My son recently announced that the small law firm website design company he works for will be giving up their trendy office space in Vancouver’s Gas Town and permanently moving to a remote work environment. He was ecstatic, as he LOVES working from home. But my husband (a school teacher near retirement) insists that most workers prefer the sociability of a traditional face-to-face workplace and that despite expert predictions, remote work won’t be a serious thing after the pandemic. It made me wonder where law firms might fall on the scale. (I learned that the answer has significant marketing, HR, . . . [more]

Solving the mental health crisis in law requires invention and transformation.

Lawyer entrepreneurs are turning their minds to the challenge and bringing innovative offerings to the market aimed at making a difference.

Aaron Baer is one such entrepreneur, a corporate commercial lawyer who started his legal training company 4L Academy this year. 4L provides modern legal training for Canadian lawyers and law students.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Baer on June 7, 2021 – the very day 4L launched the summer pilot program.

The launch attracted lots of attention.

The response from law students was phenomenal—the summer program . . . [more]

Languishing.

Thanks to Adam Grant’s May 2020 article in the New York Times, we now have a word to describe this malaise many of us are experiencing:

“Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021.”

The opposite of languishing is flourishing.

Martin Seligman, a founding father of the School of Positive Psychology, writes in his book Flourishing that five factors together contribute to flourishing.

• Positive emotions
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning
• Accomplishments

There is also a . . . [more]

A correspondent from Europe wrote me recently to ask if I had any thoughts about unhealthy work schedules and high billing pressures facing young law firm associates. I had assumed this was strictly an Anglo-American problem, but based on what my correspondent told me, it seems that wherever in the world there are sizeable full-service law firms, there are overworked and over-stressed lawyers inside them.

The usual expressions of concern are being made by bar associations and the firms themselves, and there’s been talk of task forces, educational webinars, voluntary programs, and so on. I told my correspondent that I . . . [more]

Tuning in to a discussion about access to justice, we might think, mistakenly, that the big problem is how much the legal system costs. The cost of litigating a dispute is too high, it goes, and so lawyers should flatten fees, cap fees, and unbundle fees, fleeing fees like so many fleas. Only the richest (they have the money) and the poorest (they have so little they qualify for aid) can litigate, so to achieve justice for the masses we should turn to alternative dispute models like mediation and online dispute resolution. The justice system is too complicated and too . . . [more]

In March of this year, artist Mike Winklemann, AKA “Beeple”, sold a compilation of digital art for $69m through Christie’s. The artwork was comprised of 5,000 images, created daily over a 13-year period. Unless your firm is planning on investing in digital art anytime soon, why should law firms care about this sale? Because whether you are a Managing Partner or a Marketing Director, business strategy is about identifying important shifts in the marketplace BEFORE they are entirely relevant to your current business processes so you can determine if and how they might affect you and your client base in . . . [more]

As a coach, I am intensely interested in how we – professionals in the legal sector – can help retain young lawyers in the profession.

The young lawyers I speak with have a healthy perspective. They have the types of strengths and interests that align well with a career in law. They are interested in building meaningful and rewarding careers that also leave room for a life outside of law. I believe they are vital to helping transform the practice of law for the better.

And we need to retain them in the profession.

Too many young lawyers are leaving . . . [more]

Jane wants to ask the partner she works with about raising her salary, but she is afraid to initiate the conversation.

John works with a disorganized partner who is a last-minute delegator. John has ideas about how he can better support the partner but doesn’t know how to raise the subject.

Why is it that speaking up and making requests can be so hard to do? Why does self-advocacy raise so many fears?

The difficulty in speaking up is often about the tension between exercising personal power and tending to our relationships.

It can seem like communicating about what’s important . . . [more]

Spring is here, so allow me to introduce you to Joshua Palacios, a young outfielder for the Toronto Blue Jays who has something to teach us about the development of new lawyers.

Josh, who is 25, made great strides last summer at an “alternate training site” that the Blue Jays created for their young players when the pandemic forced the cancellation of the minor-league season. And during spring training in March, he tore the cover off the ball and made spectacular defensive plays in the outfield. Combined with strong character and leadership skills, his new productivity made him a . . . [more]

One way to look at whether your salary is fair is to understand how a law firm calculates your value. We’re going to look at the numbers behind such a calculation with a concrete example and assume you’re a lawyer making $100,000 a year. This is intended only as a primer – adjust the numbers and add/subtract factors according to your own facts.

What is your value to a firm? Profit, of course

There are two bottom-line numbers to calculate your value to a firm in terms of profit: how much money you make for the firm, and how much . . . [more]

Cognitive bias is:

1. Making decisions or judgments not supported by objective reality;
2. The subject of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow;
3. A barrier to effective Legal Project Management;
4. All of the above.

As a lawyer, you probably have some familiarity with cognitive biases. (If you do defense work, your clients are likely very familiar… from experience.) However, I want to focus on some ways cognitive biases can screw up projects.

(I’m deferring my promised column on project charter disasters to next time.)

Anchoring, or “First Liar”

We can’t help it. Someone tells us about a . . . [more]

I wish I had more confidence.
How can I become more confident?

In coaching conversations with junior lawyers, concerns about lack of confidence and questions about how to build it up come up a lot. This is such a common challenge it is addressed directly in the opening session of AMP (Associate Mentorship Plus) Club in the context of career navigation and what to expect in the early years of practice.

Wouldn’t it be easier if I was confident?

Yes, probably.

Lack of confidence can feel like a unique challenge. Looking around is can seem like other lawyers appear confident. . . . [more]