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May 26, 2006

The Legal World Outside America: Non-U. S. Blawgs

If you scroll down a little on your left, you'll see our first edition of a catalogue of non-U.S. legal weblogs from or about (I) The West and (II) Asia. Latin America, Africa and the Middle East are next. We'll keep building on this--just as my own firm has built an international practice over the past 10 years. The idea here is to catalogue active quality "foreign" blawgs so we can all expand the digital conversation into the non-U.S. legal community and make a few new friends and contacts. WAC? has worked on this project for a while--see e.g., here, here, here and here--and commentators or bloggers like Rupert White of the UK Law Gazette, England’s Justin Patten, Nick Holmes and Delia Venables and the United States' Bob Ambrogi have mentioned or weighed in on this effort.

Suggestions for additional non-U.S. blogs are welcome. They should be active legal weblogs. Blogs without English language versions are fine, as many lawyers and business people--especially outside America--are multilingual.

Why do this? Where or what does it get American attorneys?

First, many jurisdictions around the world--especially in Europe and Latin America--have legal systems remarkably similar to America’s for historical and cultural reasons. Some don't. But as many more of us and our clients dive into the new international mix, it's good to know something about these jurisdictions legally and especially culturally. Many of these blogs are excellent, like China Law Blog, The Canadian Privacy Law Blog and TechnoLlama, to name just a few. Some cover developments in the European Union, and other focus on one practice area in several countries or regions.

Second, American lawyers with corporate and high-end practices in solo shops, boutiques and firms under, say, 300 lawyers should be especially interested in "meeting" lawyers and businesses headquartered outside of the U.S. There are opportunities to do U.S. work domestically on behalf of these entities. You don't need offices in London, Brussels or Beijing to obtain or do that work.

Finally, this could be great fun.

Posted by JD Hull at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2006

More General Counsel Venting Plus...

Here's yet another post-BTI Consulting Group study follow-up article--this time in Law.com's In-House Counsel. And this piece, by Petra Pasternak of The Recorder, has pointers from some candid but helpful GCs for those of us who are General Counsel-challenged, including: "5. Embrace Risk", "8. Keep Me Focused" and "10. Make Me Look Good".

Posted by JD Hull at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2006

Excellence: In the Details

What if we lawyers put into our efforts to retain clients 10% of the attention to detail most of us put into our substantive work? If we did that--i.e., focus increasingly on the details of service delivery in addition to the "legal work" itself--we would seldom need to market, except through servicing existing clients we want to keep. On that subject, Tom Collins at More Partner Income has the post Excellent Law Firms Sweat the Small Stuff:

I’m on the same page with John L. Michalik, former ALA Executive Director, when he says [in the April/May 2006 issue of ALANews], “How can we be trusted with big things and big responsibilities if we’re not trustworthy as to those things that are small?”

“To achieve excellence and success...you often have to care more than others think is wise, expect more of yourself than others think is possible, and do more than others think is enough. A starting point for that is realizing that everything does count, and the size of the problem, task or the error to be corrected is not determinative of its importance.“

Caring about the small things sets the standard, and how the small things get treated determines how the organization will deal with the really big things. Everything counts!

Posted by JD Hull at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)