« January 18, 2009 - January 24, 2009 | Main | February 01, 2009 - February 07, 2009 »
January 31, 2009
The Real Paris
Lots of large international cities have mimes, street people and street theater. But if you live for a long while in DC or Paris, and then you move, you sense something special is missing. You don't know what. One day you're at lunch and you think: "Wait a minute. There's not even one demonstration every day in downtown Louisville?" See at ParisDailyPhoto "Capitalism: The French Nightmare" via The Paris Blog. Eric of ParisDailyPhoto writes:
There were several big demonstrations in France today and the largest one, as always, took place in Paris. It ended up at the Opera house where I took this photo. I thought it was pretty funny to take an anti-capitalist billboard in front of two shiny adverts for Rolex and Commerzbank in the background! FYI, the billboard roughly says: 'Unrestricted capitalism equals people in danger'.
That's what I'm talking about.
ParisDailyPhoto
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (2)
Staffs that work.
See at Lawyers USA the article "Are You Overlooking Your Best Marketing Tool?" by lawyer-editor Sylvia Hsieh. It's about making your employees customer and client-centric. Which is, of course, easier said than done. Unfortunately, even at well-meaning businesses, the claim that "customer focus informs our every thought and action" doesn't last longer than a couple of days. It is quickly relegated to gimmicky feel-good website language at most companies, hotels, stores, shops, fruit stands and brothels on this planet.
The reason: Client service is very hard, and most businesses don't even know it. So they don't build it, they don't work hard at keeping and improving it, and they don't enforce it.
However, the Lawyers USA piece does hold out hope for building disciplined client service cultures at professional firms. It features: (1) some great advice from real pros, like Tom Kane and Ed Poll, (2) a few new but practical ideas, and (3) a creepy law partner who summarily fires associates who don't buy into client service 24/7. Some people. But Ms. Hsieh's article is fine instruction for managing partners, and new lawyers just starting out. Just a few mixed excerpts:
Written policies and training are a starting point.
This message should come across as early as the hiring process.
He [the partner] bluntly tells everyone in the firm the rules are not a gimmick and anyone who doesn't buy into them will be fired.
And he has followed through on that promise, such as when he fired an employee on the spot for refusing to take a phone call from a client over a weekend when both partners were out of town.
Employees at his firm know they will be evaluated based on their customer service skills and are encouraged to evaluate the partners on the same.
Another policy that [the partner interviewed] instituted at his firm to involve staff is that every person who works on a project for a client, including the paralegal and secretary, knows what the client is being billed.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2009
The Midwest: Toughen up, bundle up, tap your brakes.
Is that Exit 44A, or a new footpath to Springfield? You live too long in Southern California, you get too soft; too much time in New York City, you get too tough. A famous Indianapolis-born writer--the brand of eccentric you get only from America's Heartland--once said that.
This week: Detroit, and then Columbus and Dayton for driving. The weather gets worse at every venue. On an IP mission here, and can't figure out the heating system in the rental car. You get annoyed that the car's heat is not working, then you realize that's all the heat there is. Been a long time since you worried about your windshield wiper fluid cache. Speaking of icy southern Ohio, IP missions and frozen markets, Cincinnati's always-excellent Patent Baristas has this one from earlier in the week: "Patent Law: Global Economic Slowdown Edition".
Hull McGuire's recent cut-back on travel expenses was offset by significant upgrades in its Pittsburgh staff. At a rest stop, a new hire surveys a snowy Ohio field. (Photo: Chicago Tribune)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Nino Does Duke.
But can he do that reverse pretzel thing? Alumni and students alike speak of "The Duke Experience" in reverent and hushed tones. And Justice Scalia, whether you love him or not, has Moxie. So can we get that smooth little genius to do a pole dance in downtown Durham over at the Re-Lax Parlor? When I lived all those years on East Capitol, Scalia and I used to pass each other on The Mall while jogging. He stays in pretty good shape. See Duke Daily Chronicle: "Justice Scalia Pays Visit to School of Law". Excerpt:
Scalia responded with humor to one question concerning the free speech of exotic dancing.
"I like it," he joked, adding that it does not fall under the protection of the First Amendment. "I draw a line there, I don't think that means communication."
Posted by JD Hull at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)
Amazon: In the Zone.
And how nice for you. Americans do "small" pretty well; we've raised it to an art form in some circles and regions. But certainly we are more attractive when we enter the No Schadenfreude Zone. Amazon, the nation's largest online retailer, is doing quite well, thank you, according to the The Seattle Times late yesterday:
NEW YORK — Amazon.com Inc. said Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit rose 9 percent and easily surpassed analysts' forecasts. Those results, plus an optimistic forecast, sent its shares soaring 13 percent in extended trading.
Amazon had called the holiday season its "best ever," and the earnings report backed up the idea that the online retailer is not being seriously hurt by cutbacks in consumer spending. Amazon said its revenue in the current quarter should be between $4.53 billion and $4.93 billion, while analysts are expecting $4.57 billion. [more]
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2009
Hesse's main point.
Ah, but it is hard to find this track of the divine in the midst of this life we lead...
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (1927)
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Jim Hassett on alternative fees--Part 4.
Now we know it really won't go away. At his Legal Business Development, Jim Hassett just published Part 4 of his series on alternative fees, where he's done a fine job of summarizing the players, views and "literature" in The Movement. See this week's installment "Why Every Lawyer Needs To Consider Alternative Fees Now".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)
Bolivia: The new deal or a race war?
Here's one we missed in The Economist earlier this week: "A Question of Rights". Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, is an Amerindian and socialist who is now in his fourth year. Last week voters passed a referendum he pushed for a new Bolivian constitution that give the majority indigenous population special land, mineral and petroleum rights. The new constitution has further polarized Bolivians along class and racial lines.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)
So, tell me again, what do we do now?
Service Firms, and The Way-Down Global Economy. Some advice, with great related links, from people who think about this stuff all the time (so you don't have to). They were thinking about it all along. You can hire them, too.
Ed Poll: "Three Lenses for Law Firm Recession Survival" (9/16/08)
Jim Hassett: "The First Thing Lawyers Should Do In A Recession" (1/30/08)
Dennis Kennedy: "Planning for Legal Technology in a Recession" (1/22/08)
Tom Kane: "Time to Get Closer to Clients" (9/25/08)
Bruce MacEwen: "Costs & Revenues: Health Check Time" (9/5/08)
The prescient Larry Bodine: "Get Ready for the Coming Recession" (8/26/07)
Jennifer E. King: "Marketing Your Firm’s Legal Services During an Economic Decline" (2008 LexisNexis white paper)
And finally, Chicago trial-lawyer, thinker and value architect Patrick J. Lamb: Read Anything Pat writes these days.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
January 28, 2009
The Economy: Mr. Obama goes to Capitol Hill.
In The Hill, see "Praise for Obama, Not Votes".
In the Senate, the new president was peppered with questions about the proposal [economic stimulus package], with GOP senators pressing him to reconsider the package’s $825 billion price tag and to keep the stimulus focused on the housing and financial markets. Obama was also asked to consider helping the housing market with the second half of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)
The subject that won't die: alternative fees.
And you can't ignore it. Thought leaders like Ron Baker, Pat Lamb, Tom Kane and now law firm leaders won't let the topic go way. See, for example, Kane's "Now Is The Time To Consider Alternative Fees". Because of its flexibility in the hands of client-centric lawyers, WAC? still likes the Billable Hour--even though many (if not most) lawyers abuse it out the wazoo. The problem, as we see it, is not the Timesheet, and it never was. Law is now both a trust-based profession and a business. No single system can make that built-in conflict go away. Only individual client-lawyer relationships can. We support any system that aligns as closely as possible the interests of clients and outside counsel. Hourly billing can do that. Alternative fees--value-based, hybrids, whatever you devise--can do it, too. Hey, we're still listening.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 08:30 AM | Comments (1)
John Hoyer Updike (1932-2009)
That something-is-missing in the suburbs was one of his great themes, and no one did that better. Although I liked his Bech character (and alter-ego) the best, the Rabbit books made him famous. None of us growing up in the 1960s and 1970s wanted to end up like Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the reluctant small town family man who made choices in life that hardened around him quickly. Updike won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice, both for "Rabbit" books. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, who for decades has done great work covering other writers, has this article in the New York Times, via the International Herald Tribune.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:30 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2009
Energy and the Environment: 'Real science' in DC?
"Obama needs to pass in 2009 the mother of all energy bills." In the yours-in-the-struggle but generally excellent Salon, see "Real Science Comes to Washington", by Joseph Romm, Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Romm is author of Hell and High Water: Global Warming--The Solution and the Politics.
Obama must begin high-level bilateral negotiations with China (or trilateral negotiations that include the European Union) to get a national commitment from the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter to cap their emissions no later than 2020. Such a deal would presumably be contingent on U.S. action, but would enable a much stronger domestic climate bill.
We simply can't solve the climate problem without Chinese action. And absent Chinese action in the next decade, the developed countries could never sustain the price for carbon dioxide needed to achieve meaningful reductions.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
China Business: What about Dan Harris?
At Dan's China Law Blog, see "Is Your China Business Recession Resistant? What Is?" Excerpt:
My firm has seen increased business of late from companies related to energy and fuel savings, food companies, gaming companies, health care companies, education related companies, and, (no surprise here) collection companies. All of these companies seem to have relatively stable (or even rising) income flows and they are seeking to expand in China or take advantage of China cost savings.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2009
Amsterdam has a bit of everything.
Art, religious art, not-religious art, the Anne Frank House (moving, authentic and not to be missed), religion, not-religion, sex for pay, sex as play, a wonderful absence of jackass Western "moral certitude", happy people, The Sex Museum, a truly international atmosphere, real global business, real lawyers, real tall blonde women who speak English way better than you, Jack. Even "soft" drugs. Whoa. And dang.
After ditching the Americans he was with ("they traveled together through Europe in a self-imposed Yank Bubble to make 100% sure they wouldn't learn anything"), WAC?'s main writer, by then a Tea-Totaler on all chemical fronts, first visited the Betty Boop Coffeeshop on an early September morning in 1992, and really did think the place was just about the coffee. Which it is, mainly, sort of. It's still there. And it's still a good place to hide from Americans. Ask for Ellen. Or a guy named "Space". Boop-boopee-doop.
Special note if you are traveling with your 79-year-old Aunt Nina from Sioux City and need a cup of Joe: "In Amsterdam, coffee shop means a place where cannabis is openly sold and smoked, while only café means a coffee and tea drinking place." --Amsterdam.info
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)