Category Archives: Management

After a CLE a few months ago, I sat in a bar sipping bourbon and listening to my friend, Jim Dedman, explain his plans for doing a blog series commemorating the 20th anniversary of one of the all time great lawyer movies, My Cousin Vinny. Jim asked me if I would write something about the… Continue Reading

I’ve been interested in the idea of legacy for a long time, probably since I first read Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The topic became a lot more concrete and real to me a few months ago when my dad passed away. As I have dealt with my own grief over his… Continue Reading

Carolyn Elefant of My Shingle offers some thoughts on what’s happening in the UK and what it might mean in the US and elsewhere: Across the pond in the UK, there’s growing anticipation over the possibility of legal services coming to a supermarket near you as the 2011 effective date of the Legal Services Act… Continue Reading

Deanna Brocker of NC Legal Ethics offers this analysis on the use of employment agreements for attorneys: It is rare that a lawyer stays in one place for his or her entire career. Lawyers change law firms everyday. And yet, relatively few law firms have employment agreements with their lawyers. A lawyer’s departure from a… Continue Reading

  I just finished reading a really interesting book about… checklists. Yeah, I know that reading a book about checklists sounds about scintillating as watching paint dry. I was skeptical, too, at first. The book is The Checklist Manifesto by Dr. Atul Gawande, a writer and surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. I… Continue Reading

Not really. It’s hard to text at 80mph.

Kidding. Sort of.

But that’s between me and my traffic attorney. (Thanks, Timothy!)

Recently, multitasking – that darling of 80′s productivity – has gotten a bad rap. It turns out that multittasking makes it harder for your brain to focus or switch between complicated tasks. (Tip: avoid complicated tasks; works like the dickens!)

Here’s the thing about these studies, though. They all treat multitasking as if it is some kind of weird street performance involving juggling a smart phone, a laptop and two flaming chain saws. That kind of misses the point.

I am working on starting a pilot program at the North Carolina Bar Association. It’s called Starting Out Solo and is based on a group by the same name that started up in Massachusetts (trademark hawks can relax, I have permission to reuse the name). we’re hoping to get up and running in the next… Continue Reading

With the possible exception of the Donald, nobody likes firing people. It’s no fun, disrupts the lives of the people who are laid off and takes a toll on the morale of the people left behind.  Unfortunately, it is a sometimes necessary evil, and one that too many managers handle badly.  (Hint:  try not to… Continue Reading

Developing a portable book of business is not your debutante ball. I understand the allure of the grand gesture:  trapping a witness with the perfect cross examination question, cashing out of stock just before the market crashes, hitting the walk-off home run in your softball game.  They’re rare but unbelievably satisfying when they happen.  They’re… Continue Reading