Question of the Week

Does wining and dining clients get you work?

This month’s ABA Journal shares 50 simple ways you can market your practice—and most tips are fairly simple and low-cost. But earlier this month at Above the Law, Aon VP and Chief Litigation Counsel Mark Herrmann noted that many lawyers and firms spend quite a bit of cash on client…

Jun 26, 2013 4:15 PM CDT

Have you ever been dressed down for your work attire choices? Was the criticism fair?

Summer is here, and so are the annual complaints about lawyers dressing too casually for work or for court. A judge in Tennessee announced that he plans to offer specific suggestions to female attorneys about attire in an upcoming bar newsletter. And men have not been spared: A partner at…

Jun 19, 2013 3:44 PM CDT

How much privacy would you willingly sacrifice in the name of national security?

Outrage has been widespread and lawsuits have been filed since former CIA employee Edward Snowden exposed the the National Security Agency’s secret U.S. collection of cellphone data from Verizon subscribers. Some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have declared the program lawful under the Patriot Act and have asserted…

Jun 12, 2013 5:39 PM CDT

Did you take a bar exam prep course? If so, did you take out a loan to finance it? Any regrets?

The time has come for new law graduates to turn their attention to the bar exam. Many law grads take bar preparation courses that cost between $3,000 and $4,000, and many finance those fees—as well as their living expenses while they study—with a bar review loan of up to $16,000.…

Jun 5, 2013 7:12 PM CDT

What practical office tasks can you do efficiently?

Last week, we did a post about how one corporate counsel, frustrated by big bills from law firms for routine matters, created and administered a test for potential law firm hires. Associates were tested on efficient use of basic software such as Microsoft Word and Excel. They didn’t do well…

May 29, 2013 6:10 PM CDT

Are you still in touch with any of your law school professors?

It’s graduation season, so you might find yourself attending one soon–or graduating yourself! So this week, we’d like to ask you: Are you still in touch with any of your law school professors? If so, have they continued to be of help to you as you advanced in your law…

May 22, 2013 6:20 PM CDT

How long is your work commute, door to door?

The League of American Bicyclists has declared that this week is National Bike to Work Week—and Friday, May 17, is National Bike to Work Day. It’s feasible for some of us to bike to work, and for some of us, bicycling may even be the fastest way to get there.…

May 15, 2013 5:45 PM CDT

How long does it take you to get down to work after you arrive at your office?

It’s a situation familiar to many: Once you’ve sampled the baked goods brought in by a co-worker, jumped into a conversation with some other co-workers, sorted through dozens of worthless emails and perhaps (bless your heart) taken your first look of the day through ABAJournal.com, you look at the clock…

May 8, 2013 4:42 PM CDT

How much caffeine do you need to get through a workday?

Regular NPR listeners probably know that last week was Coffee Week, and that a number of coffee-related stories were featured on Morning Edition and NPR blog The Salt. One blog post from last week explored whether caffeine makes us better workers. The short answer is that the right dose of…

May 1, 2013 6:48 PM CDT

Are the Socratic method and lecture-based classes the best way to teach law students?

Should law school classes be more visual? This week, the Wall Street Journal Law Blog (sub. req.) took note of an upcoming essay for the Maine Law Review by Suffolk University Law School professor Shailini Jandial George that asserts that the law school lecture format needs a revamp. Although initiatives…

Apr 24, 2013 6:40 PM CDT

Are you living and working in your dream city? If not, where do you want to land?

This week, in a profile of DLA Piper co-CEO J. Terence O’Malley, the powerful partner shared why he wanted to end up in San Diego. “At Notre Dame, I kept track on the wall by my bunk of the consecutive days I had gone without seeing the sun,” O’Malley said.…

Apr 17, 2013 7:15 PM CDT

What personal safety measures do you take at work, at home and in between?

The recent slayings of two prosecutors in Kaufman County, Texas, and other fatal courthouse shootings in 2013 have put courthouse security in the spotlight. But aside from what the courts you practice in are doing to protect you and your clients—what do you do to protect yourself? What personal safety…

Apr 10, 2013 8:30 PM CDT

Have you ever accepted something other than cash for legal services?

In February, a lawyer on Solosez was asking for recipes as he had recently been paid for his services with 100 pounds of beef: “a couple dozen steaks, a lot of roasts, and the rest is ground beef.” He also noted that he’d previously been paid with an entire lamb.…

Apr 3, 2013 7:06 PM CDT

What are your favorite lawyerly spaces?

Last month, we noted a couple who visited all 254 Texas courthouses and eventually married at one. “In a lot of ways, the courthouse is the keeper of local history, the center of local history, and all of them together make up state history,” Aaron Mason told the American-Statesman in…

Mar 27, 2013 5:05 PM CDT

Do you think that curtailing telecommuting is best for the bottom line?

It made headlines last month when Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced that those who had been working from home needed to start working from the Yahoo office. At the time, San Francisco State University management professor John Sullivan said Mayer’s conclusion about the benefits of collaboration is right, if the…

Mar 20, 2013 5:23 PM CDT