Archive

Recently, Joanna Penn was talking on her podcast about all the different things she’s tried and revenue sources she has developed over the years as a part of her writing business. She said that every year she does an analysis of the work she enjoys and finds productive and the work she needs to either […]

It occurred to me one day in early October, while working on a problem no one in my firm had dealt with before, that I had just entered my seventh year of practice. And that suddenly seemed like a pretty significant amount of time. This started me on a pig trail thinking about how comfortable […]

“It takes a village to raise a child.” This maxim could easily be applied to lawyers. Sure you can try to go from being a baby lawyer to a adolescent lawyer to a full grown lawyer on your own. You can try doing it without a mentor to help you grow and without a community […]

One of the major determinants for how an associate’s year-end review is going to go is how much money she made the firm. There are other things too, like how an associate is developing client and case management skills and whether the associate is developing her own book of business. But when everything is boiled […]

Because in our line of work, time is money, I keep close track of my billable hours. I write my time entries down after each billable event. When I hear about lawyers not writing down time for a couple of days and having to go back and recreate it, I shudder. People are generally lousy […]

In January of 2018, in the middle of the college football national championship game, Nick Saban substituted out his quarterback Jalen Hurts, who had led Alabama to its second consecutive national title game. Saban sent in his true freshman QB Tua Tagovailoa, who by all accounts was expected to be the next great quarterback. In […]

Good goals are a beacon to let you know you’re headed in the right direction. They enable you throughout the course of a year to review your list to affirm whether you are taking actions to help you achieve the goals you’ve set. Without goals, you are a boat adrift at sea. You can paddle […]

When I look at my traffic on the blog every month, the same few articles are at the top of the heap every time: Objecting to Discovery Requests under the new FRCP 34; Beware of Bogus Requests for Admission; Your Client Died during the Case – How about a Suggestion of Death?; and What Is a Party’s Duty […]

How many times have you heard something to this effect: “The key to getting clients is to just do great work.” Well, I’m here to tell you that’s a partial truth, at best. Clients expect you to do great work. Clients expect great work. That’s what happens when you pay upwards of $150/hour for someone’s […]

I was involved in a multiparty email exchange about a pre-trial scheduling order. As sometimes happens in conversations among many lawyers about how much time to allot to discovery, expert disclosures, and dispositive motion deadlines, things went a little sideways. And since all this communication was occurring by email, no one could read anyone’s tone, […]