Lawyer Wellness

Former BigLaw Attorney Spends His Mornings Feeding the Homeless

A lawyer who formerly practiced labor and employment law at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius has switched to the plaintiffs side—at the same time that he made a switch in his morning routine. For the past year, Washington, D.C., lawyer Rob Farley has been helping feed breakfast to the homeless at…

Jan 6, 2010 7:36 PM CST

BigLaw Partners May Be Worth Top Pay, But What About Associates?

Amongst those at the top of the BigLaw ladder, partners at the 10 highest-grossing law firms in Washington, D.C., have been earning seven-figure annual incomes and some of the top players are billing over $1,000 an hour. Are they worth it? The answer may be yes, according to a lengthy…

Jan 5, 2010 11:55 PM CST

Train Ride Home Took Lawyer on Journey Toward Writing Book About Christmas 1945

Needing a break after a workday spent on white-collar insurance fraud defense matters in New York City, Matthew Litt started reading printouts of archived 1945 newspaper articles on his ride home on the subway, years ago. A politics major in college, the now-32-year-old New Jersey lawyer says he didn’t even…

Dec 24, 2009 2:24 AM CST

GCs Demanding That Firms Staff Part-Time Attorneys on Their Cases

General counsel at a dozen major corporations—including Wal-Mart, General Mills and Del Monte Foods Co.—are telling their outside counsel that they want at least some part-time attorneys handling their matters. “It’s completely logical,” said James Potter, Del Monte general counsel told the National Law Journal. “You’re never going to fully…

Dec 3, 2009 11:05 PM CST

Third Annual ABA Journal Blawg 100

Welcome to the third annual ABA Journal Blawg 100—the best legal blogs as selected by the Journal’s editors. This year we did something even more blog-like. We asked our readers to help us find blawgs worthy of note. We called it our Blawg Amici and we asked law blog readers…

Dec 2, 2009 5:50 AM CST

Come On, Get Happy

There always have been legions of disaffected and unhappy lawyers. Few, however, thought there were any alternative ways of practicing law that might change their outlook.

Dec 2, 2009 3:49 AM CST

Sick Call

Prepare ahead for days when kids fall ill

Dec 2, 2009 2:49 AM CST

Green Achers

The lure of BigLaw and big cities may stir some. But for a certain solo breed, the small town is the place to be.

Nov 2, 2009 4:30 AM CST

Wal-Mart to Require Outside Law Firms to Have Flextime Policies

Law firms must have flextime policies if they want to do legal work for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Wal-Mart associate general counsel Joseph West said his company will add the flextime requirement to its current list of criteria used to evaluate outside law firms, the National Law Journal reports. The retailer…

Oct 27, 2009 4:06 PM CDT

Psychotherapist Tells Lawyers: Embrace the Rock

A psychotherapist and professional coach notes the travails of Sisyphus, doomed to push the same rock up the same hill day after day, and says many lawyers see parallels to their own law practice. “At this moment, we all have a sense of our rock, of the suffering of the…

Oct 23, 2009 1:21 PM CDT

Drop ‘n’ Give Me 20

Fit lawyers may seem like an oxymoron to some. But this month the Chicago Bar Association aims to show that physically fit lawyers not only exist, but there are also a whole lot of them.

Oct 2, 2009 3:20 AM CDT

Mom Makes It Work

Her search for balance now helps others

Oct 2, 2009 1:30 AM CDT

Former Paul Weiss Lawyer is Busy Giving Away Much of His $2.7B

Now that he’s 60, David Rubenstein hopes to be busier than ever. A self-described workaholic who routinely returns e-mails within three minutes, according to the president of the Kennedy Center, Rubenstein is now focusing on how best to spend a substantial portion of his $2.7 billion in assets, reports the…

Sep 30, 2009 9:41 PM CDT

Partner Says Law Firms Should Take a Cue from Obama, Who Works at Home

President Obama’s home and office—the White House—are one and the same. Of course, the president has plenty of staffers and a place big enough to accommodate them, law firm partner Patricia Gillette writes for the Am Law Daily. Those differences aside, his ability to take a break for family time…

Sep 30, 2009 4:41 PM CDT

Attorney Marc Dreier Says Midlife Crisis, Sense of Failure Drove Massive Fraud

Marc Dreier admits he had a lengthy track record of “cutting corners.” But it wasn’t until an apparent midlife crisis, precipitated by his divorce and a sense of failure, when he compared his own life to the noteworthy success some of his well-educated, well-to-do peers had achieved, that the 50-something…

Sep 29, 2009 9:28 PM CDT