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December 31, 2009

Scotland's Hogmanay: Staggeringly Cold.

Wear that rabbit fur-lined Somerled helmet Aunt Mordag gave you last year at the Burning of the Clavie. However you go--Druid priest, celebrated Celtic warrior, or just a rank-and-file Viking fighter--do dress and dress warmly if you're in Scotland today and tomorrow for Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year's celebration that sometimes goes on until January 3. Sub-zero temperatures are expected. See the Herald Scotland and The Guardian.

Last year's Hogmanay in Edinburgh got way out of hand.

(Photo: Daily Telegraph UK)

Posted by JD Hull at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)

December 30, 2009

The Economist: Working U.S. Women Officially Rule.

Robert Palmer once sang, persuasively and with brio, that "the women are smarter". We'd add braver, and more motivated. It's bracing to hear we may have new heroes and leaders. Just stay focused on merit. Some worry that the frightened U.S. male worker is steadily losing Moxie, Mojo, and the Ability to Think and Act on His Own. So this is good news. See at this week's The Economist the cover piece "We did it!":

At a time the world is short of causes for celebration, here is a candidate: within the next few months women will cross the 50% threshold and become the majority of the American workforce.

Women already make up the majority of university graduates in the OECD countries and the majority of professional workers in several rich countries, including the United States. Women run many of the world’s great companies, from PepsiCo in America to Areva in France.

Rosie the Riveter, now in her eighties, has arrived.

Image: The Economist (from J. Howard Miller's WWII poster "We Can Do It!")

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (3)

Charon QC's Christmas Art

CQC aims to add paintings through New Year's Eve.

We don't understand the Art or the Context, but it did put us in a holly jolly mood. But the "F**kART" series? We'll noodle that awhile.

Never law cattle, always original, CQC makes us like the state of being alive, curious and thinking, and to want more of it.

Christmas ‘09 (2009)
Oil on canvas
Charonasso

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Real Heros: John Hope Franklin

John Hope Franklin, author, historian and civil rights figure, died this past year at the age of 94. Franklin wrote From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, a classic first published in 1947. He taught at Fisk, St. Augustine's, Howard, Brooklyn College, Chicago, and finally Duke, where he taught history to undergraduates, and served for seven years as a Professor of Legal History at the law school. He wrote, published and lectured into his nineties.

John Hope Franklin (1915-2009)

Posted by JD Hull at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)

December 25, 2009

Ile St Louis fruit stand, December 17, 2009 (R.Nahem)

Posted by JD Hull at 07:00 PM | Comments (0)

December 24, 2009

Chantilly

At Richard Nahem's I Prefer Paris, see "Meredith Mullins: Chantilly Night".

Photo: Meredith Mullins

Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

December 21, 2009

The Economist: 2009 not so bad?

The Great Recession never arrived, says last week's The Economist. But there's a catch. See "The Great Stabilisation". Excerpts:

Today’s stability, however welcome, is worryingly fragile, both because global demand is still dependent on government support and because public largesse has papered over old problems while creating new sources of volatility.

Apparent signs of success, such as American megabanks repaying public capital early), make it easy to forget that the recovery still depends on government support. Strip out the temporary effects of firms’ restocking, and much of the rebound in global demand is thanks to the public purse, from the officially induced investment surge in China to stimulus-prompted spending in America.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:33 PM | Comments (0)

December 19, 2009

Richard Nahem: A Paris Christmas.

All month long, our friend Richard Nahem, an American photographer and writer who lives in the Marais district, has given us Christmas in Paris 2009.

Hotel de Ville (R.Nahem)

Posted by JD Hull at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2009

It's Limey Time at the ABA Blawg 100.

Two Hip Brit Wits. Legal London and the Profession Unbound can be found at GeekLawyer and Charon QC.

GeekLawyer is a barrister with an IP specialty. He is smart, rude*, hopelessly un-PC, and usually toasted. A tad more sober, Charon QC is a charming academic with a velvet voice and golden pen. He is eclectic, erudite, and only mildly Albion-eccentric. I.e., criminally insane by Yank/New York City standards.

These blokes are lawyers. But, even so, each steps up and just says it--on a variety of subjects. Each reconnects us with our European forms and heritage. And of course neither uses "party" as a verb. Or "interface" as a word. What more could we want from real Limeys? Or from real Lawyers?

So do vote (just click on ABA banner above) for our English cousins in the ABA Blawg 100's In My Humble Opinion category. These are not the only remarkable sites in the "IMHO" niche--but do cast your votes for these two fine writer-thinkers.

Geeklawyer

Charon QC

*On good days, Americans are merely dismissed as "the colonials".

Posted by JD Hull at 11:22 PM | Comments (1)

"All hat, no cattle".

Everyone in your shop has to buy into client service like a cult, like a religion--like an angry sermon that lifted them out of their pews at The Church of the Final Thunder.

Real client service--i.e., know-how consistently delivered as an experience the customer likes and wants more of--is by now a global cliché. Hey, you must say you are "into" it--but do you even know what it is? It sounds easy, and intuitive to the speaker and listener.

"Client and customer service...how hard could that be?"

Very. Making a client be safe and feel safe at the same time is as hard an order to fill as we can imagine. Whether you're a lawyer, accountant, hooker, fishing guide, house painter, drug dealer, or mom-and-pop corner store owner, superior work alone won't keep a good client or customer coming back.

Clients want something more. You have to figure out what that is.

And then everyone in your shop--yes, everyone--has to buy into CS like a cult, like a religion, like an angry sermon that took them out of their pews at The Church of the Final Thunder.

"Yes, yes, got that covered." One problem is self-deception: (1) most service providers think they know what CS is, but they don't; and (2) if they really do know, they don't know how to discipline their organizations to make CS stick.

"All hat, no cattle." The second and more immediate problem is deceiving clients themselves. At a minimum, even if you don't have a clue what CS really is, do you say you provide it when you don't? Is CS a little joke at your shop? A ruse, maybe? Something for the website? For that first pitch?

Well, there are voices in the wilderness besides ours on that one. And one of our favorites is Tom Kane at The Legal Marketing Blog. See again his post from June 2008, "Don't Let Client Service Be Merely Lip Service" and the related links.

Posted by JD Hull at 05:16 AM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2009

New FRCP deadlines effective December 1, 2009.

While the work of the Judicial Conference's five Advisory Committees never really stops, big changes to federal court rules, including the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), don't occur that often. The newest amendments are "technical amendments"--but the changes are anything but technical.

Two years in the making, the changes were signed into law (H.R. 1626) by the President on May 7, 2009, and became effective December 1, 2009. There are also significant changes to some of the time triggers in the appellate, criminal and bankruptcy rules. All are part of the Judicial Conference's "Time-Computation Project".

FRCP. Rule 6, FRCP, the general "time counting" provision, and post-trial Rules 50, 52, and 59, are among the rules changed. Gone forever in Rule 6 is the much relied-upon (and, for many, much beloved) "11-day rule" adopted in 1985. It was designed to take the hardship out of 10-day post trial deadlines, i.e., don't count weekends and holidays for deadlines of 10 days or less.

But you no longer need it. In the new provisions, the Advisory Committee on Rules of Civil Procedure gave litigants more time (a lot more) to file motions for judgment, or for a new trial, under Rules 50 and 59. Beginning on December 1, the time to file after entry of judgment was 28 days rather than 10 days.

Sources. The D.C office of Chicago-based Mayer Brown published an advisory to the in-house community on November 30, 2009. It summarizes changes to the civil and appellate rules. See also the April 2009 summary at Smart Rules. The popular Cornell Law School site on the federal rules put up all the FRCP changes by December 1, but is still working on getting the Advisory Committee Notes into it.

The most complete Advisory Committee history and Congressional legislative history of the amendments are at the federal rulemaking section of the U.S. Courts website.

Posted by JD Hull at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2009

Is French Television still hiring up all the good Anchorettes?

From earlier this year, see La Mom via The Paris Blog. We still admire 43-year-old Laurence Ferrari, the Sorbonne-educated anchor at French channel TF1. She also has world-class looks. We don't know if it's true or not, but for a brief time after her divorce, Ferrari was romantically linked in the European press to Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president.

This is hard for us to believe for a number of reasons. One reason is rational. After all, Sarkozy has never been mistaken for Paul Newman, Warren Beatty or Johnny Depp. But WAC? is famously shallow on non-lawyering issues. We don't know how two such oddly-matched humans could be attracted to one other. We steadfastly believe in looks. Don't trust us.

More importantly, did La Mom need to call Ferrari "the French Katie Couric--minus the aging cheerleader look"? Look, Jacques, you're talking about America's Sweetheart. We'll always defend D.C. native Katie, even if she is at times cranky, and was once mean to one of our writers at The Monocle, and for absolutely no reason at all.

Ferrari: Smart. Tough. But she flirted for France? We doubt it.

(Note: WAC? alumni Oliver is on loan to this blog through the end of the holidays, or until his wife learns of it, which ever happens first.)

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2009

Suddenly, American CPAs are boozing, drugging and philandering.

Columbia Pictures

Not really. But those folks do seem to be "getting out" more.

It's good to escape your own neighborhood--and on a regular basis. A real road trip--like drive from DC to Charlottesville or Chapel Hill. Or at least a virtual one. Like take a vacation from lawyers. Consider meeting engineers, actuaries, doctors, sales people, chimney sweeps, cocktail waitresses named Merle--you get the idea.

And accountants. As with lawyers, real accountants put clients first. As a friend of ours recently said:

Once I start gazing at my clients and stop gazing at my wallet, I have a life. Because I am doing what is important. Amazingly, my wallet takes care of itself.

Accountants, also like lawyers, are reputed to be careful and a bit risk-averse. And self-important and boring. But we never completely bought that (about the accountants, anyway). For many businesses, their day-to-day accounting firms are more cost-efficient, solution-oriented and productive than their outside law firms.

You and yours starting a business and putting your money, sweat and ideas into it? You aim to be the new Apple, new Starbucks, new P&G?

Well, that's just great. Do hire both a CPA and a lawyer you respect and trust--you need both kinds of consigliere--and do it well before you incorporate. But find that CPA firm first.

Our fellow Midwesterner Michelle Golden at Golden Practices likes good practicing accountants, too. She's noticed all the accounting blogs sprouting up (about 125 so far). One of the CPA sites Michelle features is hosted by Hansen Neiffer, a firm which intrigued and impressed us with its niches and reach.

Hansen Neiffer works out of two offices in the cities Yakima and Kennewick, key cities located in southern Washington state. This is an important American agricultural region with steady to high growth even now. However, the firm services businesses--many, but not all, are farms--in not only in the U.S. Northwest but throughout the U.S.

And while WAC? writers are primarily urban (read: way urban) creatures, we also admire Hansen Neiffer's blog Farm CPA Today, and noticed this gem: "Corporate Farms in Africa". It comments on a recent Business Week piece on the new momentum (in large part by American agribusiness) to invest in African farmland. Makes us want to visit Yakima and Kennewick. Or survey the rice farms in Siaya, Kenya.

Yes, it's good to get out of your neighborhood from time to time.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2009

Raise the dead, heal the sick, and make a blind man see.

Simple Justice: Who Hates Social Media Snake Oil Salesmen?

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2009

Can we change how good clients think about lawyers?

The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue.
The knack of a mason outlasts a moon.
The hands of a plasterer hold a room together.
The land of a farmer wishes him back again.

--Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), author, editor, poet, Pulitzer winner.

But first: Hearse Horses, anyone? Do you love what you do? Step back from the canvas and try some simple tool sharpening. Bone up on your fundamentals, maybe. Your techniques. Do you need some new ideas? How does your firm do its work these days? Do you get things right? What do you teach associates?

Now step back further. What of this Lawyering Thing?

Clients? What is it you really do for them? You serve, right? You mix your products and services with an overall experience that makes you unique, right? Or are you and yours indistinguishable from the rest of the generic law cattle out there? Is your firm really different?

Step back again. Are you problem-solvers?

Or just part of an insular and self-important "club" that needs clients as equipment to pursue a daily game?

Does practicing law and serving turn you on? Or is it just a past choice you, or your partners, made--maybe one that hardened around you too long ago--and now regret?

Carl August Sandburg: "The lawyers, Bob, know too much..."

Too many people practice law who should not. Practicing law is hard.

Client service is just as hard. But many people with law degrees--there are way too many of us in the U.S.--don't get that. Or they don't love it. If either applies to you, or to your colleagues, it's not too late to "get it", to get it back, to love it (again or for the first time) or just to try something different and new.

The law is not for everyone. And to do it right day-in and -out is a hard order. A privilege, too.

If you wish to stay in the profession, try to make it what it can and should be. Visit our world-famous, annoying, counter-intuitive but dead-on accurate 12 Rules of Client Service. See "Rule Four: Deliver legal services that change the way clients think about lawyers".

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

December 05, 2009

Dites-le en anglais, s'il vous plait?

French blogs (see lower left of this blog), not that suprisingly, often have stunning designs, photos and graphics, but we'd still like to see more of them in English. And especially ones about law, business and public policy.

To the French: we're sorry we let our French fall into disrepair; you, the curators of all things fine, still teach all how to live and remind us what we should know about the West.

But any Blogs of France in English out there? Doesn't have to be "American" English.

For now we'll continue to make do with an American writer Tara Bradford's wonderful Paris Parfait. While she routinely ignores us--probably because many of us here at WAC? are from the Midwest--her site does make us want (1) to get back to the Hull McGuire island and (2) meet and speak with Maryam, who we discovered in Paris three years ago. We owe Tara a great debt.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (2)

December 02, 2009

The Overstatement.

When you overstate, readers will be instantly on guard, and everything that has preceded your overstatement as well as everything that follows it will be suspect in their minds because they have lost confidence in your judgment or your poise.

Do see "The Only Writing Tip That Really Matters", quoting The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, at Evan Schaeffer's The Trial Practice Tips Weblog.

Blarney Castle, near Cork, Ireland

Posted by Rob Bodine at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Rule Eight

Over at our annoying but highly correct 12 Rules, Rule Eight is "Think Like the Client--Help Control Costs".

If you really think your firm is "partnering" with a client, then think through and plan client projects as if you were an owner of the client. Your employees have to buy into that, too. But what if you and yours don't or won't buy into it? It means, at best, this: (a) all those "partnering" and "dedicated-to-excellent-client-service" overtures on your website are just more cookie-cutter noises in the usual law firm marketing rhetoric, and (b) your firm's lawyers and employees can count themselves among the usual generic American law cattle who pretend--to themselves and others--that they actually like what they do for a living and even excel at it.

So are you folks even in the right profession? Lawyering is a service career. Lawyers are servants, first. Lawyers are not special. (And in the U.S., where we are a dime a dozen, and the differences in quality among us are immense, lawyers are becoming less and less special every year.) Lawyers are not the main event. Get used to it. Get your employees used to it.

But you can get a higher standard--and enforce it. It's not too late.

Posted by Rob Bodine at 09:46 PM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2009

Redux: The GC as Wartime Consigliere.

(From a June 1, 2009 JDH post)

"I don't like violence, Tom. I'm a businessman. Blood is a big expense. "

In May of this year, over at his well-regarded Law Department Management, Rees Morrison, one of the smarter, sager and more experienced lawyer-consultants out there, had asked "Does a General Counsel Make All That Much Difference?" Our two cents is still the same for a working formula for "the right GC." And it's still a no-brainer: Get thee a philosopher-warrior. Be safe, and feel safe, friends.

The Wrong Stuff: Tom Hagen (Paramount Pictures)

And Morrison had gone a bit farther, inspired in part by May's Atlantic piece "Do CEOs Matter?, by Harris Collingwood. A Morrison excerpt:

Other researchers have found that CEO leadership matters relatively less in constrained industries, such as electrical utility industries, than in hotly competitive, fast-changing industries. A similar conclusion probably applies to general counsel: legal/business calls are tougher and more frequent in roiling industries so the top lawyer has more opportunity to make a difference.

(Emphasis added.) Do we ever agree--as did the wonderfully warlike trial lawyer Scott Greenfield, when he picked up on our original post back on June 1 singing the virtues of the "tough-guy" inside counsel--that "GC warriors" are worth their weight in gold bow-ties and silver spats.

Virgil 'The Turk' Sollozo. "I don't like violence, Tom. I'm a businessman. Blood is a big expense." (Paramount Pictures)

As Morrison suggests, it's just a business fact--especially in changing industries--that General Counsel do make a difference. So your corporate client might as well demand the "right" package:

A. She should be broad-gauged, intellectual, scholarly, take-charge, organized, preventive, resourceful--and warlike at heart.

B. Hates war as expensive ("blood" one Godfather character noted, "is a big expense")--but likes, and even revels in, a fight.

C. Tells management what to do--and not a tentative, qualified "what you can do."

Note: See also our May 15 post, "Proctor & Gamble's Lafley: Look to the Meaningful Outside", on the must-read thoughts of A.G. Lafley, P&G's then outgoing CEO, about CEO uniqueness in May's Harvard Business Review. In many respects, you can adapt Lafley's notion--i.e., the most effective top inside lawyers should "look to the outside"--to law departments at great companies.

The Right Stuff: Rees Morrison

Posted by Rob Bodine at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)