Question of the Week

If You Had a Do-Over, Would You Choose Law School?

With the economy in shambles and firms, large and small, struggling to find solid footing, the time is ripe for self-reflection. Indeed, hard times can unleash a creative yearning for another profession, prompting lawyers like onetime Wall Street lawyer Jonathan Fields, who gave up law a decade ago to become…

May 27, 2009 7:31 PM CDT

What Boundaries Have You Set for Your Own Facebook or Twitter Use?

Social networking is fairly new for lawyers, and there aren’t many best practices for using the medium for client development and professional networking. Jones Day partner Steven Bennett, who chairs the firm’s e-discovery group, took a crack at it with a Twitter-related cover story in this month’s New York State…

May 20, 2009 2:34 PM CDT

Share Your Witness Attire Horror Stories

News that the Michigan Supreme Court is considering a rule to guide trial court judges who find themselves imposing dress codes on witnesses drew some interesting comments. And while an underlying issue in Michigan involves a Muslim woman whose case was dismissed because she declined to remove her face veil…

May 13, 2009 6:43 PM CDT

Who Would You Nominate for the Supreme Court?

With President Obama grappling with his first vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, there’s been no shortage of short lists of prospective nominees for him to choose from. So we wonder … If you were president, who would you nominate for the Supreme Court? We’re particularly interested in individuals who…

May 6, 2009 9:33 PM CDT

Are You Washing a Full 20 Seconds?

Children learn in preschool that to truly prevent the spread of nasty viruses like swine flu, the best approach is to cover your mouth when you cough and wash your hands. But a squirt of soap and a quick rinse won’t do the trick. Indeed, to get those nasty bugs…

Apr 29, 2009 9:22 PM CDT

If You Had 12 Months of Paid Free Time, What Would You Do?

News keeps coming about deferred start dates for incoming associate classes and offers from some firms to take a year off, with pay, to do something in the nonprofit world or to just take a break. And Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has a no-strings-attached offer out to its…

Apr 22, 2009 8:34 PM CDT

Choose Your Grammar Battle, and Take a Side

Thursday, April 16, marks the 50th anniversary of the first edition of the writing and grammar guide The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. “Publishers at Pearson Education Inc. are proud to say it has not changed at all since that first edition,” Editor & Publisher…

Apr 15, 2009 7:38 PM CDT

When The Going Gets Tough, What’s the Best Niche Practice?

We know times are tough. Many lawyers are finding their in-boxes empty and their bank accounts draining. Yet law is a vast field; there are nooks and crannies, practice niches that could allow lawyers to stay in the work they love. So we’re asking, in the spirit of aid to…

Apr 8, 2009 5:10 PM CDT

Who’s to Blame When Turnover Is High?

This week, readers and commenters were intrigued by a purported small law firm middle manager at a firm that usually fires two of the three associates it hires each year. The manager was so frustrated that he or she wrote to the Washington Post for advice. “Is firing people just…

Apr 1, 2009 9:51 PM CDT

How Are You Keeping Yourself and Others From Despairing?

Even with encouraging news from the Dow early this week, there is economic bad news all around. And the long and the short of it is, workers are scared. Maybe that’s why our attention was drawn to an e-mail this week promoting ways to look forward and to keep morale…

Mar 25, 2009 9:59 PM CDT

Are You Lost in March Madness?

March Madness is here, which means that die-hard college baseketball fans will be logging in many hours in front of the flatscreen in the next few weeks, and that even those who know little and care even less about hoops are likely to have filled out a bracket in an…

Mar 18, 2009 7:18 PM CDT

Should Lawyers Form Their Own Unions?

Amid all the gloomy news of the sour economy and law firm layoffs, there have been a few comments at ABAJournal.com urging lawyers to band together and form unions. Crazy talk, you think? Not according to these posts at PrawfsBlawg “Law-Firm Associates Should Unionize” and Law Memo “Attorney Labor Unions.”…

Mar 11, 2009 6:16 PM CDT

Given the Power, What Would You Ban?

Banned Books Week isn’t for another few months, but toy makers may be watching how the American Library Association rallies in support of controversial literature if one West Virginia lawmaker gets his way and bans Barbie dolls from his state. The push by Delegate Jeff Eldridge (D-Lincoln County) for Barbie’s…

Mar 4, 2009 8:05 PM CST

What Would Be the Ultimate Lawyer TV Spin-off?

We were inspired this week by a post by Boston University law professor Jay Wexler at Prawfsblawg, in which he talked about TV spin-offs, and a subsequent comment by Kelly Lynn Anders, who suggested a William Shatner spin-off of Boston Legal: “It would be entertaining to have a new show…

Feb 25, 2009 6:11 PM CST

What’s Your Favorite Law and Why?

We do a fair bit of Web surfing over here at ABAJournal.com and often come up empty when searching for treasure. But we were delighted the other day to dig up this gem in which Colorado’s MileHive asked ABA President H. Thomas Wells a series of questions for a law…

Feb 18, 2009 8:18 PM CST