April 2005

I am a big fan a accountability.  There is a lot that doesn’t happen when no one is accountable.  Create a committee and there will be a bunch of meetings.  Tell someone they are responsible and will be rewarded (“carrot”), punished (“stick”) or both (“carrot and stick”), and something will get done. In my experience, …

I was having lunch with a close friend the other day.  He’s now the Managing Partner of a pretty large, well-established, regional law firm.  He was telling me a story about how he went to dinner with the CEO and General Counsel of a client he had just won a case for, and the CEO …

Last night, I was staying at a hotel in Houston.  My cell phone was running out of juice, and I had forgotten my charger cord.  I called down to the front desk and asked if there was a store nearby where I could buy one.  The person on the phone asked what my problem was, …

My kids are now old enough to ask questions to which I have no answers-Which came first, the chicken or the egg-type questions. (At least we’ve moved on from why did the chicken cross the road types!)  But McGuire Woods’ shocking discovery that client service is a good thing and newfound commitment to alternative fees …

I woke up this morning to this headline in the Business Section of the Chicago Tribune: “Hourly Legal Fees Under Attack.”  I thought to myself-finally!  But the article is simply a puff piece on how McGuire Woods is starting an advertising campaign touting its willingness to use fee arrangements other than straight hourly rates.  …

The floors in my house are being refinished this weekend, so my family and I were evicted and are “vacationing” in a hotel just a few blocks away.  I just finished reviewing my email, had a conversation with a colleague over Skype, and am now posting to my blawg, all while sitting on a lounge …

I’m certain that this blawg will provide ample opportunities to discuss billable hours.  We’ll read some story somewhere about some tireless associate billing a client 4,000 hours to write a motion to dismiss a complaint that has a minor pleading defect or some such nonsense, and I won’t be able to control myself.  But in …

Is Budgeting!  I went through 3 years of law school and the only time I heard the word “budgeting” was when my mother told me I had to budget for food and beer money.  I joined a firm that grew to be one of the 50 largest in the country, and as an associate, …

Remember the scene in the movie Analyze This where Billy Crystal is prentending to be Don Viti’s consigliere?  And Chilly tries to correct him and the Billy Crystal character slaps the crap out of him and tells him to never correct him in front of other people?  Everyone should have a client service consigliere–someone to …