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Law Firm Management

Is it the Lazy Junior Lawyer’s Fault?

Tali Green recently (sarcastically)asked the following question on LinkedIn: “Are lazy and sub-par juniors contributing to the mental health crisis in the legal profession?”

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Law Firm Management

Aren’t Non-Equity Partners Really Just Glorified Associates?

With a nod to the danger of generalizing, I would have to say that as a group, I like non-equity partners (“NEPs”) just as much, if not better, than I like equity partners. They are often people who are primarily interested in practicing law and doing well by their clients, as opposed to promoting themselves and reaching the top of the earnings heap.

On the other hand, I don’t think much of the whole concept of non-equity partnership.

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Law Firm Management

Another Law Firm Just Went Down

“Write what you know.” 

Mark Twain

I know absolutely nothing about the collapse of Minden Gross LLP beyond what I have read in the Globe & Mail. However, I did hang around the legal profession for a long time, and I figure that qualifies me to comment.

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Law Firm Management

Reap What You Sow

Hey law firms!  Have you given much thought to your partners approaching retirement, and calculated what their retirement may cost you? 

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Law Firm Management

Reading Between The Lines

At my law firm, we had great human resources management. It was so good that information was hard to come by. In fact, it was just about impossible to get any really good gossip out of management until it had made its way down to the partners, after which it became more readily available.

Since we had some really smart people at our firm (as well as a few who were not so smart), it should not be surprising that we had to compensate for the lack of information flow by learning to read between the lines.

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Law Firm Management

Math at the End of Days

Let’s say that Michael is a partner at his firm.  He stays for many years and builds up a substantial client base.

And while we are making things up, let’s assume that Michael has been a team player and introduced his clients to his Partners and Associates, so as Mike comes close to retirement age, much of his work is being done by other Partners, Associates and Law Clerks.

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Law Firm Management

Grilled Cheese, Please

There is a restaurant in Lakefield, Ontario called the Canoe & Paddle. On their regular menu is a panini called the “Ultimate Grilled Cheese” which comes with smoked bacon, cheddar, asiago, tomato, and garlic butter.

On their Kids & Seniors menu they offer a grilled cheese sandwich for which the ingredients are listed as “white loaf, cheddar.” They call this the “Grilled Cheese Please.”

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Law Firm Management

Loose Lips and Sinking Ships

Law firm partnerships like to project the image of a cohesive unit.  One strategy that they employ is to insist that although Partners may disagree with each other in a Partners’ meeting, once they leave the room, they all must support the group’s decision.

Another is to require that Partners act as though they like each other, especially when they don’t.

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Law Firm Management

The Year Was 1995

One of the many nice things about being retired is that I feel free to write about topics that I would not have had the guts to speak up about back in the day. So, here we go again!

The year was 1995. It was one of my first forays into law firm management. I helped develop our firm’s first ‘maternity leave’ top-up policy and presented it at a partners meeting. We were getting a bit of buy-in, but that ground to a halt when one of our partners said, “let me get this straight. The people who come to work every day are not earning nearly enough (author’s note- we were never earning ‘nearly enough’) and you want us to earn even less so that we can subsidize people who are not coming to work at all?  Seriously?  You are all f**king crazy!” 

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Law Firm Management

Yoga, Mental Health, and Law Firms

If any among you have not yet happened upon the writings of H.L. Mencken, you should correct that. Among his many pithy quotes are the following gems:

  1. Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
  2. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
  3. Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

One of H.L. Mencken’s quotes that seems particularly apt for law firm management is this one: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”