Hi. I'm the practice management advisor for the North Carolina Bar Association, which means that in addition to writing about this law practice management, I spend my days helping lawyers with it full-time.
Every job I've had since I was 19 has been in or around a law office of one kind or another. I've been:
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a file clerk for a solo practitioner in a hippy hippie town in upstate New York
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an intake paralegal for Neighborhood Legal Services in Buffalo
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a law clerk at Greater Boston Elderly Legal Services
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a litigation associate for an AmLaw 200 law firm in Boston
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a partner (and then managing partner) of a small, fast growing law firm in Raleigh
I stopped practicing law in 2006 and have been helping lawyers with technology and practice management full-time ever since - first as a consultant and now at the NCBA.
I grew up in one of the two Middletowns in New York - you know your home town name is generic when there are two of them in the same state - and graduated from Boston College and Boston College Law School, long enough ago that they were still teaching us to do research in books.
I moved from Boston to Chapel Hill, North Carolina mainly so that I could stop watching Boston College sports on television. Due to apparent sins I committed in a former life, after I arrived BC promptly joined the ACC so now I can watch them get trounced regularly by Duke and UNC. Between BC and the Yankees I am an alternately despondent and cranky sports fan.
I'm shacked up with my lovely wife and disobedient beagle in an old mid-century modern house that the three of us are doing the world's slowest renovation on. That's mostly the beagle's fault, she doesn't pull her weight. When I'm not camped out in front of my trusty MacBook, I generally spend my time watching movies, reading on my Kindle or listening to music on my iPod Droid. Come to think of it, I really ought to unplug once in a while.
Whenever possible, I do all of that stuff while knocking back espresso at my favorite hangout, Caffe Driade.
