Saint Augustine is reported to have said that “resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
Categories
Resentment and My Robot Vaccum
There was once a law firm which had a particular department which experienced some turn-over in its associates. Lots of turn-over, actually.
The department in question was headed by a lawyer with a ‘strong personality.’ I am not qualified to give a psychological diagnosis of this lawyer, but if I were, I would probably say that this person was a narcissist. If I was being nice.
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Selling The Extended Team
Back when I was practicing law, I was responsible for bringing in business to feed myself and a nest full of hungry associates and law clerks. In my early days I was not able to do that using LinkedIn, because someone had forgotten to invent social media. By the time that LinkedIn was in full swing, I had already fallen into a pattern of relying on networking to develop business. It worked well for me, and I really enjoyed having my partners treat me to lunch four or five times a week.
Here is a warning for Canadian business owners and their lawyers. Your plan to motivate and reward your employees may backfire if the messaging is not correct from the outset. There is no better way for an owner to screw up the morale of its most valued employees than to start talking about offering them shares in the company before figuring out exactly how to structure the arrangements.
Categories
Shotguns
Lawyers use shotgun provisions in shareholders agreements way more than they should. Good lawyers recognize when the shotgun is not favourable to their clients.
Shotgun provisions in shareholders agreements work on the cake theory.
Canadian Business Lawyers: You may be negligent if you don’t know that:
by Maureen T. McKay and Murray Gottheil
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Introduction
Resolving a dispute among shareholders of a family-owned corporation is entirely different from resolving a dispute among shareholders who are not related. Professional advisors who want to help resolve disputes in a family-owned business must understand not only that a family-owned business is different and how it is different, but more importantly, must adjust their approach to take those differences into account.
Beginner lawyers need to understand Partner Talk (“PT”), which is the language that law firm partners use.
Here to help the newbies are some translations from Partner Talk to Plain English (“PE”):
Prior to retiring from the practice of law, I lived in big cities for my entire life. Upon retirement I moved to the country. Due to Covid and people learning that they can work from home, moving to the country is now something that many people are doing.
In any event, there are a lot of new things to learn when you move to the country. One of the first things that you must learn is that it is important to differentiate yourself from the Citiots.
To help you do that, I have compiled a list of ways to tell if you are a Citiot.
Many of us think that the legal profession is broken, because too many lawyers are stressed out and miserable. Law firms are throwing money at the problem. Apparently unsuccessfully. A few brave souls are attempting to start solo practices or small firms which operate on different, and more humane and sustainable principles. But apart from that, the profession seems to be lurching along as it always has and continuing to chew up, and sometimes spit out, those lawyers who are determined to have a life outside of practicing law.