfect Client Service, and since May 2, Chicago trial lawyer and consultant Patrick Lamb has had no less than four (4) great short pieces on the billable hour. The last two were "Time Sheets and Buggy Whips" and this one (quoted in part above) where he showcases views of European in-house counsel on their outside firms.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2007
Redux: In Praise of Structure
For a long time I've thought that American business schools and the training programs of global and often publicly-traded companies do a much, much better job than do law firms of training recruits to value and adhere to the structure of a plan on an item for action.
Do we lawyers know how to get things done, done right and done on time? Do we even value that? I wonder.
I am not talking here about the simple "keeping face" and survival requirements of meeting client deal or court deadlines, or even about the cliches of working hard, creative thinking, "out of the box", working smart or being persistent. I mean structure, a real standard, and "practicing structure" every day--the discipline of (1) having a plan or strategy for any one project, client or non-client, (2) meeting internal project deadlines no matter what, and (3) applying the will to work that plan and timetable.
"Structure" is not just the hard process of getting things done. It's a frame of mind and a value which must be sold to others in your shop--like the importance of making that 5 minute call to a client about a loose end at the end of the worst day you can remember, even while you could do it the next morning at 8:00. It's realizing that letting anything but emergency tasks "slide" makes you inefficient, unlikely to meet your real goals, and tired.
Do you get up early every day with a idea of what needs to be done on each project, and knowing the difference between "important" and "urgent"? Example: Monday is your deadline to have the final changes and notes to your web designer on your new firm website, an important but not urgent project you've talked about at internal meetings for months. So far, for once, you have been on track. But on Monday a longstanding client calls with two new projects; the new projects are exciting but not THAT urgent in the sense they need to cut into internal deadlines and other goals for Monday. You need to take some first steps, though, to get on top of the new matters for your client. After all, these folks are the main event.
Key ongoing internal project v. new client project. Which gets the most attention that day? Which slides? Answer: they both get attention, and neither slides. The website (long-term important) and the new client project (short-term important) are both critical projects. Years ago the Stephen Coveys and Edwards Demings out there pointed out that business people burn themselves out by waiting around only for "the urgent" in a kind of manic crisis management that keeps other important things from ever getting done or ONLY getting them done when they morph into a crisis. For lawyers, other examples would be only respecting deadlines like transaction closing dates and court-filing deadlines--to hell with everything else.
For a long time I've thought that American business schools and the training programs of global and often publicly-traded companies do a much, much better job than do law firms of training recruits to value and adhere to the structure of a plan on an item for action. It's almost as if law school and firms deem us all such "professionals" and "artists" that we are beyond learning skills of project planning and execution. What a crock. Not learning the value of pushing non-urgent but important things along at a steady pace has cost us dearly. As motivated as lawyers often are, our discipline for sticking to anything and seeing it through is often poor; again, unless it's urgent, we just don't see its value. Do our best clients run their businesses that way?
This attitude is the norm, and we lawyers--who rarely innovate or take a leadership position on anything in commerce--are just fine, thank you, with it. After all, "all the other law firms" are mediocre on the discipline of getting things done, and have "crisis-only" mentalities--why shouldn't we be that way? So we waste time blowing off important but longer term projects. Worst of all, we send to others in our firms, and especially to younger lawyers, the message: "No worries--just work on a barely adequate level; don't do things until you have to; and if it's not urgent, let it slide." As with client care and service, our standard is not only embarrassingly low, we are exporting that low standard internally whenever and wherever we can.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:21 PM | Comments (1)
May 07, 2007
Professor Kingsfield Returns To Blawg Review
Young man, here's a quarter; call your mother. Tell her you definitely have decided not to become a lawyer.
Law school is over for most of us--and over for many American law students, if only for a few months, as another semester draws to a close. But legal life is difficult, and even cruel. Just as we all begin to recover from his ego-deflating questioning in October at Blawg Review #80, Professor Kingsfield is back, and he is this week's host at Blawg Review #107.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2007
Kane: Mid-sized firms v. big firms
On one of our favorite subjects, Tom Kane at Legal Marketing Blog has "Mid-sized and Small Firms Can Compete With BigLaw." He also follows up on the disturbing BTI Consulting Group, Inc. study released last year, concluding that a sizable majority of U.S. general counsel at bigger companies were not happy with their law firms.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)
May 05, 2007
Saturday's Charon: Goodbye to Blair
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, who turns just 54 tomorrow, is expected to resign in the next few days. Like his friend Bill Clinton, he leaves power as a relatively young man with options, including getting rich from memoirs and the speaking circuit. But some, WAC? included, think he'll take a stab at European Union president in the next couple of years. And like Clinton, Blair has intense fans and detractors. So yesterday London's Charon QC posted a photo of Blair waving goodbye and started a caption contest. So far Charon's got 10 suggested one-liners for what Blair is saying on his way out.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Ray Ward: "A New Orleans rite of spring"
Renaissance man, lawyer's lawyer and Dan Hull's good twin, Ray Ward at Minor Wisdom has all the dope on the Tchoupitoulas Social Aid & Athletic Club's 25th Barathon coming up in just 13 days, on Friday, May 18th. Starting and finish lines are at Le Bon Temps Roulé. 6:05 PM sharp. Six bars, six beers, six miles. Pros only.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)
May 04, 2007
Patten: Litigation Avoidance
As usual, London's Justin Patten at Human Law has a point. See "Are Lawyers Ready To Embrace The Concept Of Litigation Avoidance?"
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:48 PM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2007
The French presidential election
It is between two French baby boomers, Ms. Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy. It is interesting, fun, testy and embarrassingly American in style, beginning to resemble the Hells Angels Labor Day Picnic. And yet it is still very French. The biggest issue in the campaign is the controversial French 35-hour work week. She wants to keep it; he hates it. See The Times of London's article "Sparks Fly As Royal And Sarkozy Fight It Out" about last night's televised debate, which leads off like wrestling reportage:
Sparks flew as Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy tonight launched into their two-hour face-off on French television in front of an audience of around 20 million.
Facing each other six feet apart at a square white table the finalists for the French presidency made their opening attacks with Royal notably more aggressive in her initial stance.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)
Subpoena for "lost Rove e-mails" served on AG Gonzalez
There's a copy of it here, via beSpacific, if you scroll down a little. This features a lawyer-politician with an arguably high-end client, the U.S Congress. Sen. Leahy (D-Vermont) requested the Rove e-mails at the Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearings on the U.S. Attorney firings (for alleged job performance problems) with Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez on April 19, 2007, and again in a letter on April 25. When there was no response to either request, a subpoena for the e-mails issued from Leahy to the Justice Department on May 2.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2007
Rupert Murdoch: Today MySpace, Tomorrow Dow Jones?
He already owns Fox, MySpace and The Times of London. Now he's bidding for Dow Jones, and its The Wall Street Journal, and he'll probably need to exceed his first bid of $5 billion. See Newsweek Business story and the many related links.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
Geeklawyer Sighted in US
British Werewolf in America. He apparently entered at Bangor, Maine, of all places. Geeklawyer may be in States to rest up for the UK Legal Blogging Conference he and co-writer Ruthie have organized in London for May 18. Anyway, the infamous barrister and pundit is here unsupervised, sans Ruthie, doing whatever he wants. Advice to New Englanders until GL leaves: Alert local authorities. Lock up your women. Stay in basement with radio and food. Don't leave house after dark.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)
May 01, 2007
May Day, Law Day--and Blawg Review #106
Our main author is in the humble but beautiful village of Indian Hill, Ohio, pretending once again that he actually has a career in the film industry as an agent and treatment writer--but there are big doings today which I can cover. The ever-popular Blawg Review has been out for a whole day, and this week's host for BR #106 is Brett Trout at his Blawg IT, a finalist in the 2006 Weblog Awards. It's also Law Day, USA (but not Lawyers Day, we're reminded), established by President Eisenhower in 1958. Law Day has brought out the best of the usual poetic musings by Harvard Law grad David Giacalone. Finally, of course, it's May Day, the date of many different cultural, agricultural, religious and political observances all over the world for centuries, including the ancient Gaelic celebration called Beltane, as well as Walpurgis Night, celebrated in Scandanavia and Central Europe.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)