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December 23, 2006

"Vaz you ever in Zinzinnati?"

Well, I was during about half my youth--and eventually ran away to join the circus in Washington, DC. And I'm in Cincy now. Rivertowns are alike yet different--and there is not one quite like this one. Hail Queen City and Clean City, a still German, Republican city-state of the first order. And Order is important. Local government has a history of talent, and even then-sane lawyer and Democrat (brave!) Jerry Springer was a damn good and interesting mayor here.

Chili, beer, well-educated, no jaywalking, politeness, consumer society, "fitting-in" is very key in all circles, family values, sports and everyone with a German surname--the very names of still-tiny German villages today in the Rhineland you see on signs driving on the autobahn and up north around Berlin. Rolling, green and pretty, too. Only lightly industrial. Nothing like it...a beautiful, dream-like place. "I beg your pardon?" here is still "please?"

Posted by JD Hull at 02:57 PM | Comments (0)

December 22, 2006

Pupil Barrister - "Master, more gruel, please..?"

Maybe it's just the holiday season (in which most years I love), the winter solstice, an early appreciation of Charles Dickens, or my growing awareness of the English fascination with things antiquarian, but I'm charmed by a new blog by a pupil barrister in training in the heart of Legal London. Two fine but very different Brit lawyer-bloggers, Geeklawyer at Geeklawyer, and Nick Holmes at Binary Law, clued me in on PupilBlog. "Dickensian", comments Nick Holmes. "Tortured writhings", says GL, also a barrister. For a taste of PupilBlog see "Battered and Deeply Fried Ego". And, finally, I'm reminded of what a British instructor of religions at Duke once said to me about his school and university years after about 5, maybe 7, drinks: "At an English school of any sort, you never know what the rules are until you break them."

Posted by JD Hull at 05:38 PM | Comments (0)

December 21, 2006

"U.S. Dollar versus Euro"

It's in the Atlantic Review, a Berlin-based digest on transatlantic affairs, and based on excerpts from articles in The Economist, other sources.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:06 AM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2006

Clients in 3-D

See Michelle Golden's post "Visit Your Clients".

Posted by JD Hull at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)

Associate Reviews: "Dude, if you can't steal our clients, you're fired."

There are lots of suggestions out there on standards, guidelines and take-aways for year-end associate reviews. Two are (a) letting staff evaluate co-workers and partners on specific inter-office skills in writing, and (b) reviews of staff based on specific client service standards which ALL employees must buy into (i.e., pay increase for well done client service; hit the road, for the unwilling, clueless).

Here's another one--and it's been my firm's for over ten years. But first, expand your mind for a brief moment and pretend that you're NOT a lawyer, accountant, MD, broker, consultant, salesperson, retail clerk, Alaskan fly-fishing guide, or other alleged service-provider (it's most people that work in any job these days!), that you are passionate about what you do, that you love your clients and customers, and that you want more of that business and income stream.

Ready?

Every day, the client service by associate and paralegals should be good enough to permit those employees to actually steal any client, and take them to another law firm (use "transport" for the foregoing, if you need the PC professional services term), if they were to leave your shop tomorrow morning.

Period.

Fact: that's what we want at our firm, and that's what we tell associates.

If you are not, in effect, willing to go that far with your own employees in instituting and daily demanding client service, you are neither confident about client loyalty (not to mention employee loyalty) nor really serious about delivering outrageous client service to your clients. A true client service culture has to be that "extreme". So folks, let "them that can" whisk those clients out of your firm with a phone call or two; after all, that's only fair to the clients, if they so decide. If you find this idea preposterous, radical or just too disturbing, please think very hard about what you are really doing at your firm, and your real commitment, to build and lead a true client service culture.

At your shop, is "client service" just drinks-and-dinner b.s. for the clients, and website-and-brochure lip service for the public? Or is it real?

And wouldn't it be wonderful if the service were that good, and the atmosphere at your firm fun, lucrative and engaging enough that those employees just had to stay?

Posted by JD Hull at 09:16 PM | Comments (0)

In the Holiday Season, all creatures, even Legalese, are tolerated, loved.

With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore. From Singapore Law Blog: "Whereas, on or about the night prior to Christmas, there did occur at a certain improved piece of real property (hereinafter "the House") a general lack of stirring by all creatures therein, including, but not limited to a mouse." And then...

Posted by JD Hull at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2006

Serious Suggestions for 2007

1. Republicans: Bring back Don Rumsfeld. He's enormously talented, a national treasure, maybe indispensable. He's not evil, or a knee-jerk partisan; he correctly gets that civil rights are different in a war, and just needs to clean up his act a bit. He is a different breed than Cheney, Rice or Wolfowitz and has loads more real character and strength than Colin Powell. (Take a good look, too. Rummy "is us"--like him or not.) Forget about his age. He's too smart to waste, not ready for retirement.

2. Democrats: Consider a Joe Biden-Hillary Clinton ticket in 2008. It might work, if Senator Biden can get past certain old baggage with the voters. Hillary Rodham Clinton can't win--maybe not ever, but certainly not in 2008--and Biden has that Bill Clinton/President Bush-esque gift of connection with voters that HRC lacks and will continue to lack. A natural politician, Joe Biden actually likes other people, and it shows.

3. Consider a system of nationwide reciprocity in lawyer licensing. Let NY counsel freely invade CA if they need to to work there for longstanding clients as long as they agree to CA bar discipline.

4. Take a stand. Discourage "required" gender-neutral speech. Enough is enough. Let nature take its course. Words come into the arsenal of real English when they are ready. Quit forcing the issue. Resist "chairperson".

5. In the alternative, set aside a "required" day where everyone must smoke, smoke heavily, and smoke Camel non-filters.

6. In the alternative, set aside a day in the workplace on which everyone must talk to one another like Elvis ("thankyouvirymutch, for that e-mail, little honeys..."). And on that day, flirt in the workplace--and openly. Refuse to be a Dweeb.

7. Work very hard at anything you care about. Plan. Pray. And...swear and curse more--but only at work, and only on the record. More Howard, less Conan, less Rosie. More Parker Posey, less anyone named Brittany, Justin or other Gen X names. More Annabeth Gish. More Ellen Bry. Everyone in U.S. must acknowledge in writing that the simplest woman is 10 times more complex than any man.

8. Joking about any client is now a firing offense.

9. Stop Political and Cultural Stereotyping--and other Drive-By Cartoon-ings.

If you are a Democrat, please talk--really talk--to a Republican. And vice versa. Humans are complex and have all manner of reasons for voting or thinking the way they do. Resist the temptation to reduce people to political stereotypes in order to feel warm, fuzzy and self-righteous about your own ferverently-held beliefs, choices and situation. Be fairer. We all fall short here--even international and ecumenical WAC?, on his best day, harbors unfair prejudices and misapprehensions. Its smartest, best-read and best-travelled GOP and Dem friends do, too.

And the most gifted Americans also screw this one up royally, by conveniently reducing people with whom they disagree to cartoons and stock characters from bad morality plays. This past year one of my client reps, Julie McGuire (of Hull McGuire) and I had dinner with a wonderful and engaging poet and Pulitzer Prize winner. As he admitted, and movingly confessed, he was insular and isolated with other writers, academics and friends at Princeton and at his other home in Paris to a degree that my law partner Julie McGuire, was "the first Republican" he had talked with in many, many years. He seemed genuinely shocked (1) that he liked Julie, (2) that she was first in her class at Carnegie-Mellon in Mathematics and Business before entering law school (in which she was also first in her class), (3) that she had ever read James Joyce and (4) that she is both religious and spiritual, and very kind. Republicans, he had always felt, must be shallow, insensitive, patriotic in a goofy way, way dumb and just plain mean.

That, ladies and gentleman, is cultural insanity. And we are all doing it this decade in some degree. Americans are smarter than that. The culture war in America has become a drug too many of us need to feel Moral, Part of The Correct Sub-Tribe, and Right. Being Right is expensive, and will stunt your growth. Avoid contempt prior to investigation. Stop turning one another into silly Sci-Fi monsters-that-never-were. If you are a "D", start with George Bush, one of our most "American"--the good stuff/the bad stuff, warts and all--presidents ever (like Rumsfeld, Bush is us.) If you are an "R", re-evaluate Wild Bill Clinton, a visionary, inspirational and at heart a genuinely pro-people guy who, like Rummy, was damn funny and fun with reporters. Talent is talent--and none of these guys are Vlad the Impaler, Dr. Evil or Bugs Bunny. They trim Christmas trees, have dinner with family, play saxophones and drink beer in the Boom-Boom Room at the Westin like the rest of us.

10. Finally, and more importantly, Do Grow. Have a difficult but worthwhile relationshp. Read Hunter Thompson, and Francois Villon. Travel. Talk to people who aren't like you at all. Leave a legacy. Be original in some productive way. And at least play your old Yardbirds, John Mayall, Byrds and Kinks albums. Loud.

But get out of your cars and dance. Have a great 2007.


Posted by JD Hull at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)

Are book agents spoiled, lazy vultures with staffs from Hell?

Query: Does anyone know a reputable and skilled business book agent with even the crudest of: manners, organizational skills, and instinct for the Client as an Asset?

Forget all the unkind, if accurate, things I have said about my client service-challenged fellow corporate lawyers recently--well, at least for the weekend. And color me naive. Three business book agents with good reputations--WAC? is seriously considering naming all 3 in a future post, and to hell with the consequences--are showing interest in a WAC? book proposal. WAC? was/is quite willing to become a humble and eager student of the difficult business of developing, marketing and publishing a book. It's hard to find a good literary agent. I never expected Easy--and I heard and read that most good agents were the new royalty, and treated first-time book writers like troublesome peasants, servants or turds. But be patient with the process, I was told. They are busy and get all manner of queries and proposals, many of them terrible, from misguided or full-of-themselves writers. And do listen to what they say.

I had no illusions. The Student was ready.

And apparently, I lucked out, in my first time out. So, as the proverb goes, the Teacher(s) (i.e., agents) started to appear--but none of them are quite "all there". They are 10 times worse than I had been told and read. To summarize, none of the agencies or agents have any people or business skills, two appear to be mildly retarded, and one is clearly flat-out insane. They keep losing things--and the things these cretins lose are my things. They have unhappy robot office staff from Hell. The are like third-tier "customer satisfaction" employees at a utility or insurance company--phony, dumb, mean and 100% cartoon.

My would-be agents say they want to help me develop a book on 'client service', and 'building and leading service cultures'....but how could I ever let them any of them help develop such a book--unless my own hypocrisies suddenly had no bounds? Sure, these people are nuts--but so am I for letting them in on a project which, due to their own dysfunctional business cultures, they could never be expected to understand without a serious 28-day client service rehab/charm school and the latest in "pro-client" medications. If they can't treat the neophyte Client-Writer as an Asset, how could they ever really buy into a book on "Client Service in the new global services economy"?

I feel stupid. And I am done, for now, with these miserable, spaced-out screw-ups. Guys, you win, I lose--but please go away.

And give me back my stuff.

Posted by JD Hull at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

Mercy! Them Eighty-Eights at BR #88...

Who has ever argued with Music and won? Well, the moment of truth has finally come, at David Harlow's HealthBlawg. Welcome to Blawg Review #88, " where you can sit back while some of the masters of the form tickle the ivories".

Posted by JD Hull at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)

Industry-Based Practice Groups

Tom Kane at Legal Marketing Blog is reading WAC?'s mind these days--and gives a suggestion which my firm will institute at the beginning of next year, starting with our firm's practice for clients in the automotive, steel, manufacturing and energy industries. See "Form Industry-based Practice Groups". Clients want you to know their business, their industry.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)