By Sara Skiff | Monday, August 30, 2010
Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 98 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:
Tip: Outlook 2007 and 2010 Reminders
Review: Samsung EPIC 4G
How Much Revenue Should Your Firm Generate Before Hiring
Does Your Website Cater to Your Clients or Your Peers?
This issue also contains links to every article in the August 2010 issue of GP Solo. Don't miss this issue or future issues.
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By Sara Skiff | Monday, August 23, 2010
Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 90 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:
Microsoft's Legal Cloud Computing Strategy
Review iPhone 4 and AbacusLaw
Why the 40 Hour Work Week Is a Non Starter
Why Facebook Places matters to Your Law Practice
Don't miss this issue or future issues.
How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. To stay on top of all the noteworthy articles published in blogs and other online publications you could either hire a research assistant or simply subscribe to BlawgWorld. The BlawgWorld newsletter has received rave reviews and is free. Please subscribe now.
By Sara Skiff | Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 94 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:
The Ultimate Guide to Gmail (PDF)
Eversheds Eschews BlackBerry in Favor of iPad
The BigLaw Bucket List
Brace Yourself for Social Media Marketing Backlash
This issue also contains links to every article in the August 2010 issue of Law Practice Today. Don't miss this issue or future issues.
How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. To stay on top of all the noteworthy articles published in blogs and other online publications you could either hire a research assistant or simply subscribe to BlawgWorld. The BlawgWorld newsletter has received rave reviews and is free. Please subscribe now.
By Marin Feldman | Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Originally published on August 11, 2010 in our free BigLaw newsletter.
A few weeks ago, I helped you figure out when it's time to leave your large firm job behind. Whether you've decided to stay put or are feverishly working on your departure memo, you can't claim to have done time in Biglaw without completing certain rites of passage. At my undergrad alma mater, you couldn't graduate (with any dignity) without having both copulated in the library stacks and peed on a famous statue in the middle of campus. Given the humorlessness of the legal profession and the dismal job market, the BigLaw Bucket List below does not require you to defile a colleague in a supply closet or urinate on a Redweld … at least not at the same time. Before you earn your last inflated paycheck and kick the BigLaw Bucket, make sure you've earned your stripes. All 50 of them.
1. Bring a cocktail to every meeting.
2. Reference Rocky III repeatedly on a conference call, and say "I pity da fool" at least once.
3. Give an enormous box of your city's best donuts to the overnight word processing crew.
4. Sample all the cafeteria entrees at least once and fill out the feedback card.
5. Locate the mythical office shower and take one.
6. "Forget" to attach a document to buy yourself more time.
7. Tweet "In client meeting, LOL" from a client meeting.
8. Fart in a partner's chair.
9. Take your family on a tour of your office.
10. Seduce a paralegal.
11. Send a "high importance" email to a colleague asking if he or she wants to combine dinner orders.
12. Wear the same outfit every day until someone says something.
13. Steal someone's lunch from the communal fridge.
14. Give a good review to someone who means well but doesn't deserve it.
15. Pose for a photo with your deal toys.
16. Replace the water in the coffee machine with Gatorade.
17. Ask for a new computer before you give notice.
18. Take friends out for dinner and charge it to Business Development.
19. Conduct a messy break-up on speakerphone.
20. Perform a public records search on your supervising partner.
21. Sneak your dog into the office.
22. Buy and prominently use a "#1 Lawyer" mug.
23. Send a letter on firm letterhead to Steve Jobs about the iPhone 4.
24. Rap your voicemail greeting.
25. Request to connect with the managing partner on LinkedIn.
26. Invent a funeral and take a personal day.
27. Ask HR to have your firm photo retaken every year.
28. Send an email to your assistant thanking her or him for the hard work.
29. Take your firm's black car service to a White Castle.
30. Replace your "Ladies and Gentlemen" email salutation with "Listen Up People."
31. Read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover in the handicapped bathroom stall.
32. Switch your 401(k) contribution amount every term.
33. Organize an unnecessary teleconference.
34. Vomit at a firm social function.
35. Plant a receipt for condoms in a BNA Tax Portfolio.
36. Take out your own garbage at the end of the day.
37. List Seamless Web sushi delivery man as an emergency contact on your medical form.
38. Submit a scathing, unsolicited 360-review of a partner.
39. Keep your office door closed for the day while working in pajamas.
40. Send a scone via interoffice mail.
41. Describe a colleague to a partner as "definitely not partner track."
42. Affix "Born to Ride" bumper sticker to your firm-issued laptop.
43. Respond to a partner emailing you an assignment by stating, "Can't right now, at a club."
44. Practice a wind instrument in your office after hours.
45. Backtrack on an already-negotiated point by claiming Opposite Day.
46. Purchase telescope/binoculars for office.
47. Send office-wide "Does anybody know a good malpractice attorney (for a friend)?" email.
48. Prepare a tearjerker farewell speech.
49. Send in a juicy tip to Above the Law.
50. Become a BigLaw columnist for TechnoLawyer.
How to Receive BigLaw
Many large firms have good reputations for their work and bad reputations as places to work. Why? Answering this question requires digging up some dirt, but we do with the best of intentions. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, BigLaw analyzes the business practices, marketing strategies, and technologies used by the country's biggest law firms in an effort to unearth best and worst practices. The BigLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
By Sara Skiff | Monday, August 9, 2010
Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 102 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:
Adobe's Advice on Purging PDF Documents of Metadata
A Frugal Attorney Reviews the Motorola i1
Nail Non-Verbal Negotiation by Mirroring Your Opponent
Law Firm's Ad Derides Service It Uses
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Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. To stay on top of all the noteworthy articles published in blogs and other online publications you could either hire a research assistant or simply subscribe to BlawgWorld. The BlawgWorld newsletter has received rave reviews and is free. Please subscribe now.
By Sara Skiff | Monday, August 2, 2010
Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 87 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:
Exploded Data, the Legal Web, and What We're Missing
Insights on Amazon's New Kindle 3
Creating a Team of Decisive Attorneys: Talk With the Boss
What the Band Kiss Can Teach You About Legal Marketing
This issue also contains links to every article in the August 2010 issue of Law Technology News. Don't miss this issue or future issues.
How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. To stay on top of all the noteworthy articles published in blogs and other online publications you could either hire a research assistant or simply subscribe to BlawgWorld. The BlawgWorld newsletter has received rave reviews and is free. Please subscribe now.
By Sara Skiff | Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 82 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:
Being a Virtual Lawyer Is All Mindset Not Technology
Review: WordPerfect Viewer for iPhone
Curbing Those Long, Lucrative Hours
Where Should Your Law Firm's Blog Reside?
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How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. To stay on top of all the noteworthy articles published in blogs and other online publications you could either hire a research assistant or simply subscribe to BlawgWorld. The BlawgWorld newsletter has received rave reviews and is free. Please subscribe now.
By Sara Skiff | Monday, July 19, 2010
Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 74 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:
New Site Crowdsources the Legal Treatise
Bad Connection: Inside the iPhone Network Meltdown
The Top 5 Reasons Lawyers Fail
How Lawyer Roy Ginsburg Uses His Blog to Attract New Clients
This issue also contains links to every article in the July/August 2010 issue of Law Practice and the July 2010 issue of Law Practice Today. Don't miss this issue or future issues.
How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. To stay on top of all the noteworthy articles published in blogs and other online publications you could either hire a research assistant or simply subscribe to BlawgWorld. The BlawgWorld newsletter has received rave reviews and is free. Please subscribe now.
By Sara Skiff | Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 72 articles from the past week worthy of your attention, including our Post of the Week. Here's a sample:
Basic Legal Research on the Internet
Smartphone Owners Rejoice: HP, Google Offer Cloud Printing
Revenge of the Laid Off Associate
The Top Law Firm Marketing Instinct to Ignore
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By Marin Feldman | Monday, July 12, 2010
Originally published on July 12, 2010 in our free BigLaw newsletter.
If you're a biglaw attorney, privately threatening to quit your job at least once a day is pretty much standard. And why wouldn't you? Who wants to deal with the long hours, demanding clients, and
office jerks? Fantasizing about leaving, formulating exit strategies, and implementing five-year plans are as endemic to biglaw as all-nighters and free meals. Of course, threatening to quit and quitting are quite different. How can you tell when it's really time to go? Whether your inner compass is broken or you already have one foot out the door, read on to learn about the four tell-tale signs that it's time to say sayonara to biglaw.
1. You No Longer Buy Into Work-Related Emergencies
Biglaw is as famous for its "work-related emergencies" as it is for its paychecks. There are 3 am due diligence emergencies, IPO pricing day emergencies, injunction emergencies, deadline emergencies, emergency memos, panicked phone calls, phantom emergencies, and thousands of other legal crises that are just as (if not more) serious than saving lives.
If you don't believe it, or otherwise no longer feel a sense of urgency about your work, it may be time to throw in the towel. Part of surviving biglaw is buying into the self-important culture. Once you stop believing, you're on your way out.
2. You're Trying to Get Them to Fire You
Biglaw attorneys may not get tattoos or odd piercings (visible ones at least), but if you secretly want to leave, you may find yourself testing the limits of acceptable office decorum in other ways. Maybe you wear money sign earrings to work (I did once) or browse the Web too often for too long. Perhaps you leave "Regards" off of your email signature or don't bother to proof the final version of the agreement.
These aren't just signs of laziness — you're also tempting fate. Take a cue from your passive-aggressive behavior and take a hike. Don't make them fire you. Quit while you're ahead (but wait for your year-end bonus if you think you'll receive one).
3. Your Sunday Night Blues Are Killer — Literally
Very few people in the world rip off the covers on Monday mornings, do a tap dance, and then head into work beaming. Everybody dreads their job a little bit ... especially on Sunday nights when another work week looms. But if you find yourself inconsolable at the prospect of going into the office the next morning, spend half of Sunday evening trolling eBay for guns, or find yourself seriously depressed on Friday night at the prospect of having only two weekend nights left, it may be time to leave biglaw.
4. Work Is Destroying Everything, Including You
Your significant other has left you and your kids hate you. You're on antidepressants, you don't have time for your hobbies, and
you've gotten fat. When biglaw has robbed you of all of your joy, it's time to quit.
Many lawyers are so wrapped up in the day-to-day of their jobs they don't realize how miserable they are. Take stock of your life. If work has left you with no room for family, friends, or meaningful extracurricular activities, it has taken over. You may think you need the biglaw paycheck to be happy, but no fancy toy or expensive vacation can make you less miserable (although science is getting close with plastic surgery). Trust me — you'll become much richer when you take a pay cut to get your life back.
How to Receive BigLaw
Many large firms have good reputations for their work and bad reputations as places to work. Why? Answering this question requires digging up some dirt, but we do with the best of intentions. Published first via email newsletter and later here on our blog, BigLaw analyzes the business practices, marketing strategies, and technologies used by the country's biggest law firms in an effort to unearth best and worst practices. The BigLaw newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.
