Continuing with my two-year-old son, Pickle. As I laid out last post, Pickle is a cyborg. A Type 1 diabetic, his life literally depends on computers that are attached to his body. Because of him, I find myself contemplating the fact that we are almost all professional cyborgs. Technology is now an inescapable element of
Real Lawyers v. Cyborgs
My two-year old just got his first iPhone. Now, Pickle (yes, Pickle!) is never without it. The iPhone goes everywhere with him the way other kids might drag along a stuffed bear. We are even thinking about getting Pickle a haute couture fanny pack to ensure his iPhone is on him at all times.
I’ll
If You’re Not at the Table, You’re on the Menu
If you’ve ever been on a committee, or on any type of board, you know that if you miss a meeting, there is a good chance you will be assigned to lead a project that no one else wanted. It’s something that we all dread, but come to expect when you’re not there to defend
Client-led Change: Toward a More Perfect Legal Market
The CLOC Institute last week was phenomenal. I barely tweeted because I was so engaged by the content and conversation. I did, however, transcribe one quote that got some attention from the legal commentariat:
I gravitated to the quote because it was consistent with my pre-existing notions of the role clients and structured dialogue play
Outside Counsel Guidelines and Collective Conversations
I hate outside counsel guidelines. Hate. It’s visceral. I have never encountered a set of guidelines I liked. My antipathy includes guidelines I had a hand in writing.
As an associate I worked for a client whose guidelines forbade time entries that suggested any form of communication between lawyers–meetings, conversations, conferences, correspondence. So, too,
Size Matters for Legal Innovation (Toronto Edition)
The median number of equity partners in an Am Law 100 firm (ranked by PPP) is 170. The number is arbitrary, but it probably isn’t random.
W.L. Gore & Associates, the maker of Gore-Tex, is known for a “radically nonhierarchical management structure.” One aspect of the Gore approach that makes the company so
Espresso Machines are Lousy Substitutes for Law Library Leadership
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| Image [cc] Cory Doctorow |
A fellow law librarian pointed me toward a Daily Report article yesterday entitled “Kilpatrick Transforms Library Into Modern Collaboration Hub—With Latte.” The story is a well-worn tale of how the law library space was cut and transformed into a collaborative space with workstations and high-end espresso machines.
These sort
On Why, I am a Gardener
Following on up on my great experience this past week in Austin, TX at the Annual Legal Marketing Association Conference, I thought I would share my thoughts from a few weeks ago when I had a conversation with someone who is thinking of
getting into legal marketing. She’s had
a vibrant career in other industries
Bad Lawyering, Not Bad Forms
As Robert Ambrogi has been reporting, Avvo launched a new legal forms offering to compete with LegalZoom. Mr. Contract himself, Ken Adams, reviewed an Avvo form and concluded that Avvo was another of the “hack vendors” that was “foisting crap” and “dreck” on consumers. Avvo responded to Adams’s “silliness” in a way that suggests to
On the Perils of Compensation, Pricing and Future Business Strategies
Of all the adaptations law firms need to make to be successful, the biggest challenge going forward will be making changes to their partner compensation systems. Ben Weinberger of Prosperoware tackles the subject head-on in today’s guest post.
The earliest known written legal code, Ur-Nammu’s Code, has been attributed to have originated in 2050