This is a true story about a law firm in another universe, far, far away. The names have been changed to protect the innocent, if there were any innocents. The third item on the partners’ meeting agenda was “Letterhead”. Innocuous enough, one would think, but not to the eighteen men and women around the table….
Angie was a summer student in our office many years ago, bright and cheery and trilingual English, French and Italian. And one day she introduced me to her grandfather. Domenic was a shoemaker, carrying on a profession he had learned in Italy long before coming to Canada. For at least five decades he toiled over…
Pretty well the first thing you learn in Economics 101 is the Law of Supply and Demand. In really simple terms, it says that scarcity of a good or service drives up the price while an oversupply of the good or service will suppress the price. On the demand side, high demand drives up price,…
How do you feel about Monday mornings? Does Sunday night leave you filled with dread, mourning the end of a weekend of joy and freedom, or can you go to bed on Sunday night looking forward to the energizing challenges waiting for you in the morning? Far too many of us are wage slaves. Even…
Hollywood wants you to think all law firms are finely-tuned machines full of high-energy, good-looking, case-reciting, fast-paced, brilliant lawyers, collegially pursuing justice while making bags of money. Well, it ain’t like that. At best, a law firm is a happy place where lawyers and their assistants pursue interesting work and make a good living. At…
Link to Part One. (https://mailchi.mp/bbcb87be965a/resolution-for-15374845?e=[UNIQID]) Last week we looked at the features of high-functioning professional firms, as well as those of the dysfunctional professional firm. The astute reader probably sussed out where we’re going next. Just like the recovering alcoholic, a professional firm which wants to become high-performing has to swear off the evils which…
Link to Part One. (https://mailchi.mp/bbcb87be965a/resolution-for-15374845?e=[UNIQID]) Link to Part Two. (https://us12.campaign-archive.com/?e=[UNIQID]&u=c5b0c09025ad045bf11bb02f5&id=11f0ba777a) For the last two weeks we’ve surveyed the highly successful professional firms and the dysfunctional ones. Last week we covered generally the reformation of the dysfunctional firm into a more successful one. This week we look at the “nuts and bolts”. If you haven’t already…
There are two distinctly different career paths to those in the professions – the lifer model and the migratory model, although most of us are a little of this and a little of that. Lifers tend to arrive in the profession and decades later retire from the same place they started, although usually higher in…
Old buzzards like myself have been through a lot, and I’ve had my share of hell-on-earth stretches. But none quite like my week at ITAW. It went something like this. Our little law firm was doing very, very well indeed, with lots of good work pouring in. Too much, actually, and it was apparent that…
It’s horrifying, isn’t it, in the twenty-first century to watch a war where the primary tactic on the part of one side is to hurl live young men, in their tens of thousands, into the meat-grinder in hopes of exhausting the enemy’s supply of ammunition. That said, the tactic succeeded for the Soviets in the…