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April 14, 2012
WAC/P? Media Hit: "Keep Your Beginner's Mind."
[Verbatim below from 2.2.09. Will seem familiar to a few of you; no, we're not trying to make anyone feel guilty.]
The ability "to think like a lawyer" is about 10% of what you need to be an effective lawyer.
Lots of people finally acquire it. Some are famously better and faster at it than others. A revered Skadden M&A partner wrote years ago that, at a minimum, it requires thinking about something that is "inextricably attached" to something--but without thinking about that something to which it's attached.
Legal reasoning is critical--but it's never enough by itself to become an outstanding lawyer. The rest is frame of mind: energy, ambition, organization, logistics-sense, re-thinking everything all the time, a take-charge orientation, genuine people skills, and an urgent passion to solve tough problems. If you think you want to be a litigator or trial lawyer, you will also need Very Tough Hide--something which you can learn the hard way.
Finally, no matter what, you need Will, and Big Ones.
Almost all of students we have interviewed in the last five years made law review, and will graduate at the top of their class. Again, not enough. Lawyers need to learn to think and act on their own from the first day. You need the traits listed above. Think of it as an inside job.
If you are new, "steal our clients", please. Be that good. That will take a while. While you are learning, please understand that you are getting more than you are giving. You don't know much. So it's not unreasonable for us to ask you to try to do perfect research, editing and proofreading.
But we love your ideas, your first impressions, and the trick is to be confident enough to ask dumb questions and make comments. Often, your first impressions or "reactions" to a problem or project are very good--but we don't always hear them right away.
So maybe read Alan Watts. Or at least read a lot of David Giacalone at f/k/a..., an HLS grad who really gets it. Think of David as your spiritual leader and technical adviser in one person. Read, for example, his "Phoenixes and Beginner’s Mind". Keep reading him.
You may not know at first very much law, or how to apply it to facts for a fee, and then give the "right advice". But you have instincts evolving all the time--they have little to do with law school--that may surprise you.
You had them all along.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2012
In The Economist: Shareholders Get Serious. Corporate Governance No Longer A Joke. Dang.
Power to the Shareholders and all that--but Shareholder Rights is still an expensive, unforgiving and tortuous hell for many well-meaning Boards. Active SHs often tend to be powerful--or whack-jobs with too much time to kill. Not much in between. See "Heating up: Shareholders are ever more willing to vote against management".
Posted by JD Hull at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2012
REDUX: The New White Trash: "Who Cares What Makes Generation Y Tick?"
M.G. Krebs: Hero of those Happy Going through Life as Turds.
You cannot short-cut or dumb down the process of becoming a quality professional who serves clients, patients, customers or buyers. You can't Google it. You can't fake it. If you don't want to learn how to do your work, consider: (i) volunteer work with street people, mental patients, addicts, special children, Boomer-era acid casualties, or animals, (ii) retail, (iii) consulting, and (iv) full-time blogging. The short post below originally appeared on May 20, 2008:
From a marketing e-mail I received today:
Are you frustrated by young workers who feel entitled to success, need constant praise, want everything to be 'their way'? Are you struggling to attract and retain a generation of workers whose commitment seems more temporary than permanent?
This is Generation Y, a workforce of as many as 70 million, and the first wave is just now taking their place in an increasingly multigenerational workplace.
In this 1-day seminar, we'll show you how to motivate and manage Generation Y. You'll learn what makes them tick, how to retain them, and make them productive and energized.
It's your problem, Gen-X and Gen-Y. Not ours. Work, figure it out, ask questions, and we'll help you--but it's your job to adjust to "us" and the often hard adventure of learning to solve problems for your employer and its clients.
(past post dated 03.01.10)
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2012
BBC: Egypt may not relapse into a predominately Islamic lawdom, after all.
The Mother of All Arab Spring Injunctive Relief Actions. And good news for a way more nuanced world. See "Egypt Court Suspends Constitutional Assembly". Excerpt:
A court in Egypt has suspended the 100-member assembly appointed last month to draft the country's new constitution.
Several lawsuits had demanded Cairo's Administrative Court block the decision to form the panel as it did not reflect the diversity of Egyptian society.
They said women, young people and minorities were under-represented.
Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafist Nour party, which dominate parliament, have a near-majority.
Liberals and secularists fear some of them would like to amend the constitution so that it follows the principles of Islamic law more strictly.
BBC Photo
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
San Leandro, 1903.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
New "memoir" on the midlife Florentine experience: Rebecca Bricker charms us all.
Think of it as an Under the Tuscan Sun for Boomers with Attitude. Tales from Tavanti by Rebecca Bricker.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)
April 09, 2012
Myron Leon Wallace (1918-2012). Journalism as a warrior-thinker-hustler's art form.
Mike Wallace. Whether you liked him or not, you had to admit this: no one worked harder at fact-gathering and journalism than this guy. He was always prepared. CBS's Wallace was perhaps the biggest, and certainly the most aggressive, major chord in the media soundtrack for us American Boomers growing up. He made journalism a warrior-thinker-hustler's art form. After he and others at 60 Minutes were on for a year or two, beat reporters at AnyPaper, AnyWhere, were are a lot less likely to be looked own on as losers and screw-ups. Like Mencken and Murrow before him, he gave the whole neighborhood more class and gravitas. RIP, sir. Thank you. See CBS reporting.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2012
Spring: We all feel its giddy dance and play.
Spring ushers in important observances by most religions and faiths. Yet nearly everyone has Spring in their deepest wiring without a scripted assist from organized religion or other "crowd control" cults and cultures that want to tell you how to think, feel and act.
All of us feel Spring's play: Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, Druids, Scots, Picts, reveling Irish folk, 3 or 4 Germans, dour Eastern Europeans, Boring Anglos Like Me, All Of The French, ultra-serious Korean dudes, Czech engineers, non-human animals (your dog, Randy) and just plain fleshy folk in the Midwest. All of us notice the natural world a bit more. A flash of joy for no reason at all.
We all do a move. Hips are often involved. Quick--but visible. It may be a jig, a giddy leap, a prance, a simple dance, the Philly Dog New Breed, a strut, boogie or waddle to nod and celebrate. It's merely primal. It's always physical.
We all refuse to ignore rebirth, renewal, new life cycles, being here now, and possibilities of bold fresh starts.
Posted by JD Hull at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)