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November 05, 2011

Work is not about You, Jack: What did your Employees do for you this past week?

Clients, Buyers, Customers, Patients, Consumers and The Served are First.

Companies and Organizations are Second.

The Workers (including Management) are Third.

Got that?

It's rarely about The Workers.

"Hi, we're here. Pay us!" The Generic Dweebs you hired?

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Work-Life Balance: Still a Spectacularly Misplaced, Poorly-Framed & Dumb-Ass Idea.

Republished here from our original October 20, 2006 post.

Work-Life Balance is the Employee's responsibility--not Management's. Let people who must work and create do just that. Let's not discourage or punish them with PC nonsense. We need new Franklins, Edisons, Jobses and Gateses.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

November 04, 2011

My Alexandria, Virginia: Old Town's Christ Church.

Apart from women who take care of themselves, lawyers who read more than CLE catalogues and a sizable part of the populace who have traveled to places other than King's Island or Lake Erie, the Washington, D.C. area offers Something Else. It does "old" quite well--and even keeps what few authentic American antiquities there are in this country open to the public and open at night. And that is happening more and more; fewer places are locked up after dark.

I lived in Alexandria--including Old Town, which was part of the District of Columbia from 1791 to 1846--as a student, as an employee of Congress and as a young lawyer. Last night I missed a plane back to California. But I did get the churchyard of Christ Church (completed in 1773) to myself for an hour before heading back to my new and suddenly-acquired hotel on N. Alfred and King streets. Rather than go back into DC, I decided to visit the old neighborhood, at least for a night. I am actually glad this morning that I missed last night's plane.

It was about 11 PM when I got to Christ Church, about 3 blocks from the hotel. I sat on a stone bench. No one, of course, could have come away with a still picture, a video or a soundtrack which captures the grounds, the garden lighting, the occasional faraway noises of a great city finally quieting down, the smells of a fall night, the ancient trees, the white alley cat who adopted me, a very old graveyard that fairly whispers to you, and exterior walls of the ghostly stone sanctuary in which Washington and Robert E. Lee spent quite a few Sundays, and in which even Roosevelt and Churchill prayed together in 1942. You need to go there and sense these things for yourself.

If you don't travel for work, I feel a bit sorry for you. If you do travel regularly, mix it every day/night with something authentic and inspiring from wherever you are and whether or not you are alone. Stretch the day out more. Go to bed later. You may not get back there for a good while. You know what I mean?

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

An Irish Guy Delivers the 2011 Dartmouth College Commencement Address.

Conan O'Brien delivered this address on June 12 at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire--where I would have attended college if it had only been fully co-ed when I was accepted there long ago. But is Hanover a great place to play in the snow and drink or what?

Posted by JD Hull at 10:46 PM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2011

Eric O'Neill on CNN's The Situation Room: Rep. King's call to expel Iranian 'spies' from U.S.

Our friend, client and "Breach" hero Eric O'Neill is now a familiar voice and face on CNN's The Situation Room. See him in last week's segment with CNN's Brian Todd. Are Iranian spooks using D.C.'s diplomatic community to spy on the U.S.?

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (2)

Is the Customer-Client Revolution finally starting?

Because we--and no doubt many others, both friend and foe--would love it if there were no need for this damn blog. What if clients insisted that lawyers perform? See by Bruce Horovitz in this morning's USA Today this one: "Consumer Gripes A Growing Force".

Posted by JD Hull at 01:21 PM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2011

Lawyers & Law Firms: We Still Need That "New Mind", My Friends.

Our thinking tends to circle around established conventions whose basis is forgotten or obscure. --Daniel Pinchbeck in The Return of Quetzalcoatl (2006)

Unless there is a new mind, there cannot be a new line; the old will go on repeating itself with recurring deadliness. --William Carlos Williams in Paterson (1948), Book 2, Sunday in the Park

Lawyers are world-class followers. We are members of just another insular dopey club.--WAC?

Okay, you get the idea. For all of this blog's well-known tangents, flaws, pet issues, quirks and prejudices, since 2005 we have been as constant, serious and relentless about one thing: ideas to change law practice and to put clients and lawyers on common ground. Available right here, right now, and free of charge, are different ways to deliver legal services to higher-end clients who, we are quite sure, have been getting shortchanged on value for decades--if not for centuries. See, from the categories set out on your right, these three topics: Clients: Getting Them, Clients: Keeping Them and Running Firms.

They are ideas any of you could have had--but we put them together, for whatever reasons, for you. For our part, we regret that we never had them and/or reported them until many years into practice. We delayed. We could have instituted and enforced at our own shop the techniques, rules and "habits" set out here in 20 years ago.

But we did not.

Reason: the vast majority of us lawyers have our heads way, way, way up our Wazoos. We think we're special--whether we do billion dollar deals or car accidents. And we are notoriously undisciplined and half-assed about the ways we do everything. We are so special. We still think that even at a time in American history when it is relatively easy for an average college student to become a lawyer.

E and Elsa, circa 1915

Clients as the Main Event fell out of the equation eons ago. It is no longer the touchstone, a value, or an organizing principle. We've become members of just another goofy insular Western club, and we are for good reason laughed at behind our backs.

Add to this the problem that many of us (I think most) secretly dislike being lawyers. But it's not about us--it's "about clients"--and the happiest of us are hard-working and passionate about the Law and Service in one short happy synapse.

For those lucky lawyers, high quality but client-centric legal products have gone from good habits to instinct.

However, these days, especially, precisely many, many of the wrong people keep coming into the profession at all levels. And they stay in when they would be happier doing something else. We've written a lot about that, too. Paying clients--and in droves--are hurt by an "accepted mediocrity" every day.

More importantly, the current Recession--which at this point is about a click away from a Depression--really has made it clear to me, and others, that general counsel and lawyers inside the companies many of us covet are not going let any of us "return to the good old days".

Inside counsel. They are a smarter, bolder and better paid lot than they were when I started practicing in the 1980s. They see more big-picture things in the delivery of services by outside firms--and very few of them at the better client shops are checking with officers and directors about the right time to take lunch. They are stronger and more autonomous. And they include some very fine thinkers.

Lawyers, bless us, are valuable for the same instincts that hold us back. We like slow, and deliberate, change. We are cautious. In our own business models, perhaps we have been too risk-averse. But there has never been a better time in the history of markets, nations, the West, and the American free enterprise experiment for us to change.

Time to step up. Get in the game. One notion here: it's okay to be cautious with work for clients--but not okay anymore to be such staid robots and frightened myopic weenies about the running of our own businesses so that we can truly serve clients, be excellent, and make money.

The now-sputtering economy will drive some of this. Outside lawyers are about to become the servants we were always supposed to be. Still, truly dedicated and skillful lawyers (charitably, about 15 to 20% of us) will be in demand. But we can assume that new role and still make great money--and have lots of fun. Excuse me if that sounds anti-intellectual or pedestrian--but at my firm we are trying to have fun and make money doing what we love.

Anyway, we can fix all this. This blog has six years worth of ideas and techniques on advising and guiding clients without "feeding the monster". Feel free to browse through it critically--and tell us what you think. No "hiding" though--if you have something to say, tell us who you are.

E and friends, New York City, 1921

Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

October 31, 2011

"Turn off the lights & lie on the floor." Halloween, Druids--and Your Kids.

Are your kids hanging out with Pagans?

Just a suggestion if you forget to buy the candy. Yes, Halloween--also called "Pooky Night" in some parts of Ireland--is really just a faint shadow of ancient seasonal celebrations of the mysteries of the cosmos: life, death, renewal, Keith Richards, Clarence Thomas. Things we see and sense but cannot explain.

In fact, the entire last week of October offers very old harvest and life-death cycle observances with Pagan, Celtic, Roman and even Christian variations. While some cultures commune a bit more seriously with the spirit world this week, U.S. kids of course love it for its costumes and candy. But for many it's just a sign of Fall. John Keats (1795-1821) was taken with the season, too:

"To Autumn"

1
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom‑friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch‑eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er‑brimmed their clammy cells.

2
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on the granary floor,
Thy hair soft‑lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or, on a half‑reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinéd flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider‑press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3
Where are the songs of Spring? Aye, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too—
While barréd clouds bloom the soft‑dying day,
And touch the stubble‑plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full‑grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge‑crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden‑croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

September 19, 1819

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)