Last month I wrote about the recent birth of my second son as being a happy reminder to keep things in perspective and to maintain balance in my life. With the winter solstice approaching later this month, this is perhaps the most important time of year to make balance a priority. Darkness is depressing. Going to and from work in the dark makes us feel as though we’re living in a cave. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a clinically recognized phenomenon, particularly for those of us living far from the equator. Added to that are the complexities of the holiday . . . [more]

How precise are the following statements?

1. The Canadian public debt as of 15 December 2010 was $275,872,478,414.44 CDN.
2. Canadian hourly-billing lawyers worked an average of 2043.96 hours last year.
3. Toronto Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista hit .26 in 2010.

One answer: They are each precise to two decimal places.

Another answer: They are precise to 14 figures, six figures, and two figures, respectively.

I hereby state that I looked up answers to all three items before writing this column. So which of them do you believe? 

Chances are, based on precision alone, you believe one of them. No one knows . . . [more]

When I talk with people in the legal marketplace about alternative fee arrangements, I often hear two common objections. Interestingly, one is raised by lawyers and the other by clients. 

Lawyers say they don’t want to offer fixed fees because they figure that the client, having bought what is essentially an unlimited amount of legal services, will then deluge the lawyer with phone calls, emails, and tasks of varying complexity, burying the lawyer in work for which he or she will never be compensated. Clients, on the other hand, say they don’t want to accept fixed fees because they figure . . . [more]

Lawyers love to armchair quarterback the trials of others. We strategize, we second-guess, we substitute our own brilliance for the wit and experience of learned trial counsel. It’s our professional equivalent of Tuesday Morning Football.

However, on the rarest of occasions, there comes a time when a legal strategy is just so outrageous that our armchair quarterbacking risks incurring hoots of derision.

I’ve been reading about a particular trial for the past few weeks (yes, it’s now, at the time I’m writing this, in week 6 of what could be a 9 or 10 week trial). I believe, officially, that . . . [more]

According to actuarial tables, a 35 year old has a 50% probability of being disabled for at least 90 days and the average duration of disability is an incredible 3.5 years. The probability decreases slightly as you get older, but the average duration increases. The probability of a 50 year old being disabled for at least 90 days is 33%, but the average duration is almost 5 years. 

Based on the probability of having a claim, I think you’ll agree that disability insurance is a good idea, but if you believe your employee Long Term Disability (LTD) plan offers plenty . . . [more]

Ever find that the change goal you most wish to breakthrough is the hardest to tackle? It’s like having one foot on the gas and one on the brake, you just can’t seem to progress. 

Chris wants to learn to delegate more effectively but every time he tries he gets burned and concludes it would have been easier if he had just done it all himself. Carrie has perpetually got too many of other people’s priorities on her plate. She would like to say no more often but every time a colleague or friend asks her for help she feels . . . [more]

Jane was a family law associate in a large firm where she hoped to be made partner within 2 years. While she had a good client base including clients whom she had brought to the firm and excellent billings, she felt that she was invisible to most of the partners.

She didn’t work in a large practice group and had no apparent champion who might speak for her at the partnership table. She often felt that the partners saw her family practice as a sideline service they were happy to provide their corporate clients provided they didn’t have to touch . . . [more]

I’m currently collaborating with a colleague who is doing a lengthy research project attempting to identify the characteristics, traits and behaviors of the most effective law firm managing partners. In our most recent discussions he posed this question: “In firms you’ve observed where the managing partner isn’t doing well or leadership is weak or dysfunctional, what one or two things do you find are the biggest or most common causes of failure?”

To provide a meaningful response, I went back through a decade worth of notes from training practice group leaders, scrutinized the results from the psychometric data that I . . . [more]

Although two of my columns have already been posted on this blog, I never really officially introduced myself to the readers. As the youngest columnist in the Slaw family, I’d very much like to share my background and the road I travelled to date on my professional journey! 

The Early Years 

My story begins in the summer of 2002 when I left my family and moved to Montreal from Haiti to begin my postsecondary studies. I immediately enrolled to College Jean-de-Brébeuf and quickly developed a particular affinity for science and the law. This affinity for both those fields would stay . . . [more]

As a lawyer who has been heavily involved in my Provincial Lawyer Assistance program and with the CBA’s National Legal Professionals Assistance Conference, I have travelled all over Canada and even ventured into the United States to either speak to, or hear others present, on the topic of lawyer’s wellness. Many of these discussions focus on our collective need to achieve a healthy work-life balance. This isn’t surprising, given the consuming nature of our profession and its demands on our time, mental and emotional energy. Employing our well-trained critical eye on the intricacies of other people’s conflicts can be exhausting. . . . [more]

What do call waiting and ramp metering have in common with legal projects?

(Ramp metering refers to stoplights on highway entrance ramps that space out merging traffic during busy periods.)

No, it’s not that some people want to sue over them.

Rather, they require a balancing of competing interests to function most effectively. They also hark back to the urgent-v.-important equation.

Call Waiting and Individual Choice

Call waiting involves three parties but leaves the choice in the hands of one.

Personally, I detest call waiting. In effect, the person at the center says, “I don’t know who’s calling, but they’re . . . [more]

I recently migrated to Sydney, Australia with my Australian-born wife and our three children. Australia’s remote location seems to allow a freedom to experiment without the pressure to conform to U.S. or European norms that one experiences in a country like Canada. Or perhaps Australia is simply, as a friend calls it, a “nation of iconoclasts”. In any event, I have observed over the years that regulatory change related to the legal profession in the common law world begins in Australia and then moves around the globe, first to the UK, and finally to North America. As a newly . . . [more]