Law Firm Management

DIVERSITY DOES NOT MEAN "PREFERENCES": In my last post, I described a very surprising reaction from a well respected AGC about diversity meaning preference. Again, I do not believe he is racially or gendered biased. But he appears not to be receptive to the message that diversity and business development consultants deliver about the need to foster a nurturing environment that will increase female and minority retention rates. He believed that diversity initiatives involve preferences.…

A SURPRISE EXAMPLE - Recently, I was genuinely surprised by a most well respected Associate General Counsel of a global corporation. This lawyer was huffing and puffing because his colleague at a competitor company had received an accolade from the local newspaper praising her as one of the tope in-house counsel in the region. The award itself as well as the press coverage focused in large measure on her outstanding record in recruiting women and…

It's been suggested by several readers that our orientation toward professional services marketing, as opposed to product marketing, is a prejudice. Admittedly, it's at least a bias against a pervasive academic view that the techniques of marketing a product apply equally to marketing a professional service. And indeed, the most successful professional services marketers tend to look to other professional services firms for answers and the best ideas, as well as for validation of their own ideas and processes. Still, it would be foolish to automatically preclude any idea that's been forged in a marketplace of ideas. In a rational world, we take ideas from any reasonable place, accept the good ones, and eliminate the ones that are bad or not applicable. That means that are things to be learned by professional services marketers from the Toyotas and Microsofts and Dells of the world.

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Who's doing what; who's going where.

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With the rising care of health costs, many law firms are finding it economically difficult to provide their employees with health insurance. One of the ways law firms are mitigating this issue is by offering health insurance plans with greater employee out-of-pocket expenses. Congress offers several types of tax-favored accounts that a law firm can provide to its employees that can be used to pay for these additional medical expenses. Each type of account comes with advantages and disadvantages, which are explored in this article.

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The hazards of misunderstanding, always present in human communication, are multiplied in the intercultural environment, and manners, language and knowledge of geography are only parts of the problem. People need a framework for recognizing, collecting and applying what they will be learning throughout their careers in this new world.

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Whether the frequent gripe is true that 'associates today don't want to work hard and pay their dues like we did,' what is certainly true is that a number of forces have conspired to make equity partnership less attainable and less desirable in many firms than it used to be. As the typical law firm career path becomes more fluid, less traditional and less predictable, law firm leaders and associates alike are struggling to come to terms with what the changes mean for recruiting, retention, professional development, promotion, capitalization, individual contribution and compensation, just to name a few of the many question marks.

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In 2008, despite some law firms feeling the brunt of the economic woes besieging the country, many are still in the hunt for marketing talent. It should come as no surprise that when you combine that temptation with the general dissatisfaction felt by most, you have so many willing to take the leap.