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February 15, 2008

Mediating Internationally: Interview with Lord Woolf

At the International Dispute Negotiation series of The International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR), hear the latest IDN interview, No. 13, "A conversation with Lord Harry Woolf", England’s former Lord Chief Justice. Hosted by Michael McIlwrath, Senior Litigation Counsel with General Electric based in Florence, Italy and CPR President Kathy Bryan.

Posted by Brooke Powell at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Redux: Slick Answers to Lazy Interrogatories.

Color me silly, but I love and respect written discovery during the pretrial process in American federal courts. Years ago, a fed-up U.S. district court judge, throwing up his hands during arguments by lawyers on a motion to compel discovery responses, referred to answers to interrogatories as "slick lawyer answers to lazy lawyer questions".

I feel his pain.

Once a new second year associate who worked briefly for our firm (after one year at another firm) complained that we were putting too much thought into a set of interrogatories under Rule 33, Fed. R. Civ. P. Our new hire patiently explained to me that interrogatories and other written discovery were in fact "simply a way for lawyers to bill time so they could make money, and nothing more." He was adamant about it, too.

Nice guy, and I liked him--I always try to take his cab when I'm in Pittsburgh.

But complex and hard-fought civil cases really do turn about 90 per cent on the quality of the discovery questions and requests, including deposition questions, and the responses to them. And well-thought out and strategically-timed written discovery is the best way there is to prepare great depositions--and get ready for trial.

JDH

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:00 PM | Comments (2)

What if you only represented clients you actually "liked"?

Only a few books I can find on the subject of rendering services to customers in the business sections of Borders or Barnes & Noble ever mention it. In the context of lawyer services, it's simply this: except for some court appointments and pro bono engagements, what if we only chose to represent clients we liked?

By "like", I mean it loosely: to derive for whatever reason real pleasure and satisfaction while doing legal work for a individual or organization.

My firm shies away from individuals as clients, regardless of his or her resources. We usually represent businesses. So in the case of an organization, we "like" the client because overall we somehow feel comfortable with or maybe even admire the personality, business culture or goals of that client, personally like/admire the client reps and general counsel, or both.

My firm "likes" business clients which are experienced, sophisticated users of legal services. When we perform well, the client appreciates us and signals that appreciation. So then we like the client even more, and want to do an even better job or keep doing the good job we are doing so we can derive more real pleasure from the engagement, and obtain more work.

As simple and as annoyingly Mr. Rogers-esque as this all sounds, we have never, ever had good long-term relationships with any organization client which did not genuinely appreciate what we were doing for it and show it (good clients "get" lawyering, have used different lawyers frequently in the past and understand the vast differences in quality between lawyers out there in the international market), or which had disturbing corporate personalities (i.e., mean-spirited Rambo cultures, groups with employees given to blame-storming, or companies with disorganized, internally-uncommunicative or just plain lazy staffs).

Lots of such "broken" clients make money in spite of themselves--but they are never worth it for the long haul.

We rely on repeat business. For us, there's no substantial reason to accept a new engagement unless we think we might want to represent that client in the long term. For years, I often sensed before the first draft of the representation letter was done that the new client didn't fit us. Usually I couldn't articulate it--or maybe I just disliked the client rep. But because of the money or the prestige of the engagement, we took the project, and kept going after the repeat business anyway. A few years ago, we stopped doing that.

Does my attitude clash with some people's notions of real client service, duty to the profession or basic law firm economics? It sure does. And today I don't think I can practice law any other way. In the long term, having no client is better than a bad client--or one that I don't see courting down the road.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)