« December 31, 2006 - January 06, 2007 | Main | January 14, 2007 - January 20, 2007 »

January 13, 2007

So how does your office hit your clients?

"How your office looks to your customers" is not a pedestrian subject. Your firm's offices, especially the part the client sees and hears in the first 60 seconds after arrival, says a lot about your firm. And we are so used to seeing the commons areas of our firms that we never see them as the client does. We don't see changes, oddities, signals of disorganization and chaos; the client always does, right down to the magazines you lay out, what they're about and how old they are. We need to think about this stuff. See Ann Macaulay's "Making Your Law Office Client-Friendly" at the Canadian Bar Association's Client Services CBA Practice Link.

Update 1/12/07: Don't miss Michelle Golden's recent fabulous post on the same topic. Looks like my fellow Midwesterner Michelle has a telepathic effect on this blog.

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

Kid from Brooklyn on Human Rights, 2nd Amendment.

Here. Open windows, turn up speakers, earplug the kids.

Posted by JD Hull at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2007

More Irish Guys

"With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?"

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900) had a rare mind, wrote well, lived too short a life, and was one of those people who give humans a good name. He had mega-talent, moxie and a good heart. Years ago, I visted the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris to see the graves of Jim Morrison, Richard Wright, Chopin and others and learned that Wilde was there, too.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2007

Appreciated: "The Endurance".

A bit late on this post, but still wanting to get in my two cents because I liked Julie Fleming Brown's idea and invitation to participate, I appreciate the lawyer who practices law day in and day out for years with the same joy, enthusiasm and dedication of a young lawyer 5 years out of law school and just begininng to "get it right". It's the religion of unrelenting good habit, and a kind of endurance: one as important as faith, fact, or love.

Posted by JD Hull at 09:06 PM | Comments (0)

January 08, 2007

A Big Mind: Ray Ward's Blawg Review #90

For today, and maybe tomorrow, WAC? takes back some of the things it regularly laments about lawyers often being inherently anti-client, risk-averse and uncreative weenies, slugs and "robot pimps" (remember the latter expression from the movie The Paper Chase?). Sanely, Blawg Review has chosen New Orleans' Ray Ward to host a Colors of Carnival for this week's edition. Like the mystical Big Easy itself, Ray is a man of many parts, a rainbow of sensibilities. So BR #90 is for the Whole Goddamn Person--body, mind, soul, timesheet. Visit Ray at Minor Wisdom and inhale this one as you start the week.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)

City of Angels

Los Angeles is an acquired taste, and one that stays with you. I'm here a lot, both business and pleasure--in a way it's too bad that out of ignorance 9 years ago I chose San Diego over LA as a place from which to service business clients in Southern California. Like me, LA is East coast at heart. Drive, confidence, a little flair, and even oddity, are more than okay here. You are always selling; don't hide your light, dude. In law and entertainment, LA is a complicated meritocracy of the hugest of egos and Super-talent from everywhere. It's nearly impossible to be "inappropriate". People swear wonderfully here, mainly as a way to vent or for comic relief. Watch an LA professional blow a tube and you'll hear passionate, funny and artfully profane rants you can't hear in Indianapolis, Columbus, or even DC.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)