« January 28, 2007 - February 03, 2007 | Main | February 11, 2007 - February 17, 2007 »
February 10, 2007
Of Rioja, Drinking and Snow.
London's Charon QC (Mike Semple Piggot) is for Saturdays. Soon, I'll make a couple of trips to London--a good town for serious topers of all nationalities. These days, I let Mike and a few mainly English and Welsh friends do my drinking for me. But, when I did drink, I often ran amok in the snow. Here are two recent Charon posts: "Rioja is good for you", and "And it came to pass...the plague of snows...".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Tom Kane: Stop Procrastinating - Fire Those Bad Clients
Here.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2007
An evolving new rejoinder to beefs about imperfect client service?
Re: chilling effect on complaints about mediocre, lame and/or bad lawyering or "Well, dang, we weren't that bad--so we'd like $1 million, dirtbags." See at Overlawyered "Chew out your lawyers, get sued for defamation". Apparently, in the NY state case, the qualified privilege--which the Manhattan trial court insisted was "absolute" instead (WAC? questions that, but it's a good result)--won the day. Still, whoa.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2007
Get off your knees: "Law Firm Pay Rates And The Domino Effect"
"We want to attract and retain excellent lawyers." Blank Rome, Philadelphia, USA
See the article at Law Fuel--The Law News Network re: starting associate salaries between $135,000 and $160,000. I'll give the NYC white shoe firms a pass on this; NYC is expensive, especially if one values the pleasures of the flesh it offers, so what the hell. And, folks, I get competition and place-holding for talent. But, dudes, you ever hear of the "value movement"--which my firm started a few years ago. We pay first-years well, very well, and anyone with the credentials, a work ethic, real class and a passion to learn things the right way can go to www.hullmcguire.com/recruit.htm and take a shot......but $135,000 for brilliant kids who are marginally productive for 3 years and will get way more from you than they will ever give back in those years? Get off your knees, be part of a solution, start acting like business people, and do yourselves, the associates, me and your clients a favor: cut it out. Your associates (and partners) think you guys are chumps. Stop it. They'll respect you more and still sign up if you promise to teach them how to be great lawyers.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:06 AM | Comments (1)
February 06, 2007
"Joe, me Mariko...me love you long time"
Not. Recently I met a well-known and beautiful Asian-American journalist on an airplane, tried to get her to talk to me like that--but she caught on, smiled patiently, wouldn't take the bait... Anyway, the point is that Mariko and Nigel and Hans and Vlad and Sasha "no love Joe" since the Spring of 2003--when the US invaded Iraq. And coincidentally when I started 3 months of travel in western Europe--from London and Ipswich to Prague and Budapest and several cities in between.
I started that year to learn suprising things about the nature of anti-Americanism: where it does and doesn't flourish in Europe floored me. E.g., our educated French cousins "like" and tolerate America way more these days than do our hand-wringing British kin. Brits think that, as a nation, we have gone and remain hopelessly insane. Over at the Berlin-based Atlantic Review, the press digest edited by 3 German Fulbright alums, see BBC: "World View of US Role Goes From Bad to Worse".
Posted by JD Hull at 09:27 PM | Comments (0)
February 05, 2007
Diane Levin's "Mediation Channel": Blawg Review #94
If you want to see both exemplary blawging and a great ad for blogging all around, see Diane Levin's "Mediation Channel" Blawg Review #94, collecting last week's best posts. A Boston lawyer and mediator, Diane Levin publishes Online Guide to Mediation. Diane's been a model for me and many others who blog/blawg and, like WAC?, she seeks to reach bloggers, lawyers and business people outside of the often-insular U.S. She's thoughtful, skillful, outspoken and (gulp) fun.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
Redux: Deming's 14 Points
W. Edwards Deming, who died in 1993, was a statistician and consultant credited with the rise of Japan as a manufacturing power, revitalizing the Total Quality Management (TQM) movement and creating interest in management systems of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). In 1982, he published his 14 points so that American business could effectively compete in the new global marketplace. The 14 points can apply to a law firm delivering services as well as to a multi-national manufacturing company selling products world-wide. And they can certainly apply to the operations of a law firm's business clients:
1. Create constancy of purpose for the improvement of product and service with the aim to become competitive, stay in business, and provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy of cooperation (win-win) in which everybody wins. Put it into practice and teach it to employees, customers, and suppliers.
3. Cease dependence on mass inspection to achieve quality. Improve the process and build quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone. Instead, minimize total cost in the long run. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production, service, planning, or any activity. This will improve quality and productivity and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training for skills.
7. Adopt and institute leadership for the management of people, recognizing their different abilities, capabilities, and aspiration. The aim of leadership should be to help people, machines, and gadgets do a better job. Leadership of management is in need of overhaul, as well as leadership of production workers.
8. Drive out fear and build trust so that everyone can work effectively.
9. Break down barriers between departments. Abolish competition and build a win-win system of cooperation within the organization. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team to foresee problems of production and in use that might be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets asking for zero defects or new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11. Eliminate numerical goals, numerical quotas and management by objectives. Substitute leadership.
12. Remove barriers that rob people of joy in their work. This will mean abolishing the annual rating or merit system that ranks people and creates competition and conflict.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)
Luntz's Words That Work: Orwellian, Machiavellian or just a tool?
It's likely all three and I am going to buy it. It appears to be a book for anyone who pitches and persuades. Republican consultant and pollster Frank Luntz has written Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear, which is already controversial (see here, here , here, and here) on the power of words. But it's not a "Republican" book. Luntz advises politicians on the language they should use to win elections and promote their policies. Luntz is all over the media--and there's no stopping him. So far the book sounds worthwhile--even when the detractors sound off.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2007
"Get lean, get talented and hunt BigClients".
Let's review, shall we?
Get off your knees. Stop bottom-feeding. Be a man, or woman.
But be somebody. Now, and in the future, law firm size may matter--but only if at your core you are smaller, agile, muscular and can do most (90%) of the work traditionally done by large law firms (250-3000+ lawyers). And smaller (up to 150) firms, for most GCs on most projects, will be (a) preferred and (b) cool. Bigger firms, for most GCs on most projects, will be (a) suspect and (b) not cool.
So below, per our "usual rant", as the mysterious anonymous all-powerful Editor of Blawg Review once termed it, are 9 WAC? (nine, count 'em) posts over the past few months on why and how you can have BigClients in boutiques or clusters of boutiques(5-150) setting if you have the talent, a true client service culture and the discipline to keep it:
In Praise of Structure (10/30/06)
Real Elitism: Toward Building A Client-Centric Culture (6/10/06)
The 7 Habits of Highly Useless Corporate Lawyers (6/27/06)
SRO: "Stealing and Keeping BigLaw Clients" (7/28/06)
"Give Me Your Tired, Your Rich Abused Fortune 500
Clients." (8/5/06)
Do BigClients need BigLaw more than 10% of the time? (9/22/06)
Work-life balance is a dumb-ass issue. (10/20/06)
GCs: Do you really want Big, Clumsy & Unresponsive in 50 cities worldwide? (10/21/06)
And: "Clientwork": The 12 Rules Of Client Service (4/3/06)
Posted by JD Hull at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)
NYC, Venice and Sargent's Venice
John Singer Sargent's (1856-1925) "Venice", which Sargent loved and painted passionately, is still at the Adelson Galleries on 19 East 82nd Street. "Sargent's Venice" stays until March 3. If you are going to Italy this year, the exhibition will be at Museo Correr, in St. Mark's Square in Venice, March 24 through July 22, 2007.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:59 PM | Comments (0)
46 nations support France’s appeal for a new global EPA
The French do have a long history of embracing correct, civilized and humanitarian ideas. From the Associated Press, see Climate Report Builds Support for World Body. Chirac: "a borderless world".
Posted by JD Hull at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)