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September 05, 2008
Kent to Zürich--and Zürich answers.
I took two days off in Kent with London lawyers, and near Albion's white cliffs, in part to recover from my Monday Mayfair meeting with GeekLawyer: a gentleman, IP scholar, barrister and genuine werewolf. And today is Zürich, first established as a Roman customs post, and now a truly global city. I'm here with lawyers from firms in 35 countries or so to talk about the main event: Clients.
Clients. Remember them?
1. What are law firm partners and associates doing for clients these days, anyway?
2. Are law firms days structured economically, and in talent and human resources, to solve client problems--or just add to them?
3. Are we delivering services using models that are fair to clients?
4. Are we charging for training when we shouldn't be?
5. Are the even best clients getting shortchanged on real value when they don't need to be?
6. Is current corporate lawyering really client-oriented and customer-focused--or just a big-ass ruse?
7. And, for fun, perhaps for the Irish and Welsh members: why is Keith Richards still alive, anyway?
(But we're serious, when we think through delivering value to clients. The only Rule: we can be irreverent about anything else.)
Posted by JD Hull at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2008
Rule Two: The Client Is The Main Event
The second in our series The 12 Rules of Client Service. Rule Two is here from November, 2005.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)
Man of Kent, or a Kentish Man?
As with London, and with the County of Suffolk to the north, from where my mother's family came to Massachusetts via Ipswich 373 years ago, I am completely and hopelessly in love with Kent, mainly the "eastern" part. The County of Kent is the southeastern doorway to the British Isles--it has even more history, legend and myth than London. Lots, and maybe even too much, has happened here during the past 2500 years...
Eventually, in 51 BC, Julius Caesar called it Cantium, as home of the Cantiaci. Augustine founded what became the Anglican Church here in about 600 AD. And of course Thomas Becket, Chaucer's "holy blissful martyr", was killed here (Canterbury) in 1170. I stay with lawyer friends in a tiny and ancient rural village I've visited before--during a visit not long ago, I helped Jane and Michael destroy and begin to re-build their home's 300+ year old fireplace. They live near Canterbury, in what is traditionally East Kent; therefore, I'm among the "Men of Kent" and "Maids of Kent".
Posted by JD Hull at 06:33 PM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2008
The GOP's other Storm: Sarah Palin
Sin in Alaska. John McCain has got Big Ones picking her. And she's a robo-babe. Bravo. But often-conservative WAC? thinks her 17-year-old kid Bristol's pregnancy underscores the danger of (1) not checking closely enough your VP choice (always difficult, we realize: "So, Sarah, any serious mescaline users at the Palin house? Juicers? Flings with Druid-worship?") and, (2) more importantly, the dangerous certitudes of the often-jackass American Christian right. See Los Angeles Times.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2008
An old London labour: law student as critic, lover.
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At Bayswater Road, near Westbourne Gate, not far from Notting Hill, it's not American Labor Day. Brits are working. Me, too. We send you the complete text of a circa-1595 comedy by Shakespeare, here, on one page, to read after the weenie roast. First performed before Queen Elizabeth at her Court in 1597 (as "Loues Labors Loſt"), it was likely written for performance before culturally-literate law students and barristers-in-training--who would appreciate its sophistication and wit--at the Inns of Court or Legal London. Interestingly, it begins with a vow by several men to forswear pleasures of the flesh and the company of fast women during a three-year period of study and reflection. And to "train our intellects to vain delight".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:55 PM | Comments (2)