Early in my career, one of my clients was the owner of a chain of retail bakeries. One day I attended at one of the stores with the President of the corporation, whose name was Stewart. When we were ready to leave the store, Stewart remembered that he was out of bread, selected a loaf, and paid the employee behind the counter for it.
I have been reading about Deshaun Watson’s return to the NFL after serving a suspension as a result of allegations of sexual harassment and assault. Normally I do not like to rush to judgment when a person has been accused but not convicted of a criminal offence, since I believe in the presumption of innocence and all of that. But however you may feel about the allegations against Mr. Watson, he definitely has some ‘splaining to do.
What struck me in the account that I was reading was a statement from one of his alleged victims who said, “he can run and throw and that’s enough.” In other words, when someone has the ability to generate serious money, our culture will forgive pretty much anything.
I like orange popsicles. The cherry flavoured ones are also okay. The grape flavour is terrible. This is one of the few topics upon which everyone in my household agrees.
It is really hard to find a box of only orange popsicles. Trust me, I have looked. So, we always end up buying a box which contains all three flavours. Eventually our freezer becomes full of grape popsicles that nobody wants and we throw them away to make room. It is a waste of money and not that great for the environment.
I have heard it said that “an expert is someone from out of town with Power Point.” This expression has some old roots. When I originally heard it, it was “someone from out of town with overhead slides.”
Apparently nowadays you do not even have to travel to become an expert. A young lawyer contacted me recently to ask me my views on the legal profession because he had been told by the Managing Partner of his firm that I was an expert on the profession, a status that I appear to have achieved by ranting on social media.
“There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.”
Tennessee Williams
On the day that the love of my life and I first told each other that we loved each other, we were, unfortunately, both married to other people. It was a pretty rough journey from then to now (together seventeen years, married for twelve.) Along the way a number of people were hurt, only a few of whom deserved it. I love the result but would not wish the journey on anyone, and deeply regret the hurt caused to the innocent parties.
We live in a hierarchical world. In a law firm, the levels are pretty clear. From top to bottom it goes something like this: Managing Partner, Other Partners (ranked in order of billings and client originating credits), Senior Associates, Professional Managers, Junior Associates, Law Clerks, Legal Assistants, Clerical Staff, Articling Students, and Cleaners.
Everyone in a law firm has a pretty good notion about what the hierarchy is, although Articling Students have sometimes found out to their shock and horror that they do in fact rank under the Law Clerks, Legal Assistants, and Clerical Staff.
Just about everything that I learned about stupidity in the realm of managing people, I learned from lawyers, much of it from my own mistakes. However, this time I will write about the failures at my friend Martin’s law firm instead.
At Martin’s firm, the Human Resources Manager convinced the Partners that it would be a good idea to initiate a program to recognize long-serving firm members, with the view of spreading the word to all members of the team that the firm valued loyalty.
Lawyers (other than litigators, I suppose) don’t like public speaking much more than other people do, and most people rank public speaking as their greatest fear, just before death.
As best as I can tell, there are two potential audiences for lawyers to speak to. The first group is comprised of potential clients. The reason for speaking to them is obvious.
Back in the day, there was a law firm in which the partners were – how do I say it sort of nicely – not ‘culturally aligned.’
Sam was the Managing Partner. He was charming and charismatic, and nice to everybody, at least most of the time. Aligned with him were enough partners to vote with him on everything that mattered, sometimes more out of personal loyalty or ignorance than conviction.
Gordon was the other high billing partner with a huge client base, which qualified him to lead a group of dissidents. He and Sam tended to be competitive about things such as compensation.
I like to bake bread. In my opinion, and in the opinion of a family member named Aidan, the crust is the best part of my bread. When he was younger, Aidan would sometimes help himself to both end pieces. I did not like that.
Once, Aidan asked if it was okay for him to take a slice of my freshly baked bread as it was cooling on the counter. I told him to take just one slice. The next thing I knew he had sliced the entire top of the bread off and was happily munching way.
When I confronted him, Aidan was not particularly remorseful. He said, “you said that I could have a slice. You didn’t say anything about how I had to slice it.”