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May 12, 2007
Hermann the German does Naples, Florida.
In addition to excellent customer service, great lawyering and the sheer fun of quietly and systematically taking higher-end business clients away from much larger law firms, What About Clients? focuses on doing business all over the world. Obviously, we like both U.S. and non-U.S. blogs on business, law, politics and foreign policy. However, the Berlin-based Observing Hermann...(cryptically subtitled "Hermann the German. And an amnesic American lost in Berlin.") is one of the few non-legal/non-business/non-policy blogs listed on the lower left of WAC? in our Directory of Non-U.S. Blogs. The reason: Hermann the German is one very rare human. He's funny, demented and smart--and, when in the right mood, he can write. See his post of Wednesday called "Shark Grossed Out Biting Into Old German Leg".
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2007
Blair out--Brown likely in. And then what?
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in many ways a politician as controversial in the UK as Bill Clinton has been in America, has announced he's stepping down on June 27. Do consult with WAC?'s London friend Charon QC on this change in leadership in
Au revoir, Sayonara, Ciao…Auf Wiedersehen, subtitled "Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a goner. He has abdicated". We also note that barrister-pundit GeekLawyer, who with co-writer Ruthie has organized the first UK Legal Blogging Conference on May 18, has published the similarly sentimental and touching "Victory in England Day".
So Chancellor Gordon Brown waits in the wings. Brown is widely to expected to emerge as the Labour Party's new leader and become the new prime minister--but there's lots of uncertainty about what kind of PM he'd be. For conventional news coverage, see from the BBC "What Is Brown Likely To Do As PM?"
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2007
Pat Lamb: King Billable Hour and European GCs
I love the discrepancy between inside and outside counsel on the issue of whether billable hour targets encourage padding. For only half of outside counsel to acknowledge the obvious suggests supreme disingenuity or that many outside lawyers in Europe live in Fantasy Land.
The Blogfather is on a roll. Over at In Search of Perfect Client Service, and since May 2, Chicago trial lawyer and consultant Patrick Lamb has had no less than four (4) great short pieces on the billable hour. The last two were "Time Sheets and Buggy Whips" and this one (quoted in part above) where he showcases views of European in-house counsel on their outside firms.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2007
Redux: In Praise of Structure
For a long time I've thought that American business schools and the training programs of global and often publicly-traded companies do a much, much better job than do law firms of training recruits to value and adhere to the structure of a plan on an item for action.
Do we lawyers know how to get things done, done right and done on time? Do we even value that? I wonder.
I am not talking here about the simple "keeping face" and survival requirements of meeting client deal or court deadlines, or even about the cliches of working hard, creative thinking, "out of the box", working smart or being persistent. I mean structure, a real standard, and "practicing structure" every day--the discipline of (1) having a plan or strategy for any one project, client or non-client, (2) meeting internal project deadlines no matter what, and (3) applying the will to work that plan and timetable.
"Structure" is not just the hard process of getting things done. It's a frame of mind and a value which must be sold to others in your shop--like the importance of making that 5 minute call to a client about a loose end at the end of the worst day you can remember, even while you could do it the next morning at 8:00. It's realizing that letting anything but emergency tasks "slide" makes you inefficient, unlikely to meet your real goals, and tired.
Do you get up early every day with a idea of what needs to be done on each project, and knowing the difference between "important" and "urgent"? Example: Monday is your deadline to have the final changes and notes to your web designer on your new firm website, an important but not urgent project you've talked about at internal meetings for months. So far, for once, you have been on track. But on Monday a longstanding client calls with two new projects; the new projects are exciting but not THAT urgent in the sense they need to cut into internal deadlines and other goals for Monday. You need to take some first steps, though, to get on top of the new matters for your client. After all, these folks are the main event.
Key ongoing internal project v. new client project. Which gets the most attention that day? Which slides? Answer: they both get attention, and neither slides. The website (long-term important) and the new client project (short-term important) are both critical projects. Years ago the Stephen Coveys and Edwards Demings out there pointed out that business people burn themselves out by waiting around only for "the urgent" in a kind of manic crisis management that keeps other important things from ever getting done or ONLY getting them done when they morph into a crisis. For lawyers, other examples would be only respecting deadlines like transaction closing dates and court-filing deadlines--to hell with everything else.
For a long time I've thought that American business schools and the training programs of global and often publicly-traded companies do a much, much better job than do law firms of training recruits to value and adhere to the structure of a plan on an item for action. It's almost as if law school and firms deem us all such "professionals" and "artists" that we are beyond learning skills of project planning and execution. What a crock. Not learning the value of pushing non-urgent but important things along at a steady pace has cost us dearly. As motivated as lawyers often are, our discipline for sticking to anything and seeing it through is often poor; again, unless it's urgent, we just don't see its value. Do our best clients run their businesses that way?
This attitude is the norm, and we lawyers--who rarely innovate or take a leadership position on anything in commerce--are just fine, thank you, with it. After all, "all the other law firms" are mediocre on the discipline of getting things done, and have "crisis-only" mentalities--why shouldn't we be that way? So we waste time blowing off important but longer term projects. Worst of all, we send to others in our firms, and especially to younger lawyers, the message: "No worries--just work on a barely adequate level; don't do things until you have to; and if it's not urgent, let it slide." As with client care and service, our standard is not only embarrassingly low, we are exporting that low standard internally whenever and wherever we can.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:21 PM | Comments (1)
May 07, 2007
Professor Kingsfield Returns To Blawg Review
Young man, here's a quarter; call your mother. Tell her you definitely have decided not to become a lawyer.
Law school is over for most of us--and over for many American law students, if only for a few months, as another semester draws to a close. But legal life is difficult, and even cruel. Just as we all begin to recover from his ego-deflating questioning in October at Blawg Review #80, Professor Kingsfield is back, and he is this week's host at Blawg Review #107.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2007
Kane: Mid-sized firms v. big firms
On one of our favorite subjects, Tom Kane at Legal Marketing Blog has "Mid-sized and Small Firms Can Compete With BigLaw." He also follows up on the disturbing BTI Consulting Group, Inc. study released last year, concluding that a sizable majority of U.S. general counsel at bigger companies were not happy with their law firms.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)