Early in my career, a senior partner in my firm, who I will call Greg, was arguing with the managing partner of the firm because the managing partner wanted Greg to fire one of Greg’s clients.
Tag: mentoring
I once had a law partner named Marvin who taught me what he called the “fish theory” of marketing. According to Marvin, marketing was simply a matter of throwing a fish back to every referral source who threw a fish to you. If you were referred a file from someone, you owed that person a file, and so it went.
(About the Marketing Thing)
New lawyers have a lot to learn about both the law, and how to practice law. Typically doing that will take up their entire workday, and then some.
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How Law Firms Drive Associates Crazy
(Part 1 of Many)
Law firms like to encourage their lawyers to produce as many billable hours as possible. In order to keep the lawyers ‘motivated’, law firms usually set a target number of hours that they expect each lawyer to bill. Some firms like to set the target at a number which is higher than they expect the lawyers to bill.
Some years ago, there was an automobile manufacturer whose products had developed a reputation for breaking down. Rather than re-engineer the products, it launched a major advertising campaign touting the quality of its vehicles.
Whenever someone makes a pop culture reference to the 80’s, 90’s or 2000’s which I don’t get, I always say, “I was busy working.”
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When Does Size Matter?
I practiced with a medium sized firm in Mississauga, Ontario, which many of you may be surprised to know is the sixth largest city in Canada, just after Edmonton and ahead of Winnipeg and Vancouver. Back in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s several Toronto firms opened offices there. At that time, the buzz in the legal profession was that there was no future for medium sized law firms, and they would all be wiped out by the larger firms with their greater expertise. In fact, almost all the Toronto firms closed their offices in Mississauga after a short time, and the local firms have been doing just fine ever since.