In the real world, you go to school to learn the basics. By the time you’re working towards your graduate degree, you know exactly where you want to be, and your schoolwork is training you specifically for that career very. Yet, every one of us who has ever held a job will tell you that schoolwork alone doesn’t fully prepare you to be a model employee. Only quality experience can do that.
Join us at 2 p.m., CT, Oct. 14 for a live Web radio chat with Paul Lippe, founder of Legal OnRamp.
Federally funded legal aid is free, and that needs to change, says Luz E. Herrera, a Harvard Law grad who focuses on access-to-justice issues for low- and moderate-income people.
We live in an age that knows few bounds. Where once we were limited by geography, we now can communicate instantly with anyone anywhere in the world. Where once we were limited by knowledge, we now have the world’s libraries accessible to us with just a few keystrokes. Where once we were limited by opportunity, we now command the power of vast digital resources, without regard to our status or wealth.
You’ve heard about Twitter. You may have even visited the site. But how can lawyers – a prolix group, if ever there was one – stand to benefit from a micro-blogging service that limits messages to 140 characters?
Imagine 15 years ago as a practicing lawyer taking 30 minutes in the morning to skim news headlines from 400 or 500 reliable news sources you selected because they offered news and commentary related to your work as well as monitoring keywords relevant to your area of law (clients’ names, subjects, cases, and the like) for their use in the news and private commentary.
Ethical rules governing lawyers are designed to maintain the illusion that law practice is something other than a business.
The illusion has always fit uneasily with reality, but never more than today.
In a live Web radio show, Twitter extraordinaire Rex Gradeless faced off with legal marketing expert Larry Bodine, debating the merits of Twitter for lawyers.
In my book, The End of Lawyers?, I claim that the future for lawyers could be prosperous or disastrous. I predict that those who are unwilling to change their working practices and extend their services will struggle to survive.
I appreciate being invited to participate in this “Rebel-Fest,” but want to start by taking issue with the notion of being a “Rebel.” My first boss was Senator Moynihan, D-N.Y., and he used to say that “words matter.” Labeling folks who want to restore the best part of the legal profession as “Rebels” is, I would suggest, part of the problem.
Besides being an executive at a multinational mining and resources group, Leah Cooper is a wife and mother to two young boys. She meets all of those obligations with creative solutions, friends say, and that experience influenced her recent outsourcing plan that sends basic legal tasks to a team of lawyers in India.
Even early in his law career, Evan R. Chesler came across as the go-to guy. Senior partners at Cravath, Swaine & Moore remember, when he was a junior litigation associate, that he was the one saving documents that disappeared in the teletype machine—even when the steno staff couldn’t. And today’s clients say he’s the first one they think of when faced with a complex legal problem.
GC Jeffrey W. Carr went looking for a few good lawyers this year—lawyers who want to earn more than their hourly rate. By early August, he had them.
For the past four years, Jeffrey Carr says, FMC Technologies Inc. has been using versions of ACES for 100 percent of its legal work in the U.S. and for most of its international work. Carr says the company pays its lawyers with a Visa purchasing card, which ensures payment can arrive in as few as three days from invoice.
On the prowl last year for a merger partner in Germany, Ralph Baxter of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe approached Hölters & Elsing’s Siegfried Elsing through a legal consultant with an invitation to meet in Paris for dinner.
Capture the energy of a border collie—that intelligent working breed known for nipping at cattle heels, almost pulling the herd ahead with an invisible string—and you’d get a sense of the spirit of Erica Moeser.
See related post, “Erica Moeser: A Bar For All.”
Below are sample questions from the three sections of the multistate bar exam offered by the National Conference of Bar Examiners. Answers for the multiple-choice questions follow the question.
On Oct. 14-15, as part of 24 Hours of Rebels, some of the most creative minds in the legal profession will be talking on LegalRebels.com about how the practice of law needs to change in the next five years – from law school to big firms, from solo practice to the demands of clients, from legal ethics to how lawyers use technology.
It was the perfect setup: a momentarily empty office at Sun Microsystems, the unattended computer of a new attorney. Mike Dillon just couldn’t resist. A few keystrokes and the deed was done—a resignation e-mail to the unsuspecting new hire’s supervisor: “It’s not working out.”
Rex Gradeless graduated law school with more than 67,000 followers on Twitter (@Rex7). Below is a question and answer on Twitter and Phonevite about why social media matters to lawyers.
