Categories
People I Met Practicing Law

Law Firm Primer For Articling Students and New Associates – Part Six: The Law Clerks

This is the sixth in a series about information that Articling Students and new Associates should have before deciding to stay at a firm for the long-term.

Today it is about some of my favourite people in law firms – the Law Clerks (“LC”) (aka Paralegals).

Categories
Client Development

Hawkers and Hookers

In 1971, Xaviera Hollander published her first book titled, “The Happy Hooker: My Own Story.” It sold twenty million copies.

Categories
People I Met Practicing Law

Law Firm Primer For Articling Students and New Associates – Part Five: The Chief Financial Officer

This is the fifth in a series about questions that Articling Students and new Associates should consider when trying to size up their new firm.

This time I will address the most senior person in charge of the money. In your firm, this person could be called any of the following:  Chief Financial Officer (“CFO”), Controller, Accounting Manager, Accountant or Bookkeeper.

Categories
People I Met Practicing Law

Law Firm Primer For Articling Students and New Associates – Part Four: The Chief Technology Officer

This is the fourth in a series about questions that Articling Students and new Associates should ponder while trying to determine whether they have landed in the right place.

This time I will address the Chief Technology Officer (the “CTO”).  Of course, being lawyers we need a definition, so let’s use this one from Alexander Gillis and others at techtarget.com:

Categories
People I Met Practicing Law

Law Firm Primer For Articling Students and New Associates – Part Three: The Chief Operating Officer

In Parts One and Two, I set out some questions that articling students and young lawyers should ask about their firm’s Managing Partner and Practice Group Leader.

Today I will tackle the much trickier issue of the Chief Operating Officer (the “COO”).

Categories
People I Met Practicing Law

Law Firm Primer For Articling Students and New Associates – Part Two: The Practice Group Leader

In Part One, I set out some questions that articling students and young lawyers should ask about the Managing Partner. This time let’s talk about your Practice Group Leader (the “PGL”).

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
Law Students and Young Lawyers

That’s A Little Bit Too Thinky For Me

A young lawyer asked me for advice. He was contemplating making a jump from Big Law to a smaller firm, for the usual reason that he wanted to work less and enjoy life more. I was not completely sure that it was the right move for him.

Categories
Legal Tech

Artificially Human?

I have a theory about life which I espouse in my less optimistic moments. My theory is that for many people, things become less and less familiar as they age. What is socially acceptable changes, people dress and act differently, friends and family move away and pass away, technology changes, and so on. Eventually everything is so unfamiliar that they do not feel that they belong in the world, and they are then ready to die of natural causes.

Categories
Firm Culture

The Zero You Deserve is Finally Here

The title of this post is taken from an advertisement for Dr. Pepper’s zero sugar soft drink and is a nifty introduction to the topic of entitlement.

One of my minor pet peeves is advertisements that tell me that I “deserve” things. How do people trying to sell me stuff know what I deserve?  On the other hand, one of my major pet peeves is people who actually believe that they deserve stuff – especially when they have not worked to earn it.