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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)