Categories
Law Students and Young Lawyers

You Need a Shrink

For years I delegated work to Mindy, who was very competent, productive, generous, and warm.

I never knew when I walked into Mindy’s office to ask her to do something whether she would be her usual lovable self or would bite my head off.

Categories
The Mentality and Attitudes of Lawyers

Shutting Down The News

I stopped reading the news this week. It has been affecting my mental health. No more scrolling from CNN to Associated Press to Apple News to Google News to National Post, to Jerusalem Post. I am even trying to scroll past posts on Facebook and LinkedIn which address hate around the world.

Categories
Mental Health and Work/Life Balance

The Ethics of Dictating Work Ethic

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Later he kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and decreed that from that date forward, people would have to work very, very hard, just to survive.

From then until recently, if you chose Law as your profession, you did not have to read much further into the Bible to understand what was expected of you.

Categories
Mental Health and Work/Life Balance

They Care… in Their Spare Time

The other day my wife, Maureen, told me about a friend who was complaining that his busy adult children do not call him very often.  Her friend asked Maureen, “Don’t they care about their dad?”  To which Maureen replied, “they care… in their spare time.”

Maureen had it exactly right. Busy people tend to focus on the issues in their life that require their immediate attention. They put the things that they can take for granted aside to worry about when they can find the time.

Categories
Mental Health and Work/Life Balance

Of Boomers and Beemers

“It just doesn’t matter.” 

Bill Murray in Meatballs

I am a Boomer who never owned a Beemer. The best that I ever did was a Honda Accord and I had to make my way through a Chevy Citation, Dodge Aries, and a couple of Pontiacs to get that far.

I had a few partners who owned Beemers.  They all said that they bought them because they liked how they drove, but we all knew the truth.  What they really liked was how they looked in them.  Successful and well-off.

Categories
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.”