Clients do not like being nickeled and dimed. They can get their heads around paying $750 an hour, but charging them for photocopies annoys them.
Categories
Nickle and Diming Our Clients
Tag: lawfirmmanagement
Categories
Lessons Learned From My COO
When I became the managing partner of my firm, we hired an excellent general manager, who ultimately became our COO. I will call her Bev.
Bev had a background in business, significant experience in human resources and a great capacity for emotional intelligence, all of which were in short supply among our partners.
Categories
The Problem With Great Expectations
I am on a slow boat to Tokyo. Over the last few weeks, I have come to know Bill and Paul, both good looking guys in their early eighties. Bill is a pianist and music aficionado. He wears a baseball cap that says, “I’m old, but I’m cool,” which pretty much sums things up for both of them.
My firm had a thriving real estate practice in the 1980’s. When the real estate market tanked from 1989 until about 1996, they were not happy times. We did not hire any real estate lawyers in those days.
Say what you will about Big Law (and I say plenty of unflattering things about them), at least when they hire a junior lawyer, they give them a generous salary and benefits, and more often than not, appropriate training and mentoring.
“Prepare the clone army!”
~ Dr. Evil
Back before today’s young lawyers were born, law firms and new lawyers had an unwritten social contract.
Firms were prepared not to make much money on newcomers. They made an investment to mentor, supervise, and train them. If the firm was lucky, it could cover its costs in the first year, and start making a profit in subsequent years. The new lawyers knew that they would have to put in some time before they could earn the big bucks, but if they hung in, a partnership would be offered within a reasonable time frame.
I am going to tell you a story that was told to me by a law firm partner who cannot risk telling it herself.
Somewhere in the world of Common Law, a rainmaker partner in a huge firm did dreadful things and was pushed out. A scandal ensued. The details were sketchy. Among those trying to figure out exactly what happened were hundreds of the partners of the now disgraced lawyer.
I got into a bit of a dust-up with a lawyer on LinkedIn the other day. She wrote something that I did not agree with, which was clothed in reverence for human rights, so I countered with my usual intelligent and incisive commentary, informed by my long history in the legal profession.
Those of you who read my stuff know that I am not the world’s biggest fan of law firms who address mental health issues by offering pizza and yoga classes, while refusing to acknowledge that the principal cause of their people’s suffering is overwork.
Categories
C’s Get Degrees
I was spending time with some young folks the other night. I heard a phrase which was new to me, but apparently not to the rest of the world. “C’s get degrees” has something to do with prioritizing the enjoyment of life, and physical and mental health, over stressing out to achieve high grades. Are the people who live by this adage low on ambition or high on life? I really don’t know. I suppose that it depends on your perspective.