« June 21, 2009 - June 27, 2009 | Main | July 05, 2009 - July 11, 2009 »
July 03, 2009
More Crossroads: Boomers ask "Who is John Mayer?"
Would prefer a good video/audio of 1968 live version but this--with lame but short introduction--will have to do for this former U.S. national anthem:
Posted by JD Hull at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)
Distinguish your firm. And yourself. Surprise clients.
It's not about the lawyers anymore. No one cares you're a lawyer. No longer impressive. In America, they made it easy to become a lawyer.
Some day, everyone, including your waitress in Richmond, Kentucky, will be a lawyer. And hey she's gaining on you, Jack. So get a head start. Distinguish yourself by serving clients. And get higher standards. Surprise them.
Rule 4: Deliver Legal Work That Change the Way Clients Think About Lawyers. From our Mr. Rogers-esque and annoying-but-accurate 12 Rules. A note about our waitress: Blaise. She attended Oberlin, had to quit twice to make money, graduated, was Coif in law school (night division), made Law Review, and has a Marshall Scholarship.
And a kid. She's a CPA, too. Blaise knows the difference between Whitman, Wordsworth and Whittier. She never feels sorry for herself. She thinks it's a privilege just to work. Blaise the waitress is going to kick your wazoo in the workplace when she gets a job at your firm.
What about your waitress?
Posted by JD Hull at 04:59 AM | Comments (0)
The late-2008 Recession: A Crossroads for Corporate Law?
I'm staying at the crossroads, believe I'm sinking down.
If you can navigate through all the painstaking diplomacy without pulling a hamstring, do visit ALM's Legal Blog Watch and read "Are the BigLaw Layoffs a Good Thing?", and the related links. It was inspired by a provocative and courageous Dan Slater column July 1 at NYT's Deal Book. Note: In writing the op-ed piece, Slater, of course, used his real name. Most of the twenty-five commenters--presumably Cuban dissidents, battered housewives and former Tony Soprano crew in the Witness Protection Program--did not.
"I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees. Asked the Lord above, have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please." Robert Leroy Johnson (1911-1938) used his real name when writing and performing.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:58 AM | Comments (0)
July 01, 2009
Performance Reviews based on CS standards.
At your shop, talk about real client service every single day--as if it were a substantive area of law practice. Make it a running conversation. And if you are serious about building and keeping a "client service culture", you need to underscore it at every performance review.
It's an idea that is here to stay--in this, or any other economy. See "Performance Reviews Based On Client Service Criteria?" Are you serious about all that "client service" stuff on your website?
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Senator Franken: Good enough, smart enough, tough enough.
The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously gives Franken the nod over Norm Coleman. Al Franken got out there and worked his wazoo off for that Senate seat. Congrats, Renaissance man--and welcome to arguably the world's most elite club. Los Angeles Times: "Goshdarnit Al Franken's a Senator". But is putting him on the Senate Judiciary Committee a good thing?
Posted by JD Hull at 06:41 AM | Comments (1)
P.L. 111-22: A Hurdle for Purchasers of Foreclosed Homes.
A bona fide tenant renting a home will be entitled to a 90-day notice before being evicted by the new owner upon foreclosure of the home. On May 19, Congress passed a Senate version of the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act of 2009 (also known as the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009). It was signed by President Obama and took effect the following day, May 20.
The 90-day notice is a minimum requirement; a tenant with additional protections already in place (e.g., "Section 8" tenants) won't lose those existing protections. The Act defines bona fide in such a way as to prevent the prior owner from abusing the requirement by mischaracterizing himself as a tenant.
The notice is relatively simple to execute. And as the Washington Post suggested last week, it may not be slowing down the resale process. Still, it is a hard and fast required step. The Obama administration's summary of the legislation as passed is here. It includes a sunset provision that terminates its requirements on December 31, 2012.
Posted by Rob Bodine at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)
June 30, 2009
Speeding the progress to useful lawyer.
Here's one thought-out solution to the "low value-added" problem associated with starting lawyers. Over the last 18 months, other writers and commentators, in bits here, and pieces there, may have suggested what LOR co-founder Paul Lippe says here--but certainly not as well or as comprehensively. See at the June 22 AmLaw Daily Lippe's article, "Welcome to the Future: Time for Law School 4.0".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Charon QC: Bearing gifts, as always--so take this with you to Nantucket.
Law School for Cretins? WAC? happens to know that he is traveling; we aren't at liberty to say where. While his "anonymity" may have all along been in great jeopardy, if not totally blown, that secret will remain with us. As always, the man's been busy--but has left us plenty of summer reading while he's away. See "Beware of Greeks causing rifts… and other thoughts…"
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Bosphorus Law
See this one by Phil Hodgen at Hodgen Law Group PC, an international tax boutique.
"New" by Ottoman Empire standards, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul was built in the early 1600s. It's one of several mosques in Europe and the Near East known as "Blue Mosque" due to the blue interior tiling.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)
June 29, 2009
Brains on purpose. Change on purpose.
And mediocrity as a choice. People will sigh and tell you "well, people just don't change." Well, they are wrong--and that entire notion is a design for (1) failure, (2) mediocrity, (3) settling and (4) otherwise failing to grow.
All of my life I have seen people change. And change in extraordinary ways. They choose it.
The catch: you must do it yourself. The wonder: you are always doing it anyway. So make it work for you.
Stephanie West Allen floored me in a conference call two months ago when she reminded the group and me that science has us changing our brains on an ongoing basis, whether we like it, or are aware of it, or not. She has two sites: Brains on Purpose and Idealawg. These are both must reads, even for people with limited time.
Any Tom Edisons or Ben Franklins in the house? Another reason to read West Allen is that she is one of the few lawyer-consultants who had steadfastly refused to align herself with the "work-life balance" movement*, now in its death throes amongst those with a modicum of self-respect and ambition. In that regard, see West Allen's enduring article, "Hot Worms and Workaholics: Let the Workers Be!", and this later piece "Hot, Cool and Cold Worms: A Contrarian Look at Work-life Balance and So-called 'Workaholism'".
Even ill-fated Oedipus knew that there are a lot of things you can change. Above: "Oedipus At Colonus", 1798, Fulchran-Jean Harriet (1776-1805), Cleveland Museum of Art.
*Historical Note: Also known as the "work-wank" balance movement" (circa 2003 - May 2009), and seemingly out of an Ayn Rand novel, WWB was devised and promoted primarily by self-loathing American workers who were so depressed about their perceived lack of talent, achievements and future prospects that it became necessary for them to create "work environments" in which they would no longer feel inadequate, underachieving and threatened by those with more energy and moxie. How to accomplish that? According to members of the heroic pro-work, anti-wank Resistance, which had infiltrated secret work-wank cells (operating weekdays 9 to 5), the Movement had planned to make U.S. Doers, Drivers, Inventors, Creators and Producers feel unwelcome and anachronistic in the workplace. The WWB ruse, fortunately, failed, when at the last minute many Yanks--with a timely boost from a lingering late-2008 Recession--woke up and remembered who they really are.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2009
Down but never out in the Andes.
Many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country.
--Aldous Huxley, 1958
Cocaine is patient--and always ready for a comeback. The Economist, a bit jacked up on the subject of drugs lately, has much to say this week about fallen cocaine production in "Mixed Signals Among the Coca Bushes".
Posted by JD Hull at 11:36 PM | Comments (0)