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Legal Commentary

In Search of Perfect Client Service

Why Lawyers Seem To Stumble. Blawg from attorney Patrick Lamb

Post Frequency: 1.8/day

Last Entry: March 17, 2011 at 16:14:07

Value, Like Beauty, Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Posted on January 23, 2009
Ed Poll of LawBizBlog and LawBiz Management has been advising lawyers for 25 years. Ed is one of the people I look to regularly for ideas and inspiration. His recent post, Corporate Counsel Want Value, frames an important question. The post discusses comments by Susan Hackett of the Association of Corporate Counsel about ACC's Value Challenge...

How Do Big Law Firms Teach This?

Posted on January 21, 2009
What About Clients? periodically reviews its 12 Rules of Client Service. Rule 10 is one of the most nuanced. From today's WAC?: Rule 10: Be Accurate, Thorough and Timely--But Not Perfect. Ah, devil perfectionism: it's the curse of eldest children, professionals, many knowledge workers, most lawyers, all spouses, your Mom, and the geek classes, or Techwazee...

The United States of America

Posted on January 20, 2009
Godspeed, Mr. President.

Survey Of GCs--More Alternative Fees Coming?

Posted on January 19, 2009
Nearly 75% of all law departments are facing budget cuts in 2009. Over 30% are facing cuts of between 11% and 20%, while 35% are facing cuts between 6% and 10%. These are among the bleak results from an Altman Weil flash survey of General Counsel...

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Jim Hassett Takes A Detour--But It's Worth It

Posted on January 16, 2009
Earlier, I wrote about Part I of Jim Hassett's 5-part series on alternative fees. Jim has already written the entire series (if you want it in full format, it's available here). But showing great agility, Jim has adapted Part II on his blog posts to incorporate some dialogue created by Part I...

LL Bean and Trusted Advisors

Posted on January 16, 2009
Charles Green has a wonderful post on his Trusted Advisors blog about LL Bean: Urban Myth Or Rural Superstition. Pulled from The Consumerist, it tells a story of the Maine Outfitter's legendary customer service. Guy's wife orders 3 monogrammed shirts for him for Christmas...

What About Clients? Shines Through

Posted on January 16, 2009
From time to time, Dan Hull and his colleagues at WAC? repeat some of Hull McGuire's Rules of Service. I love this post summarizing Rule No. 9: Lawyers aren't special. We're in a service business. Get used to it. Rule 9: Be There for Clients 24/7...

Hours Based Bonus + Bad Economy = Warning To Clients (Watch Your Wallet)

Posted on January 16, 2009
In a Friday post, Above The Law reveals that Arent Fox utilizes an hours-based bonus system. If an associate does not exceed 1950 billable hours, no bonus. And then in hundred hour increments, associates can receive ever increasing "productivity bonuses...

Lessons From My Wife's Broken Wrist

Posted on January 15, 2009
Last Saturday, my wife slipped and broke her wrist. Yesterday, her wrist was surgically repaired. She's doing fine. I learned a couple of things while at the hospital that are germane to this blog. Here they are, in no particular order: 1) Your waiting room says a lot about you...

A Brief Look Back. A Sober Look Forward

Posted on January 09, 2009
As Valorem was celebrating its first anniversary on January 1st, I spent a bit of time thinking back on the things that shaped our birth. One of those things was a prescient post by Gerry Riskin way back in August 2007. Gerry is, in my view, the world's foremost consultant/advisor to law firms...

Dear Cool Law Firm.

Posted on January 09, 2009
Like a proud parent, I feel an irresistable urge to share some "Valorem highlights" from our first year. I'll save you the case highlights--can you imagine a fun post on lawsuits? We just got a letter from a management consultant in New York...

Fred Bartlit Spices Up Legal On Ramp Discussions On Hourly Rates and Big Firms

Posted on January 08, 2009
Before founding Bartlit Beck in 1992, Fred Bartlit was "the man" at Kirkland & Ellis. As big and impressive as K&E is now, it was that and more when Fred was there. His departure to set up Bartlit Beck was big news. Few have seen big firms, big clients and small firms and big clients as up close and personally as has Fred Bartlit...

Jim Hassett Begins Series on Alternative Fees: What's Wrong With Billing By The Hour?

Posted on January 07, 2009
Jim Hassett has posted the first of five posts on Alternative Fees in his terrific Legal Business Development blog. The first post in the series is What's wrong with billing by the hour? It's a good summary. I'll provide links to the next four posts as they appear.

Cravath To Declare War On Billable Hour?

Posted on January 07, 2009
When legendary CBS Evening News Anchor Walter Cronkite announced his opposition to the Vietnam War in February 1968, President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, "That's it. If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." It was a turning point in the war...

2009 Marketing Partner Forum just weeks away!

Posted on January 06, 2009
The 16th Annual Marketing Partner Forum is being held on January 28-30, 2009 at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort and Spa in Dana Point, CA. The theme of this year's conference is "Lighting the Way: Strategies For Influencing Change. In the current environment where change is as necessary as breathing, its hard to imagine a more timely topic...

News Flash!! Pat Lamb Is Speechless

Posted on December 30, 2008
I'm not sure it's ever happened before. I received an email this morning attaching Dan Hull's post, "The man, the firm and the blog to watch in 2009." Dan is the prime author of What About Clients?, consistently voted one of the best law blogs...

The Daily Trifecta: Change Meets Law

Posted on December 30, 2008
Bear with me on this one. I came upon three different articles that, in my mind at least, fit perfectly with each other. Sort of like getting the Rubik's cube right. First is this list of the 13 Worst Things About Hourly Billing, brought to you by The Greatest American Lawyer...

It's About What You Give

Posted on December 24, 2008
Here is the Christmas prayer said for those who have paid the ultimate price in our defense: Rest easy, sleep well my brothers. Know the line has held, your job is done. Rest easy, sleep well. Others have taken up where you fell, the line has held...

Leading Legal Innovation, The Change Agenda and Legal On Ramp

Posted on December 22, 2008
I began my legal career before I went to law school. In 1978, after graduating from college, I joined Kirkland & Ellis. I was a "project assistant" and was paid by the hour. One of my first assignments was to the "Plywood Antitrust Litigation" team headed up by Fred Bartlit...

My now daily trip to the car dealer

Posted on December 22, 2008
I took my dear old Lexus in for an oil change this morning. Five minutes of check-in and out the door with a freshly washed car in less than an hour. The McGrath Lexus dealership has remodeled itself, and the customer waiting area is one part luxury hotel, one part Starbucks...

9 Predictions For 2009 (no law involved)

Posted on December 18, 2008
I like this guy and I never met him. Tom Asacker describes himself as "author, renowned speaker, provocateur." Tom Peters describes him as a "marketing guru." He just wrote an article that contains 9 predictions for 2009...

Surviving The Economic Free-Fall: Experts Offer Insights

Posted on December 18, 2008
The on-line version of LawPro Magazine, a publication for the Canadian Bar, contains a wonderful roundtable discussion about what firms should and should not do to ride out the economic storm. The panel includes my good friend Gerry Riskin, always a sure sign that the panel is noteworthy...

Newspapers .... and the Law. Any Parallels?

Posted on December 18, 2008
I saw a link to a blog post on the most overrated and underrated people of 2008, and I had to check it out. It's pretty predictible, but one "winner" got me thinking. Let's start with the paragraph that triggered my brain cells: Most underrated phenomenon: Newspapers...

Average Hourly Rate or Ratio Analysis To Thwart Work Hoarding

Posted on December 17, 2008
My eyes were drawn to the bolded Law21 on my list of blogs. A new post from Jordan Furlong. Mind vitamins, to be sure. I got my money's worth in the first couple of paragraphs: First is this National Law Journal article about how law firms are responding to the recession (short answer: myopically)...

Are Associates Worth $600 Per Hour?

Posted on December 17, 2008
$600 (bleeping) per hour? (Sorry, I'm from Illinois. It's our water.) Blago humor aside, let me draw your attention to this Wall Street Journal Law Blog post. From the Journal: Yesterday, Judge Chin, in a polite and judicious order, asked Dewey to provide a bit more information on its fees: It is difficult to evaluate the reasonableness of the hourly rates for most of the lawyers listed...

Extending An Invitation: Arguing Against The Inevitability Of Change

Posted on December 10, 2008
I ran across an article by Paul Lippe in The AmLaw Daily titled "Welcome To The Future: Brains That Can Change." Paul, CEO of Legal On Ramp, provided a taste of changes that had occurred in the past few days: • Goldman Sachs reported a $2 billion loss • Google cut spending • The American Bar Association announced a Web 2...

Change Made Easy. Well, at least easier.

Posted on December 05, 2008
Caption from a cartoon in this week's New Yorker: "There's a lot I want to experience, but not a lot I want to actually do." (thanks to Seth Godin) From Tom Peters' list of 27 things that will transform every organization: "Walk the talk...

"The Market Doesn't Care"

Posted on December 01, 2008
Outstanding post by my friend Jordan Furlong, who posts at Law21.ca (Dispatches from a legal profession on the brink). The post that really captured my attention was "the market doesn't care." Jordan draws from posts by "two of the smartest people writing on the web these days," Seth Godin and Scott Karp...

Associate Bonuses and Value Billing

Posted on December 01, 2008
It's that time of year for the associate set. The payoff for surviving a year of crazy partners and even crazier hours. We're past Thanksgiving, when every associate who still has a job gave thanks for still having a job. Now we are into payoff season...

Survey Results Confirm Vitality Of The 10% Solution

Posted on December 01, 2008
I recently posted on the 10% game that clients and their law firms play. The client representative wants to feel like he or she has achieved a real discount with the law firm. So the representative insists on a "10% discount." Lawyers, being the smart people they are, can do the 10% math, so they raise their base rates so that after giving the 10% discount, the firm gets its regular rate...

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