I am on a fifty-five day segment of a one hundred and eleven day geriatric world cruise. That is not the official title – the cruise line just calls it a ‘world cruise.’ But if you think about who can afford the time and money to be on vacation for that length of time, you can see why the average age of the cruisers is high enough to make me, at 68 years old, one of the youngsters.
When I entered law school, each year the most powerful law firm in Montreal would obtain from McGill Law School the names of the ten students with the highest grades in their first year of law school and write to them to offer them summer jobs. I received such a letter when I completed my first year of law school in 1976.
Had I gone to law school a few years earlier, I would not have received that letter, because the firm extending it had made it a practice to exclude Jews from the program.
Sometimes clients call lawyers and announce what their legal budget is for a proposed project. New lawyers sometimes struggle to handle the situation because the scope of the work is uncertain or the proposed budget is insufficient to do the job properly.
Once there was a lawyer named Mark who considered himself to be an ‘idea man.’ Mark had a whole bunch of non-billable projects on his list of things to do, and he was always adding items to it.
Somewhere in some law firm’s ‘closed files’ archive, there is probably a file with my name on it. The subject matter line likely reads something like, “Possible Sexual Harassment Claim.”
As an Anglo born and raised in Montreal and living in Ontario for many years, I consider myself to be a political refugee from Quebec. (Some would say that I overstate my immigrant credentials somewhat.)
I moved from Montreal to Toronto in 1979 at twenty-four years of age with my brand-new law degree in hand to article for a mid-sized Toronto firm. It was my third trip to Toronto. I had been in the city for a weekend when I was eight years old and again for a few days for articling interviews.
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 spent some time speaking to one of the founders of Appara to better understand how using their software would have made my life easier back in the day.
You can read my thoughts on their site by clicking the link below.
Bob was a brilliant lawyer. He loved technology and was a wizard at math.
Back in the day when we used fax machines and they stood alone somewhere near the photocopier, Bob became enamoured with the idea of software that would allow the assistants to send faxes from their desktop. Bob ran various scenarios to demonstrate how much money we would save if we purchased this product. He calculated the salary and benefits earned by each assistant per minute and multiplied it by the number of minutes each assistant spent walking to and from the fax machine every day. We were going to save a fortune.
I was the managing partner of a law firm once. I came to the job with little aptitude for management and even less experience and training. Of course, I was qualified to be the managing partner because I had high personal billings and a whole whack of originating credits.