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The views in DecisionBooks have not been approved by the House of Delegates or the Board of Governors of the American Bar Association and, accordingly, should not be construed as representing the policy of the American Bar Association.

 

Ask The Career Counselors. . . Answers for Lawyers on Their Lives and Life's Work

Ask the Career Counselors is the third work in the ABA Career Resource Center trilogy on job search matters and mechanics. It builds on Objection Overruled…Overcoming Obstacles in the Lawyer Job Search, and its companion workbook, Direct Examination... a Workbook for Lawyer Career Satisfaction, and addresses:

    • Contemplating your Career,
    • Identifying your Career Path,
    • Getting your Job Search Started,
    • Crafting your Resumes and Cover Letters,
    • Handling your Networking, and
    • Mastering your Interviews.

This manual provides quick tips, articles, and exercises to assist readers and propel them toward a more satisfying professional life. No lawyer, law student, or anyone considering becoming the same should fail to Ask the Career Counselors.


Direct Examination. . . A Workbook for Lawyer Career Satisfaction

Take control of your career with this practical, interactive workbook. Unique and informative, Direct Examination. . . A Workbook for Lawyer Career Satisfaction leads lawyers and law students through a wide range of exercises to address priority career and job search issues in practical and productive ways.

Use the Direct Examination workbook to:

    • Identify core career interests and job detractors
    • Chart strong job search strategies and workplace goals
    • Master the nuts and bolts of the job search process
    • Gain insight on how to craft your career plan

Confront job dissatisfaction and career disappointment as you are led by lawyer career experts through the pages of Direct Examination. Wonder no longer if the grass is greener as you attack negativity and move toward success and satisfaction. The workbook provides room to wrangle with career issues past, present and future.

Objection Overruled. . . Overcoming Obstacles in the Lawyer Job Search

If you have yet to read the job search manual Objection Overruled. . . Overcoming Obstacles in the Lawyer Job Search, now is the time. The manual covers common barriers to the successful lawyer job search and provides practical advice about overcoming the stopping blocks. This manual, when used in combination with the Direct Examination workbook, shows lawyers and law students how to manage the job search process to their best advantage.

Take Note. . . Tip-A-Page Notepads
Keep your job search tactics and career focus sharp with regular reminders. Specially designed to help you stay organized in your job search and upbeat about your career, this set of five 50-sheet notepads (5 1/2 x 8 1/2) comes complete with a new career or job search tip on each page. There are 250 tips in all. These include:

    • Ask others for their advice and opinions-but remember that you control how much weight you give each comment.
    • Correctly crafted, a cover letter foreshadows, not repeats, the resume, and prepares the reader to view it positively.
    • Figure out the lesson behind a bad work experience. Is it enough to make you want to leave, or is it an isolated bad work day?
    • Carry business cards. You never know who you may run into.
    • Remember why you went to law school in the first place.

The Productive Culture Blueprint
For Corporate Law Departments and Their Outside Counsel

Are unique value, teamwork, and daily satisfaction prized and rewarded in your workplace? If not, The Productive Culture Blueprint is a book you need. As companies continue to downsize and seek other ways to improve operating efficiency, they also face more legal and compliance issues than ever before. At the same time, the legal profession is being buffeted by a variety of trends with the power to force change in the way legal services are purchased and delivered. As a result, in-house law departments and outside law firms are pressured to increase productivity as never before.

Written for both in-house counsel and the outside lawyers who serve them, The Productive Culture Blueprint provides a framework for building sustainable strategic productivity into law departments by redefining and reinvigorating both internal and external roles, all based on adding business value to the corporate client. Strategic partnering between corporations and outside law firms is one of the key concepts that comes alive in the pages of this comprehensible, user-friendly manual.

In it you'll find:

  • The definition of a productive culture and reasons why you want one;
  • Key elements of a productive culture;
  • Specific strategies for building a productive culture, including:
    • Articulating your mission and vision statements;
    • Effectively reviewing your work processes;
    • Determining the highest and best use of your people;
    • Partnering strategically for win-win outsourcing;
    • Developing process and resource efficiency;
  • A not so modest proposal for change;
  • A detailed case study and practical, useful tools to help you put these strategies to work.

In today's changing landscape, The Productive Culture Blueprint will help you build a new order for the delivery of legal services-one that offers significant financial and non-financial benefits all around.

Making Work Work for You

This manual features judges and lawyers from multiple practice areas discussing how they deal with people integral to their professional success. The participants in this "roundtable discussion" focus on approaches to effectively handling relationships with clients, colleagues, support staff, judges and court personnel, opposing counsel, the family, and the media.

The companion audiotape captures a live roundtable discussion, for which Ethics and Professionalism credit has been requested. Complete with a question and answer segment, the author and participants examine issues attorneys should consider when they are looking to improve their working relationships with colleagues and opposing counsel.

Order the audio package (which includes the manual) or the manual, and consider how you can better your relationships.

Rest Assured: The Sabbatical Solution for Lawyers

In the war for human capital, lawyer workplaces of all sizes from coast to coast find sabbaticals to be a workable, worthwhile tool in their attorney retention arsenal.

This practical, 140-page manual includes written sabbatical policies and practice successes from numerous firms, including firms such as Arnold & Porter, Perkins Coie, and Holland & Hart, as well as best practice comparisons from corporations. The manual addresses common management concerns and client reactions, and covers the logic and logistics of making time for lawyer sabbaticals in busy and thriving practices.

The audio program features law firm managing partners debating and discussing issues such as:

    • The cost issue: prohibitively expensive or of negligible cost? How can both be true?
    • Perception or reality: given the opportunity to take a sabbatical, lawyers will take off time and then leave their firm/company.
    • Perception or reality: sabbatical programs are incompatible with good client service.
    • Are sabbatical programs a benefit to recruiting?
    • Are there opportunities for service to the profession presented by sabbaticals?
    • If most lawyers would like to take a sabbatical and most think it just is not possible, how is it that some people do take them?
    • What is it about lawyers in your firm that helps them overcome the resistance?
    • What incentives can be created for partners to step in for each other while one of them is on sabbatical?
    • What can be done to ensure quality and continuity of client service while a partner is out on sabbatical?
    • Is there a stigma attached to someone who chooses to take a sabbatical?
    • How can lawyers be encouraged to take sabbaticals?

Individual lawyers also share their experiences on sabbaticals in this engaging CLE program, for which Ethics and Professionalism credit has been requested.

Order the audio package (which includes the manual) or the manual, and discover why sabbaticals are viewed by workplaces nationwide as an investment in stepping up productivity and loyalty.

100 Plus Pointers for New Lawyers on Adjusting to Your Job

Transitioning from law school into your first official legal job is no easy task, and the ABA Career Resource Center has developed guideposts to help you overcome feeling overwhelmed. "100 Plus Pointers for New Lawyers on Adjusting to Your Job" guides lawyers and law students through what you need to know, from how to work with your new boss to how to keep the copy machine working. Get oriented to the working world through this electronic set of 100 Plus tailored tips, tactics, and tools for early success in the legal profession.

Representative pointers include:

    Pointer #26
    Understanding Online Research Economics
    You no longer have unlimited, free access to popular online legal research systems. Remember to inquire about the specific pricing structure your firm contracts for with vendors, as the agreed-upon pricing may vary. Contact your administrator or the firm’s provider representative to get a full understanding of how and for what the firm will be charged before you go online.

    Pointer #48
    Making Mistakes
    No one expects you to know everything. Be sure to ask for help and learn as much as you can from others’ mistakes and examples. If you do make a mistake, let your supervising attorney know immediately. The more you try to correct a problem, the worse it might become. Most likely, after you feel the terror, he or she will admit having been in the same or a similar situation.

    Pointer #82
    Recognizing Your Internal Clients
    Do not be lulled into thinking the only clients you have are those who pay the firm. In fact, your primary clients as a new attorney are the partners and more senior associates you serve and assist. Responsiveness and eagerness are attributes these clients want and deserve from you, as well.


  • Order Softbound Manual online

  • Part I: Best Practices for Individual Lawyers (Downloadable PDF)

  • Part II: Best Practices for Law Firms (Downloadable PDF)

  • Order via mail, phone or fax

    • Best Practices in Attorney Professional Development: Heading Off and Handling Wrong Turns

    More and more firms are hiring professional development experts, and the shared information in this manual will be invaluable to those, and all firms, and individual attorneys focused on their own professional development. Best Practices in Attorney Professional Development consists of Best Practice Tenets for law firm and lawyer professional development practices. The contributing authors, professional development attorneys and specialists in law firms, and members of the Professional Development Consortium, identify the best professional development practices, the related mistakes firms and/or lawyers make, provide examples illustrating the errors, and include suggestions to "cure" or prevent related blunders. Job descriptions of professional development positions are also included in the hard copy offering; sections on best practices for lawyers and employers also are each available individually and in bulk in downloadable formats.

    For downloadable order information, including bulk pricing, please contact Jill Eckert McCall at eckertj@staff.abanet.org or 312.988.6215.

     

    Kathy Morris is the Chief Career Development Officer at Gardner Carton & Douglas LLP, the former director of the ABA Career Resource Center and Senior Advisor to the ABA Center on Continuing Legal Education. She is also the founder of Under Advisement, Ltd., a Chicago-based career counseling and job search firm for lawyers.Ms. Morris' long-running Career Question column appears monthly in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. She has authored three books on attorney career planning and job search, and is an active public speaker at attorney career forums nationwide Ms. Morris earned her J.D. in 1975 at Northeastern Law School in Boston and her B.A. with Honors in 1971 from the University of Michigan.

    Jill Eckert McCall, an attorney with an M.B.A. concentration of leadership and change management, is the Deputy Director of the ABA Career Resource Center. A legal career counselor for five years, she also contributes to legal career publications and presentations on and off the Web, and maintains the ABA Career Counsel website, which includes the ABA Pre-Law Toolkit. Ms. McCall co-authored Direct Examination... A Workbook for Lawyer Career Satisfaction and Ask the Career Counselors... Answers for Lawyers and Their Life's Work. She wrote the chapter "Taking Advantage of the Internet" and related appendix material for the 5th Edition of What Can You Do with A Law Degree? Ms. McCall also served as the reporter and designer for the 2001-2002 ABA Commission on Billable Hours Report and Online Toolkit. She earned her J.D. from DePaul University College of Law and her M.B.A. with distinction from DePaul University's Charles H. Kellstadt Graduate School of Business. Ms. McCall received her B.S. in journalism cum laude from Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism via the Honors Tutorial College.

    Debra H. Snider is an author, speaker and consultant. In addition to moderating two ABA Career Resource Center teleconferences on sound time management and business terms and concepts, she has been a featured speaker at conferences in London, Amsterdam, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Toronto, and Brussels, on various topics including leadership, managing the corporate law department, effective outside counsel partnering programs, strategic vendor management, client development strategies, and success strategies for professional and business women. She has also co-written a book on strategic partnering in the legal services context, and consulted on projects in the areas of strategic productivity, law department management, change facilitation, developing effective strategic alliances, and operations and process streamlining. From 1995-2000, Ms. Snider was Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Chief Administrative Officer at Heller Financial, Inc. in Chicago (formerly NYSE:HF, the company was acquired by General Electric Capital Corporation in 2001). Prior to joining Heller in 1995, Ms. Snider was a partner at Katten Muchin & Zavis (now Katten Muchin Zavis Rosenman) in Chicago, where she practiced primarily in the securities, securitization, and mergers & acquisitions areas. In addition to her law practice, at KMZ Ms. Snider chaired the Securities Department, was Co-Hiring Partner and co-founded the KMZ Women's Forum, a network of over 750 professional and business women in the Chicago area. Before that, she was First Vice President and Associate General Counsel at The Balcor Company, and an associate at Hopkins & Sutter in Chicago.

    Gary A. Hengstler is the director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for the Courts and Media at the National Judicial College on the campus of the University of Nevada, in Reno. Prior to assuming that post in 2000, he spent 14 years as the editor and publisher of the American Bar Association's flagship publication, the ABA Journal. He remains a frequent collaborator with the ABA Career Resource Center. An award-winning journalist and former practicing lawyer, Mr. Hengstler retains an active license to practice in Ohio. Prior to his term at the ABA, where his duties also included that of Associate Executive Director and member of the Senior Management Group, he created The Texas Lawyer, a weekly legal newspaper based in Austin, Texas, in 1985. The paper was purchased by the American Lawyer Media Group, where it remains on its growing list of publications.

    Lori Simon Gordon works as Loss Prevention Counsel for ALAS, Inc. She has served Jellyvision, Inc. (an interactive media company best known for the CD-ROM games You Don’t Know Jack® and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire®) as Senior Counsel, Director of Corporate Development, and General Counsel. Prior to that, Ms. Gordon spent 13 years as a practicing corporate and securities law attorney at Schiff Hardin & Waite and Latham & Watkins, where she was a partner. Ms. Gordon earned her A.B. at Brown University in Semiotics, her J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law, and her M.B.A. from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

    Margaret Spencer Dixon, attorney and founder of the DC-based time management consulting firm, Spencer Consultants, featured in the ABA-CLE audio programs So Little Time, So Much Paper and The Palm Approach to So Little Time, So Much Paper, both of which are available on both tape and CD. Meg came to the field of organization and time management by way of a career in law, during which she practiced in the litigation and energy groups of Shaw Pittman in Washington, D.C. She received her A.B. with honors from Princeton University, and her J.D., from Stanford Law School. In 1992, Meg left the practice of law to found Spencer Consulting, and since then has been giving speeches, writing articles, and conducting seminars on many aspects of time management and related subjects such as procrastination, stress management, how to run effective meetings, and techniques for getting the most out of a Palm handheld computer. She has presented seminars for numerous law firms, CLE providers, government agencies, Harvard Law School, and organizations such as the Women's Bar Association, the National Law Firm Marketing Association, and the District of Columbia Bar. She has been chair of the Time Management Interest Group of the American Bar Association's Law Practice Management Section, authored the chapter on time management in the ABA's book, Living with the Law: Strategies to Avoid Burnout and Create Balance, and also recorded the audiotape program Organize Your Time and Manage Your Paperwork. Her most recent project, a book on using a Palm handheld computer in the practice of law, is to be published in 2004 by the ABA.

    Dr. Sharon Meit Abrahams, has 20 years of experience in the training and education field. She specializes in client relations, human resources, marketing, sales, management development training, and communication. Currently serving as Director of Professional Development for the international law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, she has conducted seminars for legal, health care, insurance, non-profit, retail, and banking organizations. She holds a master's degree in training and education and a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Miami, and received her doctorate in adult education from Nova Southeastern University.

    Dr. Abrahams, who began her law firm training career at Greenberg Traurig, LLP serves on the editorial board of Legal Management, the monthly journal of the Association of Legal Administrators, and is a past president of its South Florida chapter. She is a member of the American Society for Training and Development, and has she served on its local chapter board. She is a past board member and active member of the Professional Development Consortium, the premier organization of law firm educators.

    Dr. Abrahams is a prolific writer, publishing articles related to training within the legal profession. She served as a faculty member for the Center for Management Development and the MBA program at Florida International University, teaching training and human resources courses. She is an adjunct professor in the doctoral program on Organizational Leadership at Nova Southeastern University.

    Dr. Abrahams gives back to the local community by providing training on a cost-free basis to local non-profit organizations such as Leadership Fort Lauderdale, Women in Communication and the Broward County Academy of Finance.