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January 10, 2008
What if they gave more client service awards?
From the Atlanta dBusinessNews: "Ford & Harrison Receives Top Client Service Honor". Bravo. The Atlanta-based Ford & Harrison specializes in labor and employment law. The firm's Client Service Promise #4 is "We will watch your budget". Bravo again. BTI Consulting Group did the rankings.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Value price this. Part V.
There's more commentary--to your right and below--including Allison Shields', and her fine post "Even More Talk About Pricing". WAC?'s continuing take: billing by the hour for our firm--which depends on repeat business from publicly-traded clients we have represented in many cases for decades--is not a broken system for us. When it breaks, or if the markets change, we'll fix it and/or adjust. And quickly. In the meantime, we know lots of ethical, forward-thinking, ultra-competent lawyers who provide value for GCs the "old way".
But let us change the subject(s). If you want to improve things, work to: (1) eliminate contingent fee agreements (the greatest anti-client device ever), (2) replace the popular election of state judges (an embarrassing, medieval travesty) with a merit-based selection system, and (3) make the lawyers and all staff in your shop profoundly and religiously client-focused. Further, please oh please work (4) to take the emphasis off "lawyer comforts" like (a) "professionalism"; it encourages lawyer clubbiness and compromises clients by, for examples, taking emphasis off procedural rules when you really need them, and turning local litigation counsels into wimps who won't go to bat for clients. And like (b) "work-life balance". Yeah, practicing law is hard.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (6)
Guessing about Wes Clark.
Obviously, he wants to be a player in the hoped-for HRC 2009 administration. But which job does he want? Four years ago, some of our lawyers raised money for him. We even organized fund-raisers we were too busy ourselves to attend. And I was one of his California delegates to the Democratic convention before he dropped out of the race in early 2004. In 2003 and 2004, Clark just wasn't ready for prime time in a gruelling 24/7 modern U.S. presidential race. He was too new to national politics. But he's got "talent". Like anyone worth a damn, he has detractors and enemies out the wazoo. However, so far none of them have kept him out of the fray with real or made-up stuff about his personal life or military career. He's still a crowd-pleaser. So what is he and/or HRC thinking?
Posted by JD Hull at 10:23 PM | Comments (1)
Fed will cut interest rates again.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Any confusion as to whether the Federal Reserve plans to cut rates further to help a struggling economy may have been cleared up today.
In prepared remarks, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke pledged Thursday to slash interest rates yet again to prevent housing and credit problems from plunging the country into a recession. [more]
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)