Raising the Bar Archives | Page 16 of 19

15 10, 2007

Is Your Life Fulfilling?

2007-10-15T11:22:05+00:00By Debra L. Bruce, JD, PCC.|Comments Off on Is Your Life Fulfilling?

Want a happier and more fulfilling life? Then perhaps you should look at what really peeves you. Are you driven nuts by drivers who weave in and out of the freeway lanes? Do you find yourself screeching at family members who leave dirty dishes on the sink instead of putting them in the dishwasher? Does your blood pressure rise in the doctor’s waiting room as the clock strikes half an hour past your 11 a.m. appointment?

When you identify what annoys or angers you, you find a clue to one of your values. By “values” I don’t mean virtues or morals, but rather, what is important to you. Your annoyance is a signal that one of your values is being stepped on. The weaving driver may violate your value for safety or predictability. The family member leaving a trail of dirty dishes may violate your value of orderliness or personal responsibility. The doctor with the overloaded appointment book may violate your value for punctuality or reliability or respect.

If the situation doesn’t just annoy you, but rather, it makes you want to explode, then that same value is probably being stepped on elsewhere in your life. What changes can you make in your circumstances, your attitude or your actions that will bring your life more in alignment with your values? Wherever we are not honoring our own values, we create stress and imbalance in our life. Often, that is just when we tend to blame someone else for our unhappiness.

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10 10, 2007

ABA Says Collaborative Law Is Ethical

2019-01-16T22:19:53+00:00By Debra L. Bruce, JD, PCC.|Comments Off on ABA Says Collaborative Law Is Ethical

Some lawyers question whether a lawyer can fulfill her ethical duty to zealously represent her client in a collaborative process where the parties agree to open communication and information sharing. The challenge mainly arises out of the requirement that the lawyer must withdraw from the representation if the collaborative process breaks down, and the parties pursue litigation. In August 2007 the ABA published its Formal Opinion 07-447 about Ethical Considerations in Collaborative Law Practice, and opined that the Collaborative Law process is ethical.

This is an important stride for the Collaborative Law process, and for clients. Today many clients want lawyers to help them resolve disputes without gettingÂ so caught up in “winning” that they lose sight of the real interests of the client. Clients know that all-out warfare is often deadly to their health and well-being, as well as to their bank accounts.

The Christian Science Monitor recently published a succinct and informative piece on Collaborative Law and the recent ABA Opinion. If you want more information about Collaborative Law, check out the website of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals. You can also read an article I wrote a few years ago about the spread of Collaborative Law from family law disputes to business disputes.

15 08, 2007

Avoiding the Commoditization of Your Law Practice

2007-08-15T16:57:47+00:00By Debra L. Bruce, JD, PCC.|1 Comment

My last article about some of the potential ramifications of law firms going public generated quite a number of reader responses. Thanks to each of you for sharing your thoughts with me.

One email asked a question that intrigued me. The reader asked how he could keep his law practice from becoming commoditized. Both small and large law firms should be asking themselves that, because the tide has already turned toward the commoditization of many legal services.

What are commodity legal services? Generally legal services that involve routine and predictable legal issues that can be systematized into forms and processes. They don’t involve complex legal issues, or the issues have already been addressed with such frequency and regularity that they have become routine. Often each individual claim or matter involves a relatively small amount of money at risk, necessitating an inexpensive process or the economies of large volume. Through the use of questionnaires, checklists, decision trees, step-by-step instructions, standard processes and similar methods, technology enables rapid and cheap production of the relevant legal advice and documentation.
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20 07, 2007

A Revolution in the Legal World?

2019-02-10T23:15:55+00:00By Debra L. Bruce, JD, PCC.|5 Comments

A landmark event in the legal world launched in May. This event will ultimately change the course of the practice of law. Or perhaps it is just further evidence of how dramatically the legal world has already changed in the last 10 years.

Australian Law Firm Goes Public

An Australian law firm went public and was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange on May 21, 2007. Australia adopted legislation that permits non-lawyers to invest in the ownership of a law firm, and capital to be raised publicly. The 140-lawyer firm, Slater & Gordon, will initially have shares owned by 42 lawyers and staff, according to a June 1, 2007 article in The American Lawyer. Legislation has also been introduced in the United Kingdom to permit law firms there to sell stock publicly.
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10 06, 2007

Get Remembered

2007-06-10T07:36:39+00:00By Debra L. Bruce, JD, PCC.|1 Comment

Years ago at an early morning meeting Jimmy Brill, a veteran estate planning lawyer and the founder of Solos Supporting Solos, asked each of 30 lawyers to introduce themselves and their practices. I didn’t know any of them, and they all faded into a blur, except for one tall gentleman in a straw hat and seersucker suit. He said, “I’m a proctologist in the courtroom.” He got some chuckles and my attention.

I often ask the attorneys I coach on business development to analyze their client list to determine how they obtained their previous clients. Most of them report that the majority of their new clients come as referrals. If your business depends on referrals, your success depends on the likelihood that others will remember you when someone has a problem you can solve.

A couple of months after that morning meeting, I asked someone in the group, “What’s the name of that guy who’s the proctologist in the courtroom?” “Ted Hirtz,” he responded immediately. Ted’s introduction stood out and triggered the memory of enough people for me to locate him again.

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6 06, 2007

Law Firm Goes Public!

2019-02-10T23:15:55+00:00By Debra L. Bruce, JD, PCC.|Comments Off on Law Firm Goes Public!

An Australian law firm went public and was listed on the Austrailan Stock Exchange on May 21, 2007. Australia adopted legislation that permits non-lawyers to invest in the ownership of a law firm, and capital to be raised publicly. The 140-lawyer firm, Slater & Gordon, will initially have shares owned by 42 lawyers and staff, according to The American Lawyer. Legislation has also been introduced in the U.K. to permit law firm IPOs.

If the UK permits law firms to go public,it will probably be the beginning of a wholesale shift in the lawbiz. There will be many detractors and much resistance in the U.S., but moving mega-firms away from the partnership structure to a real corporate structure may have significant benefits. As true business managers and marketing experts have the opportunity to share in the profits of a law firm, the great class chasm between lawyers and non-lawyers may finally disappear. Innovation may become more valued in firms. The billable hour may fall away to value-billing or other creative structures. Firms may develop more balanced methods of valuing the contributions of its employees. Hey! Perhaps even teamwork could become popular.

I confess that I am having some difficulty imagining how a public law firm would work in the near term. I can imagine the possibility of a serious decline in the professionalism of law practice. Even commoditization of many legal services. We are already headed that way, however, and I’m not sure that the public opinion of lawyers can sink much lower.

One result may be that many lawyers will make less money, with most becoming part of the working middle class, instead of the professional elite, and a few becoming ultra-wealthy titans. One could say we are seeing that trend already, however. As firms go public, they will probably stratify more, with legions of paralegals and other non-lawyers. As bright line distinctions […]

1 06, 2007

Marketing: What Are You Already Doing Right?

2007-06-01T12:54:51+00:00By Debra L. Bruce, JD, PCC.|Comments Off on Marketing: What Are You Already Doing Right?

On a panel for a webcast by the Law Practice Management Program about “Finding and Keeping Good Clients,” we discussed the efficacy of public speaking. Rick Albers, a real estate lawyer in Austin, recounted that another lawyer once told him that he had spoken many times at continuing legal education programs, and never got any business from it. Rick’s mouth dropped open. He himself had referred four matters to that lawyer over the last several years. Rick made those referrals because he knew from hearing the lawyer speak that he was knowledgeable in the relevant area of practice.

Many years ago, when I had my own law firm, my father asked me how I got my clients. I blinked, dumbfounded by the question, and finally responded, “I wish I knew, Dad, so I could get more of them.” That question spurred me to examine my list of current and former clients. I discovered that 75% of my business came from referrals from other lawyers. To my surprise, many of those referrals came from my competitors!

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25 05, 2007

Don’t Wait to Read This: Tips for Procrastinators

2007-05-25T13:11:03+00:00By Debra L. Bruce, JD, PCC.|Comments Off on Don’t Wait to Read This: Tips for Procrastinators

I procrastinated in writing this column. Many wise people have said that we teach what we need to learn, so overcoming procrastination is the topic for this month. Let’s start with why we procrastinate. Here are some common reasons:

It involves an unpleasant task.
We don’t know or are unsure about how to do it.
The task involves a tough decision.
We don’t have all the materials or information we need.
The project is too big and overwhelming.
We underestimate the time required and have a lot to do.

What do we do to get past procrastination? In my coaching I find there are very few one-size-fits-all solutions. There are patterns and tendencies, however, so we experiment, and we understand that what worked yesterday may not work with a different project today. Here are some tips for your experimentation:

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15 05, 2007

Questions May Be the Answer for Performance Problems

2007-05-15T12:24:37+00:00By Debra L. Bruce, JD, PCC.|Comments Off on Questions May Be the Answer for Performance Problems

Do you have an employee who just doesn’t seem to be performing up to snuff? Is there a way to rehabilitate that employee? Or do you have to choose between termination and tolerating inferior performance? Employee turnover is time consuming, disruptive, costly and often bad for office morale (including yours). Before jumping to the conclusion that the employee just isn’t working out, it’s worth making sure that the problem does not lie elsewhere. If you don’t eliminate that possibility, you may be doomed to experience the same song, second verse with the next employee.

Managers often think that employees don’t do what they are supposed to do because they don’t want to, don’t care or are incompetent. That would lead to the conclusion that the manager must terminate the employee or settle for poor performance. However, in his bestseller Why Employees Don’t Do What They’re Supposed to Do and What to Do About It, Ferdinand Fournies points out that managers sometimes unwittingly create situations that cause the poor performance they complain about. What if getting better performance from your employee were as simple as changing your own behavior […]

3 05, 2007

The Unwritten Rules for Associates

2007-05-03T15:09:53+00:00By Debra L. Bruce, JD, PCC.|Comments Off on The Unwritten Rules for Associates

When I was a young associate in a big law firm, I began to fear that there were unwritten rules to the game that everyone knew except me. Sometimes I wanted to cry out, “What are the rules? Just tell me what they are! I’ll follow them!”

Gradually over the years I began to figure them out, one by one, often as the result of transgressing them. Sometimes I was fortunate enough to learn a rule by merely observing the consequences of a transgression by another associate. On rare occasions a more senior associate, or even a partner, would bless me by privately advising me about one of the rules.

Law firms really do want their associates to succeed, so why do they seem to hide the rules of the game? Here are my guesses at a few possible explanations:
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